There is a certain group of students that walk the hallways everyday that have some major focuses. One being school and the other being a sport. Student Athletes have to balance school and a sport and maintain high expectations in both.

“It’s not hard for me to keep grades high and still push myself at practice everyday to get better then everyone else,” sophomore Gustavo Posada said.

For other student athletes it takes a little work to keep them going and to maintain a passing grade in all their classes.

“There was one point during the grading period that my geometry grade was not the greatest and I stayed after school to retake a test to get it back up to passing, then I went to practice later than normal afterwards,” sophomore Christopher Daniels said.

A lot of student athletes do their best to keep school and their sports separate, so they can focus on each thing at once.

“If I don’t do good on a test in class, I try not to think about it when I’m at practice,” senior Sam MacPherson said. “Because if you aren’t in a good mood at practice then you won’t have a good practice.”

Others have the same mentality, but try different things outside of school and practice to keep them going.

“I normally try and eat healthy and do different things outside of school to keep me in a good mood, even if things are getting me down at school,” sophomore Lauren Rodriguez said. “Because a happy body, turns to a happy mind and everything is better when you’re happy.”

For all student athletes, one thing seems to stand out. That is the fact that they all just want to do the best they can do and strive to be the best they can be as a student and an athlete.

“No matter what, I will always push myself to be a great student, a great athlete and overall a great person,” Gustavo said. “Student athletes should be proud and confident in who they are and what they do, not people can get up every morning and go to practice then school right after and then back to practice after school, but we can.”

Coaches push their athletes to succeed in the sport and at school. Doing what they can to help them maintain the high expectation of a student athlete.

“From my athletes I expect then to be on time and do what they’re supposed to do. I expect them to be diligent, to work hard and do what is expected of them. I want them to be the crème de la crop. I expect all my athletes to execute the proper behavior by doing the right thing even when nobody is watching. I want my athletes to be the very best students in the school and to prove that there are no limits to what a student can do,”  Track Coach Tim McGuire said.