As a three-sport athlete playing football, basketball and baseball, I will be the first to tell you that it is, in fact, difficult to balance school and three sports each year.

    For me and other three-sport athletes, investing extra time into each sport is expected from coaches because they look to us to be the leaders of the team, which means more time in the gym or on the field and less time in the books.

    As a captain of the ’09 varsity football team, I often found myself staying after practice to throw passes and run routes with the team’s receivers. On some nights, I would not get home from practice until nearly 8 p.m.

    As a captain of the varsity boys’ basketball team, practice for me begins at 3:45 and ends at around 7:30 p.m. while the rest of the team practices from 5-7 p.m. That means my school days since the fall have been 13 to 14 hours long.

    After practice, I shower and finish dinner around 8:30 p.m., finally starting my homework after dinner.

    After several hours of homework and reading, I typically find myself getting to bed at around 12:30 a.m. each night. After being up for around 18 or 19 hours straight, I get barely six hours of sleep before I have to do the same thing all over again.

    By the way, the schedule I previously mentioned was one of my easy days. I did not mention the basketball games in Grand Rapids starting at 7 p.m. and not ending until nearly 8:30 p.m., or the doubleheader baseball games also in Grand Rapids starting at 4 p.m.

    The basketball and baseball games in Grand Rapids on school nights results in my homework not being started sometimes until 11 p.m.

    Although this schedule can get overwhelming, I realize I have chosen this schedule for myself; therefore, complaining will never be an option.

    I find that the most challenging part of being a three-sport athlete is finding time to study for AP tests, which require the studying to begin several days before the test is to be taken.

    To many students at Shores who are not involved with sports, they have the pleasure of being able to go home after school to take a nap, to watch TV, to hang out with friends, to start their homework, and to have dinner with their family on a daily basis. In my household, spending time with friends and taking naps only occurs on the weekends while family dinners happen only on Sundays.

    Giving up one of my three sports is a choice that is often suggested to me, and to be honest, the thought of quitting a sport has run through my mind, but I have made a promise to myself that I would never quit any of my teams, and I am determined to keep that promise.

    Being a three-sport athlete for all four years of high school will make me a better person because of the time management and teamwork skills I have learned from these sports. These skills will be essential in the workforce and will easily be applied later down the road in my career.