When I was in eighth grade, I joined Edina High School activities, and now, three years later, I can hardly force myself to come to practice. However, my head start wasn’t as special as I once thought: the stream of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed middle schoolers infiltrating high school activities only to leave entirely lifeless is growing. Despite this, these unassuming tweens don’t understand that while they are becoming burned out, they are the spark that is taking opportunities away from actual high schoolers, making it clear that these tweens should not be allowed in our activities to prevent financial and competitive extracurricular failure at EHS.
The issues with allowing middle school involvement in high school-level activities start with its burden on high schoolers themselves by stealing their funding. To understand this, you must first understand the way funding at EHS works.
When you register for a high school activity, you pay a general fee. Take, for example, a hypothetical $165 fee to join the Science Olympiad. The activity collects the fee and sends it to the district admin, who adds it to a general pot for the entire district. The funds are then re-allocated to the activities at their set annual rate, which means it doesn’t matter if 80 or 200 people join Science Olympiad and pay the fee, because the team will still only receive their same block of $2,000 funding.
This system is exactly where the problem lies. When the population of middle schoolers in EHS activities proliferates across programs that rely on the school-level funding, it creates budgetary constraints that harm the high schoolers who are actually in need. And because more kids doesn’t equate to more money for the program, an influx of middle schoolers ultimately takes funding, coaching attention, and material resources away from sophomores and juniors who rely on support to achieve competitive goals during the most important years of high school. Thus, the funding, which is created to set students up for success, crumbles under the population overload brought on by middle school participation.
The issue doesn’t only affect high schoolers, but has adverse impacts on the kids themselves, who aren’t mature enough or ready for the ultra-competitive world they are thrust into. The world of competitive sports and activities takes time and puts extraordinary pressure on the shoulders of individuals who can hardly manage to carry their backpacks.
The message is especially true for people participating in organized sports. According to Dr. Bianca Edison, 90% of kids participate in organized sports in seventh and eighth grade, and by senior year, only 43% remain participants. Of the families she surveyed, overtraining and athlete burnout have been the largest contributors to students quitting sports.
And how could we blame them? The first year of extracurriculars is designed for freshmen, when being a newcomer means low commitment in a low-pressure environment, giving them a period of adjustment. Starting in eighth grade takes this away completely. By the time they get to high school, the competitive expectations placed on them are growing, forcing long training hours and high-pressure competition constantly. Of course they will be burned out by the time they are upperclassmen; the very model of starting in middle school sets them up to fail.
When I was in eighth grade, I joined high school activities and enjoyed the low-stakes commitment, but as soon as I came back for my JV year, I was immediately bombarded with assignments, time commitments, and pressure that seemed foreign to the first-year ease I once knew. So, I took it on, all while trying to learn the walls of a place I’d never been, make new friends, and finish the homework for classes that were infinitely harder than those I’d taken in middle school. But I was still holding myself to larger-than-life expectations, and when I couldn’t meet them, I practically spiraled. Now, I can’t bring myself to get better at an activity that once offered me a chance at any goal I wanted.
The EHS administration has a responsibility to provide its students the best opportunity possible and protect their mental health. Still, by allowing middle school participation, they erode any chance of success in our programs. It is high time that our district gives kids a chance to succeed instead of stoking the flames of failure.
