hi americans!
I’ve always seen high school sports portrayed as super important in American movies, like, everyone’s obsessed with the game, (football, for example) and the athletes are basically the celebrities of the school. Is this really how it is in most places, or is it just a dramatised Hollywood thing?
don’t get me wrong i could be playing into the “all i know about america is from fictional media” thing, however, in scotland (or the UK as a whole) we couldn’t really care less about sports and things like sport-related scholarships don’t exist here as far as i know.
im genuinely curious! (if and how) much does high school sports impact school life, friendships, and even college decisions? 🙂
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It really depends where. In the north? Nobody cares except if you’re in high school. In Texas? High school sports mine as well be professional.
Depends on the the specific school, state/region, and sport.
Texas for example worships high school Football more than basically any other state
In some regions in the South and Midwest yes they are insanely popular as usually small towns have one team and its a weekly event to see them play for the town.
I feel like it depends by school/region/sport. Like I went to an all girls school that was stupidly good at volleyball and pretty good at field hockey. The volleyball players were hot shit. Now like basketball? Track? You were like everyone else
I would say that it’s significantly less important than what’s portrayed in the movies, but athletes are still celebrated both in the school and in the community.
Last year my hometown high school hockey team went to the state tournament, and even though they didn’t win, they were still celebrated with a gathering of some people in the community to celebrate them and welcome them back. But, that’s a major tournament— they’re not going to be celebrating just a regular game like that.
Local Sports in the US often are third places for communities to gather at, to various degrees.
Being a good athlete especially in a popular team sport for your area does tend to make you more popular. But people who don’t care about that exist and they are not necessarily outcasts.
I live in Indiana and high school basketball is huge.
If you are on the team it feels important New England.
No one else feels like the team and their parents really.
Like there was just a pep rally but most kids opted to go to study hall.
I’m in the southeast and high school sports are a big deal. Lots of local media attention, games on local television, people in the community that don’t have kids go to the games.
But athletes aren’t necessarily popular in school. A lot of times, they are from some of the poorest families and don’t really fit in at all.
It’s very situational. In the small towns near me it is huge. All of the parents went to the school, they have kids at the school, the town businesses sponsor the team, it’s a big deal. Especially if the team does well and players go on to play college ball. Most other places it’s just not on anyone’s mind.
Friday Nights Lights might as well have been a documentary
In Texas yes. Everywhere else, usually not but sometimes yes.
Depends on the school, region, and the sport. Indiana is a high school basketball hub, much of the south is the same for HS football. My school, basketball and football were big, baseball to an extent as well, track, tennis, and volleyball less so.
It depends on the area and school.
My high school had a good football team and a fierce rivalry with another school but it wasn’t like you see in the movies.
In the south and Midwest it is a part of daily life in small towns. Here in the northeast it takes a backseat to pro sports and some high schools in thr city I think don’t even do sports. My high school had their own football field and won the city championship over 20 years ago.
Usually yes. Different parts of the country may love one sport more than another. Usually its either football or basketball, but could be hockey, baseball, etc.
Indiana, for instance, is well known for being a basketball state. Football does well too but basketball reigns. So, yeah, a Friday night high school basketball game is going to be a big deal.
Its not true that the UK doesn’t care about sports. You all are still nostalgic for the World Cup 1966. Almost 60 years later.
Very dependent on where and the individual school. If some school in the south has won the football state meet for X years in a row, then yeah the town might swoon over them. However, if some school in Wisconsin has a solid swim team, no one cares.
At my high school, football was arguably the worst sport while I was there, everyone roasted them mercilessly.
You’re going to become friends with people on your team, but a lot of people’s experience will be individual. Sometimes people will get scholarship offers to play at the school, some people choose to go to a certain school because the school has good teams historically so they want to go to games,
It varies wildly by region, but the answer is (mostly) yes.
It depends on the state. High school football al is very much big in the south (with some high schools having fields rivaling mid-size colleges) as is hockey in Minnesota, whereas here in New York, there’s not anything like that.
Seriously, I was 160 cm 40 kg in high school and they kept begging me to play varsity football. If your school isn’t good, no one cares.
Football in Texas, basketball in Indiana. Everywhere else? Not always. It would depend on the sport and maybe the town in other cases.
My high school didn’t have football – tiny rural school district in the Midwest, not enough boys for a team. Basketball was the main sport but it wasn’t followed anything like football in Texas.
Even the college I went to for my bachelor’s, their sports were in a lower division and were not followed by a lot of people. It wasn’t anything like the Michigan Wolverines, as an example. I remember walking by the football stadium on the way to the library to study while a game was in progress.
In Nebraska it’s more prominent than movies lead you to believe, in California, it was not at all prominent
Well, take a look at some high school football stadiums and make your judgements.
Depends on the location but absolutely. Small town USA with fuck all to do? The starting qb is probably a god
Amongst high schoolers I suppose.
Youth sports are big everywhere. Some countries send little girls to gymnastics academies. Tennis kids go to special schools. Soccer clubs have their own developmental leagues for very young kids in Europe.
So in that sense, American kids taking sports seriously isn’t all that different.
Depends on the community and where in the country it is. In places like rural Texas, high school football is huge. In a city like New York, which has two NFL teams and a bunch of universities, it is not.
Yes. Especially football.
I went to high school in the Chicago area and nobody cared much about HS sports. We would go to football games sometimes but it was more just something to do and a place to see people you knew. Our HS team was pretty average so the better teams in our area had more fans but there wasn’t much difference.
I think it’s more important in rural areas where there’s no connection to pro teams. Also the south, Texas as people have mentioned is a big on HS sports
It depends. Having looked into club sports in other countries I’ve seen that the student body can get really into it as well. It’s all about context. It’s all just school popularity and who does what. I taught school in a town where the Football team was a big deal…….. But the band was the community’s golden child. As a band director I loved it and hated it at the same time.
Very dependant on the school. Moat schools on my area, sports are a thing, but not THE thing. But my school (teacher), basketball is king. My sixth graders were literally chasing down varsity players for their autographs this year. They won the State championship last year, but this year lost in the first round of sectionals. And yeah, it effects everything. The basketball players get away with murder, especially in season. It helps that their coach is the dean.
It depends on the sport and the school. When I was in high school, basketball was super popular. We had a really good kid on the boy’s team and we went to the state tournament every year I was in high school.
Football was popular, but we weren’t the best. It was just a fun way to spend a Friday night.
Hockey was meh. But now I live in a town where hockey is the super popular sport, and we don’t even have a consistently good hockey team. Everyone was shocked when the boys made it to the sectional final.
I live in Ohio, a hotbed of high school football. We have many older and much older adults who attend high school games. These tend to be people who never left the area and have little to celebrate beyond their glory years of high school. It’s sad, actually, that this is the best thing in their lives.
In addition to what everyone is saying: it’s also a subset of parents that are really into it while others couldn’t care less. For some parents school sports become their weekend activities.
Being a successful sports player can make you more popular at school, yes.
In small rural towns, the townspeople will follow the local high school sports. There’s not much other local entertainment for them lol. So then the star high school sports players can end up being minor local celebrities.
In my high school the marching band bullied the football team
Kinda sorta. I was in Colorado for Jr. High and High School. Jr. High was small and football and basketball athletes were kinda minor celebrities at school. My High School was over 2000 students for just 3 years. Sports stars were just not as big a deal in my little clique. Student government, band, choir, thespians, yearbooks, debate, honors, all were little schools unto themselves. It you weren’t in sports or a cheerleader, you didn’t much notice the sports heros.
Grew up in Texas and I’d say yes, they definitely do there.
Football itself was a big thing at my school since I’m in the south, but it wasn’t dramatic like it is in shows and movies. The football players weren’t seen as inherently better or more popular overall
People saying “small towns” have never been to a basketball game in the Chicago Public League red division.
Or a 6A California Interscholastic Federation state playoff in just about any sport (even a sectional playoff in southern section).
Our football and basketball games are packed here not sure about the other sports
It’s very regional. A lot has to do with the school district’s proximity to colleges with sports & pro teams near by. A team or kid here in Louisiana is going to get a lot more attention from LSU & maybe even the NFL than a kid from North Dakota where outside sports are less common & the population is sparse.
A high school where sports matter is a lot more interesting to show on tv and movies than a purely academic school.
& It’s hard to remember every state has its own identity. & There are 50 of them. There’s huge diversity in cultures around sports.
I’ve moved between States & it’s like moving to a new country even if they sort of speak the same American English.
I’m in the south east. People care more about highschool and college football than professional.
It is VERY real that the football players get a free ride in the football states.
Dude I went to highschool with tore something and went from “passing” to having to take summer school two summers to graduate.
Attendance at a high school football game in Texas for the biggest class of high schools can easily top 10k.
It’s very regional. High School football is a big deal in the south, particularly Texas and regions that don’t have a pro sports team.
The other component is time period. Being on “the team” was a more prestigious thing 30+ years ago. Nowadays even the students of a given high school aren’t super invested unless your school has an elite program. Being a prominent football/basketball player at your high school used to be a big social status. While it still is kinda its not nearly what it was.
In a lot of places. Especially Friday Night Lights. The other reason they’re important is college scholarships.
It just depends on your area….big city schools in some areas its pretty overlooked, small towns it can be very important.
It’s very regional. And by what type of school. Where I live we have what are called magnet schools which focus almost entirely on academics, so sports are not popular. What’s more true is the clique system. There absolutely are geeks and jocks. I never mixed with the jocks at my high school and nobody else in my cliques did either.
In my region if you are in a small rural area far from a city then everyone in town goes to the games. In the cities, mostly just some of the families of those playing go, sometimes some students, but if you have a really good team in some sport or if it is homecoming or something like that then you will get more kids from the school going .
There are so many clubs and sports and class work and other things for kids to do today that just being a fan takes a back seat to doing your own thing.
My high school’s football stadium holds about 9500 people, it’s normal for 10,000 to show up. In Texas. It’s a huge deal here.
Not really. But I was a wrestler in high school because it was the only sport where they would read your individual name out loud during announcements if you won. So I wrestled so the girls would hear my name get called.
I went 2-17.
“I don’t want your life”
Anyone in America knows that quote.. from that very specific highschool football movie.
It’s Varsity Blues, if you don’t.
But hey how about that whipped cream bikini
Our local news usually does a 15 min segment on Friday at 11:15 pm about the football games that day. I’m in a very populated area. High school sports can get you college scholarships.
Yes, pretty much.
Football is king here.
In some parts of the country for some sports HS teams are a big deal for the community. No question.
Here’s one HS football stadium in Texas. There are numerous others similar to this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoeLFRnUEAAXRg0.jpg
If you perform well in high school it’s the catalyst that eventually leads you to professional sports. So yes.
Depends where you live. I’m in northern New England and most of the students at school didn’t care about the school sports teams unless they were dating someone on the team.
Down south it’s a much bigger deal.
In my hometown yes. The high school I went to and my kids went to has won the state championship in football (American) 9 times in the last 12 years. And two years there was no football for COVID. I mean, they live and breathe football.
In fact the rivalry between them and the across town rivals is played on ESPN just about every year. My son even got a scholarship from ESPN and the marines for it being a football player. Just 250$. But it’s 250$ for freshman year he didn’t have before.
It’s all about Friday nights.
I work in the school in California. The sports in the high school can be big if the team is winning. If it’s not, there’s not a whole lot of interest outside of the kids who are on the team and a small group of kids who support all of the sports teams.But on the whole, I’d say that in terms of numbers, you’ll get more kids to go out to see the school play or the school musical then you will to a football game.
Yes. It’s the ticket to a college education and hopefully a better life for a lot of people. Or at least that’s what they’re told.
In Texas, “Friday Night Lights” is a real thing. The running joke in my hometown is that the best time to do a crime is Friday during the game.
When I was in high school, we were trying to raise funds for computers (this was the 90s, btw) and people would be all about donating….until they found out it was for the rest of the student body and not the football team.
No joke, I still remember one guy saying, “I would rather the team have new uniforms.”
It wildly varies. Small towns, the high school sports games are a center of local identity, pride and socializing outside of going to church. Maybe not to “mythic” status like in the movies, but definitely above your average popular kid in school. Generations back, your grandma probably had intense opinions about the local high school’s basketball stars. There’s also a sense of “they’re the one who are going to make it out” i.e. get scouted for college ball and leave the small town, so complete strangers get wrapped up in their relative sport success.
In college, athletes who play are untouchable. Universities have often been chided for being “a sports team that dabbles in education on the side” based on how their budget works. It’s really impossible to overstate how big of a deal college sports are in America. So high school sport stars who have a chance of getting a piece of that action get like, secondary fame almost.
In big cities where there are plenty of things to do, the kids at the school may care, and being a good athlete might make you popular, but not at all like a celebrity.
In a small town, where one of the main forms of entertainment and social gathering may be local sports, yes, absolutely. The public school is the heart of the community and the sports are a really big part of that.
This is one thing Hollywood actually gets right. I got away with so much crap in HS for no other reason than playing sports.
I had one teacher pull me aside and tell me not to worry about the homework assignment because he knew I was busy with practice. Good times.
We made it to the state championship my senior year for football and it was sort of a big deal, a lot of past graduates/players came out for the game and it was a pretty good turnout, but overall sports wasn’t that big of a deal.
The other team we played, though, was a small oil town that goes nuts for football, the whole town revolves around the team and their facilities are up to par with our state university football programs. They had a whole parade led by their fire trucks and everything on their way out of town. Hell they probably had more fans than us at the game even though the stadium was just down the street from our school and like a 4 hour drive from theirs.
Felt pretty damn good when we beat them lol
It really depends on where you’re from. My high school DGAF. Some of our football players were guilted into it by their fathers, some were drug users, and they weren’t popular because they were kind of mean. Games were usually lost, rarely attended. Many of our cheerleaders were minimal effort because they felt a compunction to do so, because “that’s what one does,” but we didn’t win any awards, let’s just say. And that’s FINE. It looked good on college applications.
But other places, especially the US south? Holy shit, football is life. Entire social epicenters revolve around game nights.
I suppose it depends on the school.
TBH, it depends on how good your school is at things.
My school had a reputation for being good at a number of things, despite being extremely small. So it was important that most students take part in and strive to excel at football, basketball, track, speech, drama, and music.
As a result, we had a reputation for graduating a lot of really well-rounded people.
20 miles down the road nobody cared about anything but basketball.
TL;DR: it depends on the high school you go to and the expectations created thereby.
They did 50 years ago. Communities came together, histories were written, and glorious rivalries played out. Anonymous professional scouts circulated throughout the season, as the players hoped to impress them.
Socially, we had Freaks and Jocks– actual, hardwired cliques, even though the Jocks were all cool, too. There were Very Popular Jocks, as well as Very Popular Freaks. There was no hostility between the groups. It was, for those who embraced it, a decent way to socialize within the safety of a group.
I imagine much of the stuff you see in UK and (recent) US media is borrowed from earlier generations. Gives a show/movie a ready framework for establishing characters and implied rivalries and such.
the smaller the town, the bigger deal high school sports are.
While it’s not based on nothing, understand that movies exaggerate how high school cliques work to an extreme degree.
Like in a typical high school movie opening, the new kid shows up to school on their first day and is immediately approached by a confident new friend who walks them around the quad pointing out all the groups they need to know:
“Over there’s the jocks” and it’s a bunch of square-jawed dudes in letterman jackets throwing a football with girls in cheerleading outfits watching and giggling.
“Under that tree is the theater kids” and it’s a bunch of overly serious looking teens wearing all black (at least one has a beret) reciting poems and reading books.
“The nerds hang out over there” points to a bunch of kids with glasses and sweater vests playing chess or flying a drone or some shit.
With the sports thing, how close to accurate the stereotype is is going to vary drastically depending on where you are. Like if you’re in the northeast, it’s not really a thing, but I’ve heard people from Texas and some other red states confirm the accuracy of the vibe of Friday Night Lights and Varsity Blues.
In Texas Friday Night Lights is a real thing.
I don’t care to read all the comments here about what they say, but this feel is the one thing in movies that’s depicted fairly accurately, whether it is high school or college sports.
I studied sport industry in college and I distinctly remember a conversation I had with a professor about how “odd” it is globally. For a small bit of background, this professor was from Georgia, was a professor at the University of Georgia, then also was a professor in Europe before coming back to the United States. She commented how there exists portions of academia that come to the United States to study this unique relationship we have with sports.
Some places are definitely yes
Definitely depends on where you are. Wasn’t that big in upstate NY when I was coming up.
Depends where you live. Some people don’t care about high school sports others go insane for some reason.
Went to see my cousin play in small southern illinois town and adults were wearing jerseys with my cousins name on them
Depends entirely on where you are in the country. I live near Philadelphia, and pro sports are mostly what people care about. Then, college sports (mostly basketball). Mostly, only the people associated with a particular high school care about that school’s sports.
Minnesota State Hockey Tournament
High School Hockey is huge in my home state
Not where I’m from. I always thought of that as a ‘southern’ thing.
In Texas, football is HUGE
Yes, but it depends.
Yes
Yes, especially in small, rural towns.
no not always
Depends on the sport, and how good the team is. State championship caliber teams are definitely a big deal, and basketball/football are a bigger deal than tennis/golf.
It’s quite the big deal for the younger crowd. It’s the “event” to go to. You socialize, cheer on your school, and it’s a load of fun. It’s pretty close to accurate in the movies.
I think it all depends on the state and city you’re in.
I’d say it depends on the location, the school and the sport.
It’s a small town thing. No a big deal in most big cities
Al Bundy was a Polk High Legend, scored 4 Touchdowns in 1 game.
American Legend.
It depends. In Indiana and Texas? Definitely.
It’s very regionally influenced, in New England hockey is the dominant youth sport, Football is king in Texas and the rest of the south, Basketball is big throughout the country but especially Indiana,
Iowa and Pennsylvania are big wrestling states.
Basically there’s no one answer because we are not a monolith.
In Texas high school football is more important than college or the NFL. High school sports are a big deal where I live in northeast PA.
Depends on what state you are in and what sport.
Football in Texas? Yes.
In Texas, yeah boy howdy. In, say, Massachusetts, definitely not. High school sports are bigger in the southern US, and parts of the Midwest, but especially Texas.
It varies a lot by location. I went to a largish high school that had all the sports, and a lot of our teams were winning championships. But I never felt like athletes were really celebrated or given special privileges like you see in movies and TV. Everyone was there to go to school.
Seems like it’s a bigger deal in small towns with only one high school.
From Connecticut – basketball is HUGE. Even American football is pretty big even though we’re not a great football state.
Depends on the sport and the location.
American football in Texas is huge. The same for hockey in Minnesota. I am sure there are others, but I know these for sure.
It depends on the school. A school with a historically good football team in Texas is going to have football players be way more popular than a crappy football team in New Hampshire.
The smaller the town, the bigger a deal it is. I’m from the South, high school football is huge here. The star athletes were popular, on Fridays wore jerseys and cheerleaders wore their uniforms, etc. College sports are also huge.
So these comments have answered your question and offered tangents. I’ll just add that as someone from a more niche part of the country sports wise (SoCal) I’m pretty sure the water polo guys were more popular than the football players, also we had a surf team lol
They can. For example, high school football is really big in Texas.
It depends. At my high school (suburban Philadelphia) it was considered kinda weird for anyone who wasn’t a student at the school or family of a player to attend a game, but in more rural areas of the state it’s an important event for the whole town.
Unfortunately, more than they should. Our school is looking at cutting English, Spanish, Music, Art, and combining classrooms to cut teachers, but you better believe school sports aren’t losing a single dollar.
Some. My High School was one of these.
Athletics still play a major role in High School social structures. However athletes (outside of specific spaces like Texas football and high level preschool basketball) don’t have this insane power in schools.
Communities (even cities) rally around and celebrate athletes and teams. It’s not necessarily the level of most movies, but Friday Night Lights is fairly accurate
Let’s just say my town has 4000 students at the high school because splitting it into two reasonably-sized high schools would piss off their parents whose kids would now either go to the new school they themselves didn’t play for or the old school that would now be less competitive with half the potential talent gone, and the local big money business like car dealerships would have to choose one over the other.
In a small town and smaller city suburbs, high school sports are not only prominent, they are political.
Depends on the high school. My older son’s high school won state this school year and it was a huge deal. My younger son will be going next year to an arts and STEM high school where there’s no sports teams. There’s not even a traditional gym. They aren’t the sportiest kids so they do things like skateboard during PE.
What’s even more unique is how over the top marching band is where we live.
Not in my area no.
Both basketball and football at my high school in the Chicago suburbs pulled big crowds on the weekend but now there are a lot more choices. The fans who go to a swim or track meet or a volleyball match or a basketball or football game don’t overlap that much. But that doesn’t mean that the parents with kids in soccer don’t go nuts about soccer matches or the parents with kids in volleyball don’t go nuts about volleyball matches.
But just try to change a racist or creepy high school mascot and watch the people in small towns go ballistic. If they didn’t care about high school sports why would they care if they can’t call their teams the Redskins anymore?
When covid happened and high school sports weren’t happening there were articles in the Washington Post (I think it was) about parents moving their kids away from Illinois to other states like Florida so they could still play and get in front of college coaches even though their kids probably had 0% to get anywhere with their sports anyway. High school sports are way too important to too many people if you ask me.
Yes, high school sports are a big deal in a lot of areas. The games are fun!
Varies greatly by sport and state, but yes in some areas things are nuts and it can be like the movies.
Yes, absolutely.
I live in Oklahoma and high school football is basically a religion down here. I have heard an adult unironically use the sentence “What in the name of high school football is going on” before. My high school the year that teachers were having to bring their own paper to print tests and worksheets for students the football team got new bleachers in the stadium, astroturf instead of grass, and a new skybox for the stadium. One football player pointed out to a teacher that he had missed enough questions to flunk a test in front of the class and the teacher flat out told him, “no you get the football bonus.”
Guess why I hate football. And that school. And this whole damn state.
Lived is the south. used to watch the entire town walk to the high school stadium on Friday night for football
It’s varies from place to region to region. Where Im from high school sports really aren’t a big deal. The most decorated competitors at my high school were the marching band.
It varies widely, I gather. It’s totally not the case here: We have sports teams, but nobody really cares unless your best friend/kid is on the team.
It’s a less extreme version of what you see in the movies. We cared about sports but our lives didn’t revolve around them.
I still remember my four touchdowns against Polk High
It depends on what sport and where, but in many places yes it does.
If you live in a place where nothing else is going on, it will be huge.
It’s a small town (or suburban) thing. History, pageantry, the community gathering, hope it stays strong, it is something that makes my town a great place to live and raise kids.
In Texas High School Football is our National pastime.
In Texas?? Sheeeeeeeit. Football’s king, but most other sports have pretty big followings too, both in small towns and big cities. Even marching band.
As someone who didn’t really talk to a lot of people in high school, it was pretty alarming that when I became a starter my first year playing, that everybody knew I was on the team. It’s crazy how people found out information. People I never talked to before, and before the first game I had played had come up to me to say something. It was weird as hell. The most baffling time was when my mom went by herself, to chick fil a, and the worker there was a girl at my school that I didn’t know, and told my mom to give me her number.