Palo Alto High School is highly competitive in academics and sports. This combination, while admirable, creates problems for students who try to do both. To better their teams, coaches have practices or conditionings in the morning. Are these practices or conditionings really helping students?

No, they are not helping. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens’ internal clocks are set later than others-Teens naturally wake up and fall asleep later. "Teenagers aren’t able to fall asleep until at least 11 p.m. or later, and awaken later in the day," states one page of the site at http://www.sleepfoundation.org/PressArchives/teens.cfm.

The courses that students take at school require students to spend at least two to three hours per night on schoolwork. Add on one and a half to two hours of practice and dinner, and its bedtime. This is assuming the student never gets off task, watches television, computer, etc…which rarely happens.

In addition to these demands , at least four Paly sports require morning workouts: water polo, basketball, baseball, swimming, and girls’ soccer. Students in these sports frequently complain about early morning workouts.

When students have morning workouts, they can get tired out during the school day. "On morning practice days, lack of sleep started kicking in after fourth period and it hurt my academic performance," junior water polo player Remy Champion says. "It makes me want to go to bed early but I can’t always because I have homework but then I get too tired to do it." It becomes difficult to concentrate on what the teacher is saying, and to stay awake, because of the lack of sleep, and the fact that teenager’s internal clocks are set later than others’. "Morning conditioning ruins my day," junior basketball player Brian Baskauskas says. "I hate running, and I hate waking up early, but putting them together is an atrocious combination."

"I spend at least two to four hours on homework per night," sophomore basketball player Jeremy Lin said. Jeremy’s sport, basketball, requires two to three hours each afternoon during the regular season, and an hour to an hour and a half in the morning during pre-season.

Getting as little as five hours of sleep a night is detrimental to the performance of a student-athlete. Morning practices or conditionings can start as early as 5:45 a.m., which means in order to make it to school in time the student must wake up at approximately 5 a.m. According to the National Sleep Foundation, the sleep requirements for a teenager are around nine hours. With Palo Alto’s workload, students can be up doing homework until at least midnight. These sleep habits are not sufficient for a student to show his or her full potential as a student athlete or scholar because during the day he/she will be too tired to concentrate.

Morning practice or conditioning could be done in the afternoon, and if it is too much trouble to reschedule then the coaches can cut morning workouts completely. Sports that have both morning and afternoon practices could just extend the afternoon practice. If practices or conditionings were in the afternoon, student athletes would perform better in school and in their sports because they could get the requisite of sleep.

Some coaches argue that these morning practices promote good work ethic and are a method of gauging an athlete’s dedication to the sport during try-outs. In some ways this can be true, but are they really necessary?

"Conditionings are tough enough as it is," junior basketball player Amar Miglani says. "It makes it even worse that they are in the morning. I am sure a kid’s dedication can be tested just, or nearly as well, through afternoon conditionings."

To perform a peak level, student-athletes should get a full night’s sleep, instead of the minuscule amount they get when having morning activities. Morning practices and conditionings tire students out during the day, on top of a lack of sleep if they chose to stay up late. Conditionings are useful and even necessary, but they would be just as useful and helpful to the team’s performance if they were in the afternoon. Morning conditionings should be eliminated, or school should start later for sports players, like possibly mandating a first period prep for them to get a full night’s sleep. Coaches, try to have fewer morning workouts! Students, try to sleep more!