If you’re a student who’s questioning whether spending time on playing soccer at your school/college is worth it or not, then here’s your quick answer: Yes, it’s totally worth it. But why?
Soccer provides tremendous benefits for students on so many levels. Soccer can increase the academic performance of students, it can also improve their mental state, build their leadership skills, improve their decision making and their critical thinking and so much more.
To explain the above claims in more depth, I’ll list 5 detailed reasons why students should play soccer during their school/college.
1- Playing soccer improves your grades.
I know this is a bold claim, but there is a lot of research behind it, so hear me out. Check out this study done on students from South Korea. The study was aiming to find a relationship between physical fitness and academic performance.
The study was done on students aged between 13 and 15, and it concluded that there is a correlation between fitness and high grades. This means that students who workout usually have higher grades than those who don’t.
As you can easily tell, soccer is a physical activity. In fact, soccer is a FULL BODY WORKOUT. When you play soccer, you’ll have to use all parts of your body in order to perform well during a soccer match.
With that said, soccer is a way to improve your grades at school or college because it involves a lot of physical activities that can help your brain overtime.
2- Soccer helps students improve their mental health.
One of the most things that students struggle with throughout their school and college journeys is their mental health. If you’re not sure about that, then check out these scary statistics about the mental health issues among students.
According to these stats, more than 25% of college students had mental health problems. Also, more than 80% of students felt overwhelmed by the tasks that they were supposed to complete in their academic year.
These numbers suggest that students need something that can support their mental health, and this thing can be soccer.
Soccer has great benefits for your mental health. I’ve dedicated a full article about the ways soccer can benefit your mental health. However, I’ll summarize it with a few words here.
Soccer allows you to connect to people, it helps you be kind to other people, it makes you live the moment, and it forces you to be physically active.
All of these actions help in improving the mental health of students across all ages.
3- Soccer requires taking quick decisions.
Making the right decisions during a soccer match is extremely critical. As a soccer player, you are always one decision away from either scoring a goal or conceding a goal.
What makes things harder is that you’ll need to make these decisions instantly. Once you have the ball, you’ll have less than a few seconds before you decide what to do next, else your opponent will just take the ball from you.
If you’re new to soccer, you might find it hard to make instant great decisions throughout the match, however the more you play, the easier it gets for you to make correct decisions.
What I’m saying here is that soccer helps you become a good decision maker. It also improves your critical thinking skills.
Before you make a decision during the match, you need to assess your environment. You need to check where your teammates’ positions are, and where your opponents’ positions are, and then you need to base your decision accordingly.
This kind of assessment requires critical thinking. The more you play soccer, the better assessments you’ll make and the better decision maker you’ll become.
4- Soccer improves your leadership skills.
It’s true that there’s only one captain for each soccer team, however that doesn’t mean that the captain is the only leader of the team.
Every player on a soccer team is a team leader. If one player makes a mistake, then the whole team will suffer. If one player makes a good decision, then the whole team will benefit.
With that said, every player is a leader of their team. They need to do whatever it takes to lead their team to victory.
This kind of mentality can improve the leadership skills of students who play soccer. When a student joins a soccer team, they’re forced to take leadership responsibilities. These responsibilities push the student to stay disciplined, focused, and consistent throughout the whole game, which are traits that every leader should have.
So in simple words, soccer can help students gain leadership traits that can help them in their academic years and in life.
5- Soccer gives students a reason to enjoy going to school or college.
This one is from my personal experience. The days when I knew I would be able to play soccer in my college were the days that I always looked forward to.
I was motivated to go to school and college on soccer match days. This kind of motivation was a huge factor in the success of my academic journey.
Many other friends claimed the same thing too.
Having something to look forward to can be of a huge benefit for your academic journey. It keeps you motivated during the whole year, and it recharges your energy every time you do it.
Soccer can be that thing that you look forward to.
With that said, I conclude my list of the reasons why students should play soccer. Here’s a quick summary of what you have just read.
Soccer is great for students because it improves their academic performance, supports their mental health, helps them become better leaders and better decision makers, and it keeps them motivated.