William Boyce ’15 | Staff Writer

Midterms week is a time spent testing, although for student athletes the time includes practicing for their sport, Carl Stafford ’13 said.

While most are able to go home or to the library right after school, athletes have to work hard to juggle maintaining their attendance at practice and still save time to prepare for their exams, Stafford said. For some it may be easier than others, nonetheless passing classes in order to stay academically eligible is always in the back of some athlete’s minds.

“I think the best way to go about it is get started early because you know exams are coming up,” said Athletic Director Jeremy Hawkins. “You break up what it is you have to do, spread over two weeks of time, opposed to the night before.”

Being academically eligible is not about letter grades such as an “A,” “B,” “C” or a “D.” To Michigan High School Athletics Association (MHSAA) what really matters is how many classes a student is passing at the end of the semester. A student needs to pass five of seven classes if they are taking seven credit bearing classes or four of six, if a student is taking six, credit bearing classes to be academically eligible for sports.

The MHSAA sets the standards for the amount of classes a student has to pass to be eligible for high school sports, Hawkins said.  South holds the same standards for the sports that are not sanctioned by the MHSAA, such as synchronized swimming.

A student’s eligibility to participate in athletics is based upon the previous semester of classes, Hawkins said. Therefore if a student would like to play football in the fall, he must have passed five of seven or four of six of his classes in the spring of the previous school year.

Most of the students at South are not concerned with academic eligibility, but are concerned with getting the grades that will get them to a top tier university.

“Keeping up with my midterm preparations, while having hockey practice every day is really tough,” said Ellie Flom ’15. “It takes hours out of the day that other students can use to study.”

Both girls and boys basketball, boys swimming, boys and girls hockey, and wrestling are among some of the sports that are active during midterms, all of which practice during the week of midterm exams.

“One thing I learned from last year’s midterms is to finish the review packets before I go to practice and study afterwards,” said Flom.

Boys swimming and diving has their “Devil’s Week” the week before midterms, Devil’s week is typically the peak of training. There are morning workouts and extended practices in the afternoon, which makes studying for midterms even harder because of the rigorous practice schedule, Stafford said.

“I probably should have started studying earlier last year, but I still really never have time because of basketball during the week and softball during the weekends. Oh and I can’t miss the Bachelor.” said Katie Kish ’15.

During midterms week, it is pleasant to be able to study after school, then go to practice in the afternoon and study afterwards, Kish said.

“Even if you don’t play on the basketball team here, a lot of kids do Neighborhood Club, or do different things to keep busy and active,” said Hawkins. “You study a couple hours, you go shoot some hoops, you come back and you get back to studying.”