TCS High Performance Athletes

Pablo Gongas training with Aguilas Doradas de Rionegro

All TCS students have a life outside school but really few of them are high performance athletes. Being a high performance athlete is something really difficult to accomplish since they need to be good at the sport. “Becoming a high performance athlete in Colombia is really hard. If we are talking about soccer it is really hard to become a professional athlete because there are about 100-200 amateur teams in each city but there are only 36 professional teams 20 in the first league and 16 in the second league and each team can have 25 players. There are many children that want to become a professional athletes but there are really few team that have the high performance facilities. In Colombia there are about 500,000 kids that want to become professional soccer players but there are only 36 team and each team can have 25 players so it is really hard to become a high performance athlete” said Eduardo Silva, the president of Deportivo Independiente Medellín. This shows that becoming a professional athlete is something really few people are able to accomplish and it’s a privilege becoming one.

TCS is a school that can say that it has a student that is close to becoming a high performance athlete. Being a high performance athlete is not easy because athletes have to be compromised with the team and with all the players and staff. Becoming a high performance athlete can bring many benefits to athletes. Many benefits sports can give athletes is health and becoming a better person. “ Soccer has brought me many benefits I became more mature and responsible, i became a calm person and not so brisk, it has taught me to be a respectful person and to become a humble person.” said Pablo Gongas 12th grader and Águilas Doradas de Rionegro player. “I has changed my life I become a better student because it made me a more applied student since i needed to finish all my work i class and i had no time to goof around because i didn’t had time after school to study. With basketball i’ve met new people and i also met my best friends. This is something that changed my life because my teammates became my best friends so our chemistry in the court rised a lot.” said Pablo Florez 12th grades and player of Sabaneta basketball team.

Being a high performance athlete while you are in school is something not everyone is able to handle because they have too much responsibilities with the teams and with the school. “I like to separate my time, school has its own time for students to study, i don’t like to take homework from the school because i prefer go and train with my friends and teammates than staying in my house doing homework,” Florez said. Training during school hours is something high performance athletes have to do but even though they train during school hours they have to do the work. “Most times I train in school time so I have to miss a lot of school, when I arrive at my house I study and when I am in school I talk with teachers to makeup exams and jobs,” Gongas said.

Being a high performance athlete is really difficult and it is harder when you are a student and a high performance athlete at the same time even though it is hard it brings many benefits to their lives. Most of this benefits are on how they grow as a person and how their social lives grow.