Students show commitment to out-of-school athletics

Sophomore Matthew Tran doesn’t do pull-ups or air squats or run the mile once a month for time, the way many freshman or sophomores enrolled in PE do. 

Instead, he is one of 31 students now enrolled in the school’s Independent Study Physical Education program.

His physical education? Playing table tennis at a competitive level at least  11 hours a week.

Tran said that since table tennis was already very time consuming, he didn’t want to have to take traditional PE. 

“I wanted more time to focus on academics,” Tran explained. 

He started playing table tennis over seven years ago, when he was just 8 years old. Since then, he has advanced rapidly, allowing him to take ISPE, which requires participating athletes to play their respective sports at either a state or national level.

While Tran recognizes that many athletes don’t count table tennis as a sport, he disagrees. 

“[Table tennis] is definitely a sport. A sport is something that you work at. It requires perseverance and dedication,” Tran said.

To get into ISPE, the district committee, which includes assistant principal Brian Safine, who represents the school, evaluates each applicant’s situation. The committee then decides whether the student in question will be able to receive credit for their outside-of-school activity. 

Once students are accepted into ISPE, they are required to fill out weekly activity logs. Through these logs, students keep track of the number of hours per week that they spend practicing their respective sports. 

ISPE is a pass-or-fail course. To pass, a student must have completed 170 hours of their activity per semester. 

For most students participating in this program, this is not an issue. Generally, students taking ISPE would be practicing the same amount even if they weren’t involved in the program.

Another student doing ISPE is sophomore Felicia Hung, who has been enrolled in ISPE for ballet since freshman year. Before applying to ISPE, Hung had done ballet for almost 11 years. 

“My day [consisted] of mostly just dancing,” Hung said. “[Doing ISPE] was just more convenient for me.”

Hung had been practicing ballet for 10 hours a week long before high school. 

“I thought, ‘Since I already do [ballet for] 10 hours, I don’t want to do PE,’” Hung said. 

Safine said ISPE is for “the state or national-level athlete who has a commitment to his sport so deep that fitting P.E. into his or her schedule is problematic. … I would recommend ISPE to very serious athletes.”

Often, though, even the most dedicated athletes don’t meet the ISPE requirements. 

Junior Samuel Junqua, who wanted to do ISPE for soccer, chose not to apply because he knew that he didn’t meet the ISPE time requirement. 

Junqua, a member of The Soccer Academy, practices soccer for more than 14 hours a week. However, only six of those hours are supervised, or overseen by his coach. Therefore, he is not technically eligible for ISPE.

Senior Will Guy, who is also part of the league, said that although members only practice six hours officially, it still “involves a lot of time and commitment.”

“[It is a league that] requires more devotion to playing soccer than a standard club sport,” Guy said. 

The Soccer Academy’s season goes on for 10 months, during which teams in the league travel across the country to play each other. 

However, even this much commitment doesn’t meet the ISPE requirements. 

Still, about 75 percent of athletes who apply to ISPE are accepted. Tran is grateful that he is one of the 75 percent. 

Although Tran admits that ISPE is more time consuming than the school’s P.E or athletics program, he doesn’t mind. He believes that table tennis keeps him fit, both physically and mentally. 

“I love table tennis,” Tran said. “I play [table tennis] not because I want to pad up my college [application]; I do it because it makes me happy.”