There are two main things Blue Valley prides itself on — its education and its sports.

All athletes can miss large amounts of class each week due to their sport, affecting grades and performance in school.

“I miss the majority of seventh hour on game days,” junior Alex Stanek said. “[For softball games] we get there at 2:50 to 3 p.m.and leave at around 10 p.m. It definitely affected me the next day in class because I was behind, but because I stay on top of my grades it doesn’t majorly affect me, but I know some of my other teammate’s grades are impacted greatly.”

Varsity boys basketball coach, Dwight Williams said school should be his players’ first priority.

“It’s important and we stress the importance of being able to balance the two during the season because the basketball season is so long,” Williams said. “My players understand that if they have poor grades they will miss practice and will sit out of games.”

For many of these athletes, time is of the essence when it comes to getting homework done in time for class the next day.

“I have two hours of homework each night and stay up until midnight during the soccer season,” senior Gracie Salts said.

Dwight J. Williams agrees, time management is a major essential for these athletes.  This quality will be very useful in life as these students journey into adulthood.

“[Time management is] much like life — they have to be able to balance different things through life and work, it’s more of a positive thing than a negative,” Williams said. “Time management is a huge quality to have as an adult. When you get to college, you’re going to have to manage your time, and when you’re an adult you still have a lot of things on your plate that you have to be able to sacrifice.”