The Relationship Between Athletic Success and Scholastic Achievement

Recently the Berrien Springs Senior High School Board members voted to transfer from one interscholastic athletic league to another, since the high school\u27s football and basketball teams had been having very poor athletic success. The faculty and administration felt that always losing was having a demoralizing effect on the entire school body, which was carrying over into their academic success. This study covered a twenty year period running from 1953 to 1972 at the Berrien Springs Senior High School. The purpose was to see if the interscholastic athletic success in varsity and junior varsity football and basketball during this period was (1) significantly correlated % with the academic success of the athletes, and (2) significantly correlated with the academic success of the non-athletes. The Pearson product- moment correlation coefficient was used to measure the possible correlation. It was hypothesized that (A) among athletes there is a positive correlation between athletic success and academic success, (B) among nonathletes there is a positive correlation between athletic success and academic success, (C) among non-athletes the higher the grade level the greater the correlation between athletic success and academic success, and (D) among non-athletes the correlation between athletic success and academic success is greater for males than for females. Hypothesis A was not supported when the total athletic success of the school was examined. However, when only the athletic success of varsity football was examined, the correlation between athletic and academic success was positive and statistically significant. Hypothesis B was not supported when all non-athletes were considered. When they were divided into male and female groups in each grade level, nine male and one female correlations were statistically significant, but only one was positive. Hypothesis C was not supported. However, negative correlations between male academic success and varsity football success did reach significance. Hypothesis D was not supported. Among males most correlations were negative, and among females the majority were positive, but only one of these coefficients was statistically significant. It was concluded that interscholastic athletic competition probably cannot be condemned or merited because of a possible relationship between athletic success and academic success