The Relationship between Physical Fitness and Academic Performance in College Club Sports Students

Pursuing innovative strategies to improve academic performance is an ongoing priority for many higher education institutions. One area that evidence has shown to further enhance cognitive ability, memory, and focus, but also, enhance the emotional and social well-being of students is through regular physical fitness. The importance of this study was to explore whether the benefits of physical fitness would have a similar impact on academic performance in college club sports students as it does on children as literature is limited concerning this relationship surrounding the college-aged population. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a relationship between Just Jump System® scores and Grade Point Averages in college club sports students. This study used a quantitative correlational design to address the research questions and test the hypotheses. Archival data consisting of 122 college club sports students among nine club sports teams from a private higher education institution was used for this study. The Pearson Product Moment Correlation was conducted to analyze the archival data. The analyses revealed that there was no significant relationship between the two variables for the cumulative 2019-2020 academic year, the fall 2019, and spring 2020 semesters. The findings indicate that although no significant relationship was found, the overall mean for fitness scores were all above average or higher and the overall mean for grade point averages were all greater than a 3.0. Therefore, further research is recommended in order to determine whether there is a relationship between physical fitness and academic performance within the general college population