Football, basketball, baseball. It’s all anybody our age seems to care about anymore, but why is that? So many people have said that since they were a little kid they wanted to be some sort of professional athlete, but why?

As the world is changing and becoming more technologically dependant, none of that will matter anymore. The importance of athletic ability would no longer be important if people would just realize that it is completely irrelevant for the goals that people have set for this world.

What really matters is some of the smaller things that not many people know about. What really matters are the clubs like robotics, not football or basketball. So why do they get all of the funding?

According to k12niche.com only “42 percent of students and parents (at SHS) agree that clubs and organizations get the funding they need.”

Well, how much do you want to bet that the majority of that 42 percent belongs to one of our sports teams and the other 58 percent probably knows that robotics and all other clubs get nothing.

I am on the robotics team and I know that everything that we get for the team comes from the money that we raise. Every year, each person on the team is supposed to raise money. For the rookies it is $250 each and for the veterans of the team, they have to raise $500 each, every year they are on the team.

I cannot be the only one that thinks this is unfair and I can almost guarantee that people will come back saying something about how they still have fundraisers and have to do a lot of work to get equipment and other things that the team might need. Nice try. Everyone knows that you get funding from the school because it’s classified as a sport and not a club.

Even colleges realize that robotics is more important. To me it seems like students are much more likely to get a very good scholarship or possibly even a full ride from being on a robotics team than a football team.

According to Firstinspires.com, in the year 2017 there will be approximately 200 scholarship providers and 30 million dollars worth of scholarships provided for student members of FIRST robotics teams.

So if we can get money and support from a college for one person, why can’t we get anything from our school for the whole team?

Some people may wonder why we should be getting more for just putting together robots, but it is so much more than that.

“The team pretty much runs like a company with some people getting us out in the public and the managing team.” said sophomore Anthony Borho.”…So if you don’t fund an extracurricular activity like this then the students won’t have the best chances.”

If the team can’t get money, can we at least get a little bit of recognition? Last year when the basketball team made it to semi-state, the entire school was ecstatic but when the robotics team made it to worlds all it got was a brief mention on the school announcements and a few posters hung by parents. The students that actually go here seem to care a lot less than the parents and it shouldn’t be that way.

Worlds, a huge competition hosted in St.Louis, Missouri including hundreds of teams from around the world. There were teams from China, Australia and Japan and team 1529 made it there by winning state and very few people in the school cared, nevermind knew.

People need to open their eyes and see what is actually important when it comes to high school and planning a future.