Popularity and Confidence
High school sports and even middle school sports can be dominated by social cliques. Sometimes it seems like a group of friends who are considered cooler than everyone else are the ones who make the sports teams, whether it's because of that or the confidence that being with all of their buddies makes them exude. These groups that are formed in sports can be hard to get into and can make people who are very capable of playing the sports, not want to. Not being a part of these groups can really edge away at your confidence and can cause some players to quit, even if they have very high potential, people don't like to feel excluded from the team. If you don’t have the confidence in yourself, sometimes people are afraid to dive into the world that is organized sports for fear of being judged by the teammates. Sadly a lot of team captains and people on the team are not very welcoming to new players and this is a very sad outlook on high school sports, who are supposed to be open and friendly to the entire school body. Sadly even the coaches and Adults in charge can fall into a little trend of keeping to a certain clique seeing the strong team chemistry and strong bond between players, sometimes ignoring children of the school that have the right at a fair chance to play. It’s important to accept all types of people in as teammates and it should be a very high priority for athletic directors and active parents of athletes to teach student athletes the importance of accepting teammates no matter what there socio-economic status, race, or gender is.