Introduction

Student participation in sports has long been an integral part of the high school experience. From “improvements in physical health” to “stress management and [meeting] academic benchmarks”, high school athletic programs foster a wide range of skills (Amaro). These benefits are even apparent outside of the classroom through building positive relationships and developing empathic instincts (Amaro).

The advantages of building group relationships are evident in the stimulus packet source “The Song of Freedom at the Estonian Song & Dance Festival”. Every five years, the 25,000-person joint chorus brings together the Estonian people to express their feelings of freedom united as one group of like-minded people. Even though they achieved political freedom years ago, the tradition persists simply because of the unity that the music creates. A similar finding is present in “The cultural evolutionary trade-off of ritualistic synchrony”, another stimulus packet source, where Michele Gelfand and fellow renowned psychologists and neuroscientists at prestigious universities across the United States of America make the case that ritualistic synchrony, which can be found in sports, has numerous prosocial and antisocial effects. Activities such as “pre-game rituals in rugby games” improve…