Fellow athletes, can you remember the last time you were sore from gym? Or how about the last time you were so tired after gym class you could barely move?

Yeah, me neither.

However, at gymnastics practice, I train until the sweat slides down my neck, and my face turns so red it radiates heat. When I get home, every muscle in my body begs me to lie down.

But I can’t. The awaiting piles of homework pull me to my desk for a long night of studying.

Athletes who play school sports, like me, spend at least two hours every day after school training. That’s two hours fewer to do our homework and two hours later that we’re forced to stay up.

Instead of gym, athletes who play a school sport or spend the same amount of time at sports practice outside school, should get to take a study hall or free period to make up for the time spent training after school. MontclairPublicHigh School in New Jersey, as well as several other schools across the country already have a policy where athletes can opt-out of gym.

Let’s be honest, those of us who play sports are undoubtedly physically fit, which is the goal of gym class in the first place. The intensity of a two hour gymnastics practice where I am constantly flipping on the floor, muscling through a bar routine or sprinting towards a vault cannot even be compared to lazily flopping my arm once a minute to absent mindedly tap a birdy two feet in the air and over the net during a riveting game of gym class badminton.

As much as I love modeling my Staples High Fitness T-Shirt, I don’t find my health benefitting from gym. I’d much rather have the time to do my homework and go to bed at a reasonable hour than burn a few calories in kickball.