High school athletes get good grades, but are more drawn to alcohol and drugs, study suggests

Keeping high school students involved in sports is no cure for risky behavior, according to a new study.

Teens who play sports get better grades, but are also more likely to use alcohol and drugs, say psychologists Jacquelynne Eccles, PhD, of the University of Michigan, and Bonnie L. Barber, PhD, of the University of Arizona.

The study tracked 1,259 students for six years beginning in the 10th grade, to see how participation in sports and other extracurricular activities affects a wide range of positive and negative behaviors, including academic performance and substance abuse. About 46 percent of the girls and 67 percent of the boys in the sample participated in team sports as high school sophomores.

Students who participated in sports or other extracurricular activities?including band, drama, community service and church?had higher grades than students who participated in no activities and were more likely to enroll in college, Eccles and Barber found.

But compared with the other students in extracurricular activities, athletes were more likely to use drugs and alcohol, they learned.

The research did not identify the reasons that athletes were more likely to drink and use drugs.

But sports participation was not linked with other problem behaviors, such as truancy and dropping out of school.

'We often think drinking and other problem behaviors go together, and they certainly do in many children,' Eccles says.

'But not in all cases, and especially not in those who are also involved in positive activities,' she says.

The research is part of the ongoing Michigan Study of Adolescent Life Transitions, funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the W.T. Grant Foundation.

The findings will appear in a forthcoming article in the Journal of Adolescent Research.

?S. Sleek