Arie Vande Geest

Abstract: High school student athletes experience a very complicated and often pressure-induced environment. This creates unique situations in how their decision to change weight, specifically while they are involved in sports, impacts their mental and physical health. High school student athletes can decide to change their body composition due to the additional pressures of a sports environment This is where unique health impacts can be displayed. These types of people answered a survey requesting them to explain the extent to which they were influenced by different aspects of a sports environment, as well as describing how their health changed after their body composition changed. After this, a correlation between these two was conducted through a myriad of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. After this correlation was done, it was determined that the extent to which one is influenced by a sport does not correlate with how aspects of their health changed. It was seen, however, that in all levels of influence by a sport, general health is impacted in a positive way. More research is needed surrounding student athlete health due to the lack of information available surrounding this demographic, but the findings suggest that sports organizations, high school teams, and family and friends of high school athletes should see sport-influenced weight change as helping health, not hurting it. Also, allowing more involvement in sports for high schoolers should be encouraged.