Damon Uriostegui
Staff Writer
Independent Study Athletics is for students who already play, or want to explore a new sport that is not provided at Mira Costa. Any sport that a student can provide reasonable hours for that is not played at Mira Costa can become ISA. The main sports that partake in Independent study athletics or ISA are Hockey, Dance, and weight lifting.
The requirements for a student to play an ISA are not easy to meet though. ISA requires at least fifteen hours a week of your chosen sport, not including travel or pregame warmups. The only times counted are practices and Games.
“A negative side to it is a lack of connection on the school side,” Kawalec said.” “My initial worries when starting ISA would be maintaining a social life”
Kawalec isn’t playing a school sport so it might be thought of as hard to socialize. However, a lot of students who are on his team also go to his school, and finding peers to study with has not been a problem according to Kawelec.
“When I first applied they denied my admission because I was not at a high enough level of play,” Kawalec said. “I was only playing hockey at a Double-A level which the school did not allow to be ISA.”
This is a demonstration of how hard it is to get into the program. Not only do you need to show proof of all of the hours of training the school has to accept your request. These requests are only accepted for players who are respectively near or at the top of their sport otherwise your chances or getting ISA are essentially impossible.
“When you play at a higher level at whatever sport you are doing it is harder for the school to reject your request,” Kawalec said. “For me, that meant I needed to step up my game so I could do ISA.”
For Kawalec specifically, he had to play hockey at a Triple-A level, which is the highest level of hockey. The reason for his first rejection was that he was playing double-A hockey, which is a level down. This is just one specific example for hockey players to show just how hard it is to make it into the ISA program.
“The level of hockey that I am currently paying at is triple-A. This is basically the same as D1 in high school sports but for hockey at the club level. ”
The biggest issue is that if you were doing a sport run by the school it might be hard to find friends. However, going out there and just talking to kids in your classes seemed to be an effective strategy whether you play a sport or not.
“Overall I am happy that I do ISA because it allows me the time to do the sport I love and still participate in a fifth-period school day,” Kawalec said. “It is something I would never have been able to do without ISA.
Some people think that ISA is just a cheat on getting out of sports but that’s not true. Kawalec Is a great example of how ISA should be used because he is still getting all of the academics from going to a public school and is still able to play hockey at the highest level.
Leave a Reply