Soccer tournaments could be placed anywhere around the world and any time of the year for almost any age group. The most recent traveling soccer tournament was for Desert Premier League (DPL), in Las Vegas, NV.

According to the official US Youth Soccer website, this tournament ranges from U12-U16 teams. (U12 are ages ranging from 10-11 and U17 are ages ranging from 16-17).

Billie Forrest, a U13 soccer player who plays wing and is captain for the Black Utah Glory P2 team, went to said tournament. They left Thursday, February 28 and came back Monday, March 4. In total, they missed three full days of school.

“Grades in some of my classes have dropped. Over the tournament [in Vegas], I had no access to about three tests and I had to make up an important essay for what would usually have been giving a full week to accomplish, in two days, but shortly after I was able to take the tests and had them added to my grades” Forrest said.

Forrest and her team have been to many soccer tournaments before. Syd Johnson, a teammate of Forrest who also plays wing, has similar problems. “My grades have dropped a little bit, but not significantly. It’s very hard to get all your work done after you have missed it. […] But if you bring your work on trips (like I did the first time) your grades won’t drop and you’ll be able to bring up missing work easier,” Johnson said.

Usually, during soccer tournaments, some bring their homework because don’t want their grades to drop, but some like to bring their homework so the grades will stay the way they would as if they were in school.

“I did not bring my homework to the tournament. It was all packed and ready to go, but we were so focused on wanting to get there in time, I wasn’t focused so much on the homework to remember to grab it before we left the house,” Johnson said.

Not only is it hard to work on homework assignments when on vacation, but when a player is out and playing a sport, their mind isn’t necessarily on the subject of homework. It’s focused on staying in the mind of the sport they are on that tournament for.

“If I had worked on it [my homework] over the weekend in Vegas, I may have gotten a different outcome. But, sometimes when multiple games are keeping you busy and in the game mindset, you feel too exhausted to work on it,” Forrest said.

Especially in this third quarter of school, students are loading with work and when at a sports tournament, a student could miss a whole bunch that is a part of their grade.

“I had two math packets, a math homework sheet, two science assignments, and a writing response. The biggest one was not starting on my social studies wax museum,” said Johnson about the homework she had missed.

Forrest was similar in a way, “I had a five paragraph research essay and it was a large part of my grade. I did none of it because of my focus on the games. Also, I had a foreshadowing slide show that I had missed.”

Traveling soccer tournaments for the students who are also could be very difficult school wise. They could get distracted and either want to go and hang out with their teammates, or the games are too stressful for them and the school work would just stress them out even more.

All in all, if a student/athlete is going on a tournament, bring homework or the grades will drop and will be hard to get back up.