Abstract:
The causal comparative design was used to compare the performance of athletes to non-athletes in Mfantsipim Senior High School. The stratified sampling technique was used in selecting 50 continuing students who responded to items on the questionnaire where as the lottery sampling method was employed in selecting 100 past students whose results at the West African Certificate Examination were used in the analysis.
The instrument had reliability co-efficient of 0.72. Data gathered were converted into frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations. The independent t-test was also calculated on the mean scores of the students. The findings revealed that students have good reasons for playing sports and do not see playing sports to be affecting their academic performance. However, students who play sports for the school were sometimes disadvantaged because they at times get too tired or miss class playing sports for the school. There was statistically significant difference in the mean scores of athletes as compared to non-athletes in Social Studies and English but no statistically significant difference existed in the mean scores of athletes and non-athletes in Mathematics and Integrated Science.
It was recommended that school authorities and parents should encourage students to actively take part in sporting activities and also train students to manage and balance their time for sports and academic activities
