Being a student athlete is a constant balancing act: practice everyday, meets or games multiple times a week, and still trying to find the time to do homework between all of that. Despite the continuous work load, many students have found an effective way to manage their obligations, but the recent discussion around school start times threatens to interfere with these well-developed strategies.
The school committee has been talking for years about changing the start times of Westford Public Schools to grant the high school students more time in the mornings. If school start times change, Westford Academy would be in session from 8 a.m. to 2:20 p.m. Even though it has been an ongoing discussion for a while, the school committee seems to be getting serious about implementing this change for the 2025-2026 school year.
A 25 minute change in the school’s start does not seem to be much at first glance. It might actually seem beneficial for the average high school student to be given a little extra sleep. With that said, the cons hugely outweigh the pros, especially when it comes to high school sports.
If WA students are dismissed at 2:20 instead of 1:55, many sports teams’ practices would be severely impacted. Certain sports, like hockey and swim, that rent facilities where they practice would be the most affected. Getting out of school an extra 25 minutes later could damage their ability to be able to continue to rent the spaces or may even shorten their practices.
“We compete in a league that has several schools with pools on campus. [However], we have to rent pool time off campus, and only have access to that pool on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” swim coach Caitlin Klick-McHugh said. “It is hard to compete with our competitors when we have so much less time in the water. Losing more practice time would be detrimental to our program.”
As a swimmer myself, I see how much our already shortened pool time affects our performances compared to some other teams, like Wayland and Concord Carlisle who are our biggest competition. As a team, we work incredibly hard for the entire hour and a half we are in the pool. However, if our pool time is cut even more, it may be hard to get back to the highly competitive level we have been swimming at for years.
Similar to the swim team, both the boys’ and girls’ hockey teams rent out facilities to hold their practices multiple times a week; the boys’ team practices at the Skate 3 rink in Tyngsborough, while the girls’ team practices at Nashoba Valley Olympia in Boxborough. All WA hockey teams could have cuts to their rink times and that could cause major setbacks in their program and competitive levels if start times are pushed back.
One of the biggest concerns of the boys’ hockey team is that, due to the later start times, they would be competing with youth and junior programs for on-ice time. This could also potentially cut the JV practice times and possibly the two JV teams all together. Other cuts could be made to the varsity practices and limit their on-ice time also.
“Unfortunately, [later start times] would impact our program and we would have to find some new solutions, [but] I hope Skate 3 would work with us as much as possible,” boys’ hockey coach Chris Carpenter said. “I would put all of my efforts into coming up with creative solutions with the rink management to ensure we don’t lose any on-ice time.”
Figuring out how to handle practice schedules to incorporate the possible new start times is difficult as there are a lot of people to talk to and things to figure out before anything can be fully solidified. However, Athletic Director Jeff Bunyon has been working to keep all parties happy when creating the plausible changes of sports schedules.
“People need to understand that we are working with those facilities [and if] we can move [practice] times to later, then we still would have the same amount of time at practice that we have now, it would just be delayed 30 minutes,” Bunyon said. “[The facilities] want to work with us, [and] we just have to figure out a way to make it happen.”
There are many sports that would suffer a great deal from changing the start times. However, certain teams may not be as severely affected as others. Many of the sports that practice at WA may not be as hurt by this change because the school has flexibility and control over who practices at the WA fields. As a result, the athletic department would be able to move around schedules and practices in a fairly straightforward manner for those teams.
Even with that said, there is a lot of effort that goes into moving schedules around. Not only would the athletic department be attempting to push back WA practices, but the youth athletes’ practices would be pushed back too.
There could still be multiple disadvantages to the athletes who practice on the WA campus. For example, the cross country team could possibly be running in the dim sunlight later in the season as the sun starts to set earlier, leading to more difficult and dangerous practices.
“If we get out later, then we’ll be running later and [farther] in the season [when] it gets darker [earlier], so we’ll be running in the dark,” senior and cross country captain Rosey Deeks said. “Also, with the away meets, those go on for even later [and] then we’ll be finishing the race in the dark too [which] can be dangerous.”
One thing that would not be affected by this change would be the times of games and meets for all sports. Since WA is in the Dual County League (DCL) and many of our schools that we compete against get out later than us, the times for games and meets are already pushed back to accommodate their schedules.
Even with all the downsides to changing the start times from an athletics perspective, I understand as a student that there are many positives. For one, many high schoolers do not get enough sleep each night so to be granted even another 25 minutes of sleep could be compelling for a considerable amount of students. Getting more sleep could also help the attentiveness in the classrooms throughout the day. Nevertheless, the cons with the conflicted athletics schedule heavily outweighs the pros for only 25 more minutes of sleep in the mornings. Moreover, students who tend to stay up late would stay up even later which would diminish the effectiveness of a later start time.
“Some programs are not going to be able to get their actual time in [to practice, so] it’s going to do more bad than it’s going to do good,” junior Lauren Flaherty said. “And I feel like, yeah, we’ll get more sleep, but is that really worth it if we are cutting teams’ [practices]?”
