Student-athletes manage to balance their time with sports and school to participate in something that they enjoy. Almost every day they have practice to improve their performance while balancing their school work at the same time.

Athletic Director Bob Morikuni acknowledges the outcomes of becoming a student-athlete and how beneficial it can be if you do become one.

“I really think it’s good for student-athletes [to do a sport],” Morikuni said. “Sports can teach them life lessons, how to set goals, how to deal with winning, how to handle losing, how to manage their time, how to stay healthy, how to work together as a team. You could get some exercise in. There’s so many benefits to a student-athlete.”

Freshman football player Lincoln Naki explains some of the struggles there are to being a student-athlete and the problems he goes through.

“Practice is always hard and since it’s every weekday they push us to practice harder than the day before,” Naki said. “Sometimes I wanna do other things after school instead of practicing every weekday because it gets kind of boring.”

Principal Ron Okamura appreciates athletic students and their role in school, and he is very proud of MHS’s student-athletes.

“Throughout my life I played sports; basketball, baseball, football, wrestling, tennis. I’ve done mostly everything,” Okamura said.

“Athletes, student-athletes I hold them in a very special place as far as my way of doing priorities. It takes a lot for student-athletes. You know not everybody can do it, not everybody can be an all star, not everybody can be able to make the team. So to even make the squad you have to have a special attitude so I hold my student-athletes a little higher than everybody else,” Okamura added.

MHS is a very proud school that offers a lot of opportunity to athletes, like study halls, scholarships and fundraising events.

“When you put on that uniform, you not only represent yourself, you represent your family, you represent the school, you represent every single person that comes to McKinley and greater yet you represent the greater community of McKinley,” Okamura said.