SIS currently offers a total of 10 varsity sports divided into three seasons. While many students have aligned with one of these sports, many students’ desires for additional sports go unheard.
“While my main sport is varsity soccer, I really want to play flag football too,” Kai Yannakakis (10), sports enthusiast, said. “I think there is enough demand from the students for an official team, and a lot of international schools have started to create teams as well, so competing with them would be great.”
While sports such as pickleball, table tennis, and flag football have seen a great increase in popularity, the main concern is the logistics of creating new varsity sports. While student demand is an important factor, there are concerns that must be addressed, such as who would coach, where practices and games could be held, and whether there is similar demand from other schools to enable competition.
“I think the hardest part for the school when creating a new sport is the coaching staff,” Jason Kang (11), baseball player, said. “For example, if I wanted to create a baseball team for our school, it would be easy to find enough students, but the hardest part would be finding teachers who are experienced enough to coach us as well as willing to take on the additional responsibilities that come with coaching.”
Beyond basic logistics, safety is a key concern as well. The risk of injury is high in sports such as baseball or hockey, complicating potential plans to form a team. While students may say that they could be careful, the school would have to assume additional responsibilities and policies to minimize dangers, making it logistically challenging to bring these sports dreams to life.
“If we could, it would be great to have a varsity wrestling or boxing team,” Brennan Park (10), active martial artist, said. “However, I know that combat sports are extremely dangerous and hard to maintain, which would make it extremely hard for the school to find valid reasons to support such teams. Safer sports such as table tennis or pickleball would be a great addition. A lot of my friends have stated their desires to play these sports on a more serious level through school.”
Pickleball is another example of an up-and-coming varsity sport. The sport has taken its place in SIS through the founding of the Pickleball Club, which partners with the Korea Youth Pickleball Association (KYPA) to promote pickleball and develop student skills. The rising popularity of pickleball, combined with its comparatively safer gameplay, makes it a great potential addition to the ever-growing list of sports.
When discussing sports that grew from humble beginnings, Track & Field cannot be forgotten. Now, it is a varsity sport with the highest number of athletes, but Track & Field at SIS was originally a club, founded by Wongyeom Yang, a graduate of SIS. It started as a ragtag group of students during the 2022-’23 school year, practicing the sport with essentially no equipment and no proper coaching. As years passed, its popularity and the feasibility of making it an official varsity sport grew and gained the school’s approval, allowing Track & Field to be established as a formal spring season sport.
As SIS sports continue to develop, students are looking forward to additional sports to supply the ever-increasing demand for student interests. In the best-case scenario, everyone’s wishes for new varsity activities would be accounted for, but the school still needs to take responsibility for each of the teams while ensuring that they are safe for the school environment. The sheer volume of teams that may result from the endless creation of varsity sports would stretch the administration thin and result in a lack of equal maintenance for all teams. However, the door can still be left open for new opportunities, but hold the condition that they are kept reasonable.