The school offers many sports, but many students compete through non-school teams. Both types of teams have advantages and disadvantages, impacting the athletes and their lives.

Emi Goodwin ’27 has skated for 12 years on the Northernettes, which connected her with friends in a different community and helped her become very close with many of her teammates. She liked “being with [her] friends and going to compete.” Goodwin believed a benefit of competing outside of school is “traveling to different countries and states and being with all my friends at the same time.” She recently traveled to Poland where her team won gold at a competition. Traveling is an opportunity that only students who compete out of school have, because school teams only travel to regional competitions.

Jojo Arlowe ’25 has rowed outside of school for two years. Her favorite part of competing through a club team was “meeting people from different schools and different communities…people who row for [the] club come from all around the Twin Cities.” Arlowe enjoyed getting the opportunity to connect with others who come from different backgrounds and have different experiences. Despite this, she said “[school] rowing teams seem to be closer than we are. We see each other 12 hours a week, but it’s not the same as carpooling and seeing teammates in classes.” Club sports have the benefits of getting to know students from different schools, but usually means only seeing each other at practices and competitions and not at school.

Piper Fuhr ’26 has done Irish dance for 11 years at Corda Mór. Fuhr reflected on the community at her dance school, explaining “It allows you to make connections with people at other schools which will help you in the future.” Despite her love for dancing, Fuhr acknowledged negatives to non-school sports, mainly the downsides of the intense time commitment. “My least favorite part is that I often have to choose between school events [and dance],” Fuhr said. Further, some people drop activities altogether because of the time commitment. She “was involved with cross country” for four years, which she described as being “really fun,” but “had to make the hard decision to just do dance in the fall because [of the] increased homework load.”

Arlowe said that school and outside-of-school sports are “hard to compare.” There are pros and cons to both, and as Fuhr elaborated, “they’re just two totally different communities…I just know it is really important for kids and everyone to have places where they can go and feel welcomed besides just their home and school.”