Sophia Stumpfl

English Comp 1201

Professor Hunter

Research Proposal: Relationship Between Amount of Sleep and Athletic & Academic

Performance

I chose my research topic because of some of my own past experiences with sleep and athletic

performance. For example, I used to play two sports through my school while also taking

challenging classes. With these factors in my life, it became harder and harder to get a good

amount of quality sleep. I began to notice I was struggling to keep up with classwork and sports.

My grades dropped a bit and my coaches had several talks with me about having too much going

on in my life. I soon realized that since I was not getting the sleep my body needed. I was not

only having trouble in school and sports, but my health also declined. I would get headaches

almost everyday, I was constantly exhausted, and never had any energy. Thinking about my

experience with the effects of sleep deprivation, sparked my interest while writing this paper.

Another factor that really pushed me to start to get more sleep was when my coaches had noticed

a difference in my performance. They realized my lack of energy and worried about me,

knowing I wanted to take this sport into college. Once I started getting into a better sleep

schedule, I realized my coaches were right all along. This gave me a push into this new research

concept about the relationship between amount of sleep and an individual’s academic and

athletic performance.

Before researching further into the relationship between these two areas, I have some

previous thoughts and opinions. For example, I feel that this a very crucial topic to research.
Many students, especially high schoolers, are faced everyday with stressors from school, family,

sports, clubs, etc that can be difficult to overcome with an inadequate amount of sleep. Sleep is

essential for the human body to function properly so when an individual doesn’t get enough

sleep, it can make it even more challenging to overcome everyday obstacles such as tests and

homework assignments. So, researching deeper into this would allow for more students to gain

awareness. I believe that this topic is not stressed enough to students. I also believe that more

schools and administration should inform students, especially ones who also play sports, about

the importance of sleep. For example, I would like to find a possible solution that could be

applicable to high schools around the United States. Lastly, going into this research, most people

already know that sleep is needed for the body to function properly. Sleep allows for a healthier

state mentally and physically. We all know these facts about sleep, but we need to go further into

this study and learn about the effects of this lack of sleep.

Overall, I am very excited about continuing this research process. My guided research

project for this paper is “How does the amount of sleep high school students receive affect their

academic and athletic performance?”. I plan on looking deeper into the specific causes of sleep

deprivation to better understand why student athletes aren’t getting proper sleep. After learning

the background about the topic, I then would like to break academics and athletics into smaller

subsections to identify the effects on both when someone is lacking sleep. Once I gather all this

information, I then plan on creating a solution to this problem.