Paying high school athletes? C'mon now

I was talking to one of my friends about my Junior Theme topic, why NCAA student-athletes aren't getting paid, and he brought up a good point. He asked me if collegiate athletes started to get paid for their participation, why shouldn't high school athletes also get paid? It's an interesting idea that I have never really considered, and it definitely isn't an important enough issue to include in my paper, so I thought I would write about it here.

Even if college student-athletes begin to get paid, I see no reason why high school students should. The amount of time that HS athletes put into their sports is not even close to the amount of time college players do. For HS sports, once the season is over, practices and workouts basically come to an end. For some sports there may be once a week workouts a month or two before the season starts, just so players can get in shape, but it isn't nearly as demanding as college athletes.

Another main point is the fact that high schools make nearly nothing off of sports, as most of the events are free of charge to attend. There aren't many sponsors to these events, and if there is, it is mostly a local pizzeria or sports shop that pays a marginal amount of money just to put up a poster by the entrance. The level of revenue for college sports is at least 100 times the amount of high school sports (college sports is a multi billion dollar industry, and I am assuming that high school sports is nowhere near that). The schools are barely financially benefiting from these sports, so why should the players?

Lastly and most importantly, high school athletes have parents that can pay for food and housing. Collegiate athletes are mostly on their own, and need the money more. As a high school student who has participated on a couple of the teams at New Trier, I can say that I have never ever thought that I should be paid for my work. For me I had to spend maximum 20 hours a week to devote to my sport, and college athletes are almost 3 times that number. They spend more time and need the money more, so I hope that if college athletes start getting paid, the problem doesn't continue on to high school sports.