Another difference between going to school at Bayside High and going to school at Broad Ripple High was that at Bayside High School sophomores, juniors and seniors all had to include a period of physical education/gym in their scheduled program each term. At Broad Ripple, however, after a student's freshman year, no student was required to take any period of physical education/gym in their sophomore, junior and senior years.
In the fall of 1962 at Bayside High School, most days of the week your individualized program required you to spend one period during the school day going into the school gymnasium's locker room to change into your gym suit, prior to being led by some authoritarian gym instructor in exercises, running around within the school's football stadium's track, a few blocks away from the school, or spending a portion of the gym period involved in some sports game with the other male students who were taking gym class in the same period with you. And since Bayside High School, besides having a gymnasium and small football stadium with a track, also, inside its school building, had its own pool, gym period also sometimes meant a period showering in school and, if you were a male student, then swimming during most of the period in the nude in its high school pool.
Both Broad Ripple High School's gymnasium and its football stadium with a track, however, were larger than Bayside's gymnasium and football stadium; and, unlike Bayside's small football stadium, Broad Ripple's football stadium included a lighting system that enabled its high school football team to play opposing high school football teams under the lights on Friday night games, whereas Bayside's football stadium lacked a similar lighting system. So Bayside's football team generally only played their high school opponents in afternoon games after school at 3 p.m. or, perhaps, on Saturdays sometimes. In addition, the spectators' seating capacity of Broad Ripple's gymnasium and stadium was much greater than was the spectators' seating capacity of Bayside's gym or small stadium's spectators' stands.
One reason Broad Ripple (and other Indiana public high schools) may not have required their sophomores, juniors or seniors to take gym/physical education classes after their freshman year is that a greater percentage of the male students at Broad Ripple H.S. seemed to be members of one of its school sports teams than the percentage was at most New York City public high schools in the early 1960's. So school administrators in Indiana may have felt that most male students at their schools were already getting enough physical exercise by being part of their school's teams; and school administrators could, therefore, save some money by substituting a period of "study hall" for a required gym period for those male high school students who had no interest in being some kind of high school team "jock", after their freshman year was over.
Another reason why physical ed or gym was not required after the freshman year of high school in Indiana may have been that in Indiana, unlike in New York City where most high school students only could get their licenses at 18 years of age and usually only started driving in their own cars after high school, most Indiana high school students usually got their driver licenses at 16 years of age and began driving their own car (or their parents' cars) by their junior year of high school. So, by their sophomore year, most Broad Ripple High School sophomores were also both more in need of and more interested in taking driver's education courses in their sophomore, junior or senior years than in continuing to take physical ed/gym during their last three years of high school.
Another advantage of not having to include a period of gym in your daily individual program at Broad Ripple in your sophomore, junior and senior years was that it also enabled students who felt like joining schools clubs or getting part-time jobs at 16 years of age in stores after school to have some more free time from having to be in a class than Bayside H.S. students had.
