Every morning this fall, right before school starts at San Tan Charter School in Gilbert, the 45 members of the school’s varsity football team headed to the front office and collectively dropped off their cell phones into small storage cases.

As Chase Cartwright, the school’s football coach, department chair of Physical Education and weight training coach noted, the varsity football team has followed the “No Cell Phones in School” policy since last spring.

“When the policy was proposed, we as a team were not consistently meeting the academic standards of our program,” Cartwright said, adding that to try to improve the football team’s overall average GPA, the school tried approaches like progress reports, study hall, and other methods.

“We had success with those experiments as well, but it got to a point where we felt like the cell phones were becoming a problem for our players. We felt confident that if we could remove the distraction from a classroom setting that it would pay great dividends in time.”

When the school first proposed the “No Cell Phones in School” policy, a few of the football players grumbled that they wouldn’t be allowed to use their phone in school.

“After a couple weeks they saw the academic value of not being constantly distracted by their phones,” Cartwright said.

As Brandon Tauscher, Power Campus principal said, while San Tan’s school policy states that students are allowed to have phones with them on campus but not use them in the classrooms — and teachers and staff have enforced this policy as best they could — it was not always easy to accomplish “on the ground level” in the classrooms.

“When Coach Chase asked me if he could take the lead with the football team instituting a cell phone ban in the school, we both agreed we should give it a shot to see what we could learn,” Tauscher said.

Tauscher said it did not take long for the “No Cell Phones in School” policy to have a positive and tangible impact on the football team’s GPA and the players’ ability to stay focused in class.

“The first quarter of this school year we tracked grade-point averages and found that our varsity football team earned a 3.45 GPA, which was higher than the overall student body," Tauscher said, adding that he and Cartwright believe much of this improvement came from the new cell phone policy.

“We also noticed we had fewer discipline issues coming from the football team, especially as it related to students and their phones during class.”

While the academic improvements stand out the most for Cartwright, he has also been pleased to see how leaving the cell phones at the front office has had a positive effect on the team’s sense of community.

“When the players put their phones down, they are awesome to be around socially," Cartwright said. "They've relearned how to interact with each other, their teachers, and peers.

“I believe the longer they go without their phones, the more they will value what’s real in the world, which is human interaction and building relationships. We as coaches tell them all the time, ‘Your notifications aren't going anywhere.’”

Uriah Neloms, a senior and starting quarterback, said that although it did take a while to get used to the new policy, he feels not having access to his cell phone while in school has been great.

“I feel like it has helped me as a student tremendously," he said. "It takes away all the distraction from the outside world and allowed me to focus on what’s really important when I’m at school."

Jake Stafford, a junior and member of the varsity football team, agreed that without his cell phone nearby, he gets a lot more of his schoolwork done during the day.

“I also feel it’s helped me as a player because it’s built a new bond and discipline in our team," Stafford said. "Everybody is ‘in it’ together and so we all get to socialize instead of watch videos and now have built our team into a brotherhood."

The San Tan Charter School’s varsity football team won its 12 games this season,  including the first time the Roadrunners have gone undefeated during the regular season in the school’s history,  before falling in the Class 2A semifinals to Scottsdale Christian.