Being a student athlete is a great thing, but it can also be very challenging. Balancing school, your mental health, a social life, practices, and even games is a lot, and you have to be strong and passionate about your sport to stick with it. These students have also learned valuable lessons and how to be a better person. Not only that, but they have also pushed through hard times, trying to keep their grades up and doing things to better themselves.
One of the biggest challenges a lot of student-athletes face is keeping up with their school work and training. Going from practice, workouts, all the traveling, and games, it can be a lot. With all of that, there aren’t enough hours in a day, so it doesn’t leave much time for your studies. To stay on top of everything, you might have to give up on things outside of your current sport. Willow Lovett said, “Being an athlete while trying to keep good grades can be hard sometimes, but I have learned good time management skills and to prioritize my school work before I do anything extra.” Being a student athlete myself, I completely agree because you have to be on time for things and learn how to squeeze in time for all the other extras. Your coaches also help with this a lot because they teach you discipline and responsibilities. So if you dont get your homework done or you’re failing a class, you can’t even play.
Another thing sports can get in the way of is your social life. Having practices or games every day and even on the weekends doesn’t leave much time to do things that you do for yourself. Lillian Babiak said, “I love going to practice and going to games, but sometimes it sucks to miss out on other things people are doing.” Being a teenager and not being able to go out and have fun with your friends can be hard on people sometimes. But following up with that, Babiak stated, “In the end, it’s all worth it though because being able to do what I love and succeed in it is just such a good feeling.” While I was interviewing her, Maggie Bueker also agreed with her statement and said, “I agree, the feeling of might not being able to go out in the moment might suck, but after accomplishing something even better, I honestly forget about not being able to go.”
Lastly, the final thing we talked about was mental health, your sport ever bringing you down, and burnouts. Out of the four people I interviewed, they all said they have at least had some form of burnout or had a time where they wanted to quit. At some points, they got so stressed because of all the schoolwork they had, they wanted to stop playing because they prioritize their grades so much. Bueker stated, “I guess I have kind of experienced a burnout out but it has never gotten to me so bad that I have quit my sport because I love playing so much more than that.” So even if student athletes experience these mental issues most of the time, they push through because of their love for their sport.
Being a student athlete is a very challenging thing to do, and it takes a special kind of person to be able to balance everything. You also have to have a crazy kind of love for your sport to stick with it because even when the times get hard, nothing should take you away from the thing that brings you the most joy.
