For this post, I am going to dive into a topic that I read an article about a couple of days ago by Tristan Coulter, a doctoral candidate at the University of Queensland Australia concerning the routine and life of student athletes in college and how their schedule affects their mental state. Given that I am a student athlete here at Santa Clara and practice around five hours a day between the morning and afternoon, I was interested to see what this study unveiled about people who were experiencing a similar daily schedule as me.
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I related to a lot of the points that Coulter touched upon like how athletes are put under lots of pressures throughout a typical day both in their sport and in the classroom. Not only this, but most athletes try and keep up a social life as well which only adds to the juggling act of priorities. I also agreed with the fact that student athletes are not only expected to participate in all these aspects of their life, but rather they are presumed to excel in them all as well. These expectations can cause an elevated amount of stress because you want to please teachers, coaches and family/friends.
Source: FX
As talked about in the article, student athletes learn to deal with handling all these pressures by becoming very good at managing and blocking time for all these different activities. However, making the transition from high school sports to coming to play a sport at a division one school is pretty tough and I know many people, myself included that have struggled at times with this change. On a more positive note however, the camaraderie and achievement that is reached by being an athlete on a team that you spend more than thirty hours a week grinding with is unmatched and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have learned so much in such a short period of time and although being a student athlete comes with a little more stress during college, the skills and morals that you get from the experience are unparalleled.