Life as a Student Athlete
School is one of the most stressful things that young adults have to deal with. Incorporating team sports with school only amplifies that level of stress.
Jordan Thornhill, who plays on the basketball team at John Abbott College, highlighted some of the difficulties of managing both worlds: “It’s really difficult keeping up with all the essays, assignments, tests while having to practice 5 days a week. It gets tiring very quickly.” The multiple practices and games per week (not including tournaments) have a toll on some of the students. It takes time away from doing other activities or assignments for class. This creates a rush for the students to do their homework and increases the stress put on them, as they juggle playing for the team and doing well in school.
One of the things that Jordan finds helpful regarding being a student athlete is having less classes: “Having only 4-5 classes instead of 6-7 saves a lot of us. It isn’t as heavy of a workload. If we had 6-7 classes many of us would just stop playing and focus solely on school.” Many college students struggle to handle 7 classes so they take 5-6 a semester to ease their workload. It's a credit to how determined these student athletes are because not many people are capable of multitasking at an efficient level.
Jordan pointed out the treatment some student athletes get from teachers at times: "Most of the time, teachers don’t even know who the student athletes are, but when they do their reactions can vary. Some teachers don’t care, others want you to make the school proud and a few think you’re taking the easy way out because we take fewer classes.” He later elaborated on an existing stereotype that student athletes don’t always take school very seriously. In some cases, this might be true but, overall, it is an unfair presumption. Most of the students are just trying to get by and do well like everyone else. One can make the argument that they have more to deal with than the average student.
Most people despise losing. Jordan commented on how frustrating it can be to lose often while still keeping up with school: “I hate it. It’s hard for me to focus on my work sometimes because I keep thinking about the game that we lost a previous night or how I can be better to help the team win.” This just further shows how underestimated the life of a student athlete can be. Imagine going through a semester while constantly losing games, while having to deal with the negative energy surrounding the team--this can be more detrimental than people realize.
The life of a student athlete is a lot more complex than we seem to know. It is to their credit to be capable of juggling school and sports simultaneously. Many are not capable of doing that, especially in this day and age where school is proven to be one of the most stressful institutions we know.
With that being said, juggling both school and team sports creates a certain level of self-discipline for the individual. Being required to manage their time efficiently helps them in moving forward in life, as self-discipline and time management are traits that are very useful in today’s society.