People call me crazy when I tell them I've been up since 5:30 a.m. "Why do you do that to yourself?" they always ask. "Wouldn't you rather have a life?"
With my first semester of being a college athlete in the books, I've learned it's not an easy task fitting multiple classes, double practices, homework, and adequate sleep into 24 hours. My day begins before the sun even catches its first glimpse of morning. I rush from practice to class, barely finding enough time to eat breakfast. Practice #2 hits me in the late afternoon before I scarf down a much-needed dinner and finish my day studying with teammates until we pass out in our dorms early enough to get a good night's sleep for the next day when the cycle repeats itself.
On the outside, the life of a collegiate athlete appears glamorous, almost privileged. While the fancy athletic gear, priority class registration, and instant-friend-group aspects of college sports seem like frivolous rewards for being able to kick a ball or run fast, they mask the countless hours of practice, sleepless nights, and numerous muscle aches that accompany elite-level athletics.
We've accepted the constant tiredness that comes with playing a sport in college. Waking up at the crack of dawn to work our bodies to exhaustion before sitting in hours of class makes it difficult to not fall asleep on our desks. The 20 hours we spend playing our sport each week are 20 hours taken away from completing our schoolwork, so we lose sleep preparing for the next day's classes and end up even more tired the next day. Naps? Good luck fitting that into our already hectic lives.
While our friends embark on vacations to tropical beaches for spring break or snowy ski slopes over the winter, the most adventurous location we visit is our weight room. Since our lives revolve around playing a sport and catching up on schoolwork in between, we struggle to maintain a stable social life. Going out with friends on weekdays is out of the question as we have no time nor energy to do so with practice scheduled early the next morning; when we finally have the opportunity to engage in social activities, we feel too burnt out from a week of tough workouts to be much fun anyway.
A deep soreness permeates our muscles, making walking across campus a daily struggle. We find ourselves texting our athletic trainers every week with new aches and pains from killing our bodies at practice and showing up to class with bizarre tape and suction-cup spots covering our skin.
College athletes endure the "dumb jock" label each semester. Many students mistake the recruiting process as "an easy way to get into college without being smart," pairing sports with unintelligence and fostering an undeserved stereotype. However, while our athletic abilities assisted our acceptance into a university, they prove no assistance in graduating. We attend the same school, take the same classes, and abide by the same grading policies as any other student, yet our peers undermine our academic potential and immediately assume we receive "special treatment." Although we sign up for classes before the rest of the student body, many students fail to understand the necessity to find classes that fit into our demanding schedules. Often we are unable to take desirable classes because they conflict with practice times; on top of that, hours of working out replace the hours of class we could be attending, forcing us to take less units each semester and implement the fear of graduating later than expected.
Every action, social media post, event, and decision we associate ourselves with represents our teammates and coaches; therefore, we hold ourselves to high standards not only in competition but outside of the direct realm of sports. In joining a team, we immerse ourselves in a community whose values take precedent over individual luxuries. It becomes our duty to fulfill the positive reputation that so many former teammates established and conduct ourselves with the utmost grace.
Despite the hard work and stress that seems to define being a college athlete, we could not imagine life without our sport. The amount of pride and excitement we exude when representing our school in competition grows every time we suit up for a game or race. We discover lifelong friends in our teammates, who we spend the majority of our day with and unveil our best and worst selves to. Our coaches become irreplaceable mentors who encourage our success in and outside of practice. Being a college athlete means joining a community of relentlessly hardworking individuals who dedicate countless hours of persistent effort to competing for a school and team we owe everything to.
