This is a bit of a personal anecdote as well as my opinion on how strange of an experience it is to go from being a varsity athlete in high school to an everyday student in college.
When I entered college more than two years ago, I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to walk onto a collegiate team or simply enjoy my time pursuing my degree and playing intramural sports and participating in other club activities. As it turns out, I opted for the latter. While I was in high school I lettered in Indoor and Outdoor Track, Cross Country, and Lacrosse. Besides still running avidly today and working out on my own or with my fellow ROTC classmates, I don't have a similar schedule to my high school glory days whatsoever and that is completely fine by me.
In high school, no matter what season it was, I would constantly find myself performing a balancing act between sports and schoolwork. Every day, after school let out around two o'clock in the afternoon, I would have a thirty-minute break before two to four hour-long practices began for whatever sport was in season. By the time I was thoroughly drained for the day, it was time to go home and finish whatever massive pile of work I had to do. Thankfully, my experience in college has been surprisingly different, albeit not without its own challenges.
A typical school day for me now consists of getting up for physical training in the morning, classes for the day that usually release around five o'clock at the latest, and then working out on my own once more in the afternoon. There are many local and semi-local events for running, particularly in the nearby North and South Carolina area that I occasionally sign up for just to keep myself sort of in cross-country shape, though not anywhere near my peak track condition. As an adult with responsibilities, it is incredibly difficult to really enjoy the freedom that quitting high school athletics brought with it. Technically, I now have a greater number of opportunities to pursue in terms of running or club activities; however, my competitive spirit has in many ways diminished enough that there isn't always a need to satisfy whatever ego or feeling is involved in being the best runner or player I possibly can be.
Making the transition from high school to college student is one thing; making the transition from high school athlete to collegiate athlete is another. However making the transition from high school athlete to collegiate nothingness is an entirely different ballgame. It is interesting that a great number of people make this transition considering the fact that of the thousands of former high school athletes going to college, only a small percentage of them go on to play at the collegiate level and an even smaller percentage ever makes it to the professional world. Despite that, it seems as if few people ever really talk about the transition from an overly competitive varsity athlete to an average college student.
College is in many ways a culture shock for most people. For athletes it is understandably even more so. I would imagine you can still find a familiar sense of routine in your sport of choice and in your workouts at this higher level, but you now have to learn a completely new set of operating procedures and get to know a new team of people as well.
College in and of itself is very much the same. You're adjusting constantly from what you were familiar with in high school and taking what you've learned already and applying it to a more advanced curriculum and way of life. Nobody should be able to go into that unchanged or unscathed.
Many people talk about the freedoms and opportunities that college represents, despite being a slow transition into the realm of the "real world." Although you have more responsibilities on your plate, there is a lot you can accomplish and a lot you have the opportunity to pursue as well. As a four-sport athlete with little to no free time in high school thanks to clubs and classes, college has presented me with the opportunity to pursue courses I would never have dreamed of being able to enroll in. I think my successful balancing act between classes and extracurricular activities has only been helped by the strict schedule I adhered to during high school athletics and the lack of freedom I found there. I am definitely of the opinion that high school athletes have a slight edge over students who didn't take part in sports during their teens, if only for the fact that it instills greater discipline and helps to meet the multitasking challenges required of adults nowadays.
The transition from any stage of life to the next is going to be an arduous one and going from college to high school is no exception. However, being an athlete and becoming a student with somewhat fewer responsibilities and less focus on a sport or club has truly been a learning process for me and undoubtedly most of my peers.
