It’s your freshman year of college and you are just now starting to realize what it truly means to be a college athlete. You survived your first semester, and had a blast traveling with your teammates and competing in countless games and tournaments. Now it’s your second semester of college, and with only a few weeks until midterms, you are starting to get completely overwhelmed. Eighteen credit hours of extremely challenging classes, plus off-season training is beginning to feel like working two full-time jobs. Your sleep schedule is suffering, and your social life is becoming almost non-existent, and with every early morning practice you start to wonder if it's even worth it anymore. Well I’m here to tell you that it is! When you start to feel discouraged remember:
1. Why you started.
Why did you want to play in college in the first place? It’s because your sport has become a part of you, and you can’t go a day without thinking about it. You have spent many years of your life working to get to this point. You have put in so much time, effort, tears, sweat, and heart into becoming a college athlete, and when you take a minute to look back on everything you have worked for and everything you have accomplished, you can’t help but smile and continue to push forward.
2. How much you love the sport.
There’s a quote by soccer star Mia Hamm that I absolutely love, which puts everything in perspective for me. Earlier this year when my volleyball team was feeling discouraged, my college coach read us this quote. It goes, “Somewhere behind the athlete you've become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back... play for her.” Since the first time I heard this quote, it has stuck with me. Whenever I start to feel overwhelmed I remember this quote, and I also remember my fifth grade self who never wanted volleyball practice to end. I have to keep playing for her.
3. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.
Being a college athlete is hard. There is no getting around that. Your social life will suffer at some points in the semester, and you will not be able to attend all of the events on your campus. You will either be in the gym working out, studying for hours a day just to keep your scholarship, or sleeping because you are just that exhausted from a hard workout. You will meet many people who will just never understand why you choose to do it, but despite all this, your college experience will be unlike anyone else’s. Your teammates and coaches will become your family if they haven’t already, and they will have your back no matter what. Your discipline and hard work will set you up for success for the rest of your life. Finally, your ability to push through the frustrating practices and stick with your sport, shows determination like nothing else. You will learn just how strong you are and that is one of the greatest things you can learn about yourself.
So when the homework is piling up, your social life is starting to suffer, and the morning practices are getting earlier and earlier, just remember that all of your hard work is worth it. You will learn how to manage it all, just like all of the other college athletes that have gone before you. Remember how much you love your sport and let that passion keep you going when things get hard. Continuing to be a college athlete will be one of the best decisions you make. Enjoy these next four years because when you look back years from now you will not regret even one minute of it.
