To be a college athlete is usually the dream of every young athlete in grade school. As an ameture athlete we want recognition, we want the scholarship, we want to make a name for ourselves, we want to be the star athlete in our high schools that goes forward to play for the NCAA. All of our coaches, parents, teachers, and sports agents are pushing us to go play for the best schools. They tell us it's going to be great and it is going to be the best decision we will have ever made! All of that may be true, but there are some things that they didn't tell us, and as a current college athlete, here is my letter to incoming athletes to the collegiate athletic world.
1. TIME MANAGEMENT
When you are planning to come play in college, the biggest thing you will hear is that you will pick up great time management skills. You will be a pro at sorting yourself between, work, school, sports, and fun, all this mumbo jumbo. DO NOT BE FOOLED. You have absolutely no time to manage. Your schedule manages your time for you.
Wake up, eat, practice, shower, eat, class, training, class, eat, physical therapy, practice, meetings, work, class, therapy, study, sleep, repeat.
You manage your time? More like your time manages you.
2. GAME TIME
Come game time nothing else in this entire world matters. It is no longer just a game that you play to win or lose. It is a job that you are required to do and your only option is to win. The feeling you get when the first whistle blows, you're on the court or on the field. It is the most indescribable feeling ever. Everything else going on in your life does not matter at game time. It may be like that for you now, but once you get to college, that feeling is magnified by 10,000. You also realize that all the games that you thought really mattered or were the end of the world in High School, really didn't matter at all. Welcome to college. Welcome to the big leagues. If you're not careful, it will consume your life.
3. TEAM BONDING
What is your idea of team bonding? A night out on the town with your buds? Sleepovers with your girls where you stay up all night? You re about to radically change your definition of team bonding. The only nights on the town you are getting with your guys are grocery shopping together so you can make it through the week without dying of starvation. Girls those all nighters will still exist, but only because you guys are studying for the test you have to make up the next morning that you missed last week because you were playing in another state. Adulthood is starting tons found fun isn't it?
4. COACHING
The coaching styles in college are very different than what you may be used too. You are not getting baby'd anymore. No one is going to hold your hand and telling you that it is okay and you're still a good player. You come into college on the same playing field as everyone else. Every single one of you is talented, that is why you were recruited. We all know you're good, now it is a better of how hard you are going to work. You're coaches are going to push you to points of your breaking, both physically and mentally. They will break you down past weak. They will make you cry. They will make you hate them. But at the end of the day you will realize that you need them, and you would not be where you are without them. You will end up relying on them and they will be there for you and believe in you even when you don't believe in yourself. You and your coaches will have a love hate relationship but that is okay because they are your coaches, not your teammates.
Being an athlete in College is hard. It doesn't matter what level you play at, Division 1, 2, 3, NAIA or JUCO, there is always more expected out of you than anyone else. There will be days you will wake up and you are going to want to quit. There are days you will cry because you are in so much physical pain. There will be days where you question your sport and why you stay. But then there will be that one special little moment that makes up for EVERYTHING. The team victories, the fact that you have an entire team of brothers and sisters that will carry you on their backs if they had to. The God given right to play and represent something bigger than yourself. I struggle to go on every day as a D3 student athlete. But I would not trade any of this for the world. All of it is too precious to let go.
