Student Athletes The demands of being a student-athlete in high school or college can be extremely challenging in terms of budgeting your time for your academics/school work, and what little free time that remains for social activities, or one 's personal life. In this essay I will discuss the effects about being a student athlete because many people think that student athletes have there life easy but in actuality they have to deal with things that regular students would not be dealing with. Image yourself waking up early every morning for practice, then right after practice you have a short time to get ready for school, then once you finish school, you have to go to practice one more time. By doing this it can really affect athletes to really focus on their priorities like school because to play in any sport, you have to make sure you are passing every class you are taking, if you are not then you are ineligible to play in games or even be on the team. According to the NCAA, the governing organization in college …show more content…
athletes, they have an academic standards list that an athlete should meet if they are going be a student athlete in college, like you have to make sure you graduate high school completing “a minimum of 16 core courses” to play at a division 1 school. (ncaa.org 1) Playing any sport can cause students to have their minded set straight on focusing on school because without education there isn’t any other way to become a student athlete. Being a student athlete also has good and bad effects to their own social life. Becoming a student athlete can benefit your social life because as you join a sport you can meet new people that who also has the same interest as you and most of the time you start to build a strong relationship with the new people.(Wilson) For example, the first time I joined a club basketball team it was really awkward because I didn’t know anyone on the team but after maybe a week or so I got more comfortable with my new teammates and now we still keep contact with one another. In most cases after gaining new friends who share the same interest as you in the sport you are in, sometimes you can lose your old friends that you used to hang out with. I had an incident when I had to choose between hanging out with my friends or with my teammates and most cases I chose to hang out with my teammates and it caused me to kind of drift away from my other friends. Overall you can have good and bad outcomes dealing with your social life but being a student athlete can also affect your personal life. A student athlete’s personal life can also get affected because you can deal with a lot of stress but you can also gain a healthy lifestyle.
According to Athletic Insight’s study, athletes were reported that their stress levels were higher than non-student athletes due to having more responsibility, and not getting enough sleep. (Wilson 1) Athletes have more responsibility because they have to focus a lot of their time on school and practice. When student athletes focus so much on practicing the tend to forget how much time they have left to do school work, this causes some student athletes to stay up real late and sleep shorter than usually. But being a student athlete can also affect your personal life in a good way because you can gain a strong mindset, be more disciplined, and also have a fulfilling physical appearance. So with all this said, your personal life can also be affected but it could benefit you in some
ways. In conclusion, being a student athlete can be challenging because you have to balance out your time with your academics/school, and also manage your social and personal life. You can have great benefits becoming a student athlete but becoming can also affect you in some bad ways. From my personal experience becoming a student athlete has impacted my life in many good ways and it change my lifestyle in good ways.
Work Cited
"Becoming Eligible - NCAA.org." NCAA Public Home Page - NCAA.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.
Wilson, Gregory, and Mary Pritchard. "Athletic Insight - Comparing Sources of Stress in College Student Athletes and Non-Athletes." Athletic Insight - The Online Journal of Sport Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2013.