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Secret 2

Understand Who a Student-Athlete Is

. . .

Author Viewpoint—DR. NORM O’REILLY

I was fortunate enough to be a student-athlete during both my undergraduate degree (Nordic skiing at the University of Waterloo) and master degrees (swimming at the University of Ottawa). Although they are two major Canadian universities, Waterloo and Ottawa would be the equivalent of Division II colleges in the United States (from an athletics perspective). Both have formal and resourced athletic departments and a full slate of sports, but scholarships are low, facilities sufficient (but not great), and ticket sales for events low or nonexistent in some sports.

I believe I was successful as a student-athlete: getting named an Academic All-Canadian, requiring both academic and athletic success. Life as a student-athlete was challenging, to say the least, and full of sacrifices, mostly on the social front. Parties missed, events declined, hanging-out with my roommates at a minimum.

As an undergraduate student, in a challenging science program, I was very focused on individual learning (lots of studying) and a large amount of class time: 15 hours in class and 15 hours in labs. Five days a week of classes, including Friday afternoon labs. As a graduate student, less class time but enormous responsibilities as teaching assistant, research assistant, and reading.

As an athlete, I focused efforts on competing and performing at a high level. My sports were both individual but with training and competition as part of a team. Between 15 and 25 hours per week training and at least 10 weekends away each academic year for competition, sometimes more. 5 a.m. practices regularly. Friday night practice. Saturday/Sunday morning practice. Team meetings. Coach consultations. All on top of challenging academic schedules.

I don’t believe my experience is atypical for most student-athletes.

. . .

THE SECRET IN A FEW WORDS

Secret 1 told you to follow a plan. This is vital to the student-athlete or really to anyone with any objective at all. This leads us to Secret 2, which will give context to your plan. You are a student-athlete. Being a student-athlete is a special experience, and a privileged one. Yes, a small percentage of student-athletes are super-privileged and may go professional, but this book is not for them. It is for you, someone who will live four years of your life in a unique way. Like Spider-Man and Peter Parker, you’ve got a double role, even a double personality.¹ And, you need to be very good at and focused on each.

On one hand, you are a high-performance athlete. Respected by other students, under massive pressure from your coach and teammates, fortunate to have a scholarship (in many cases), and surrounded by support structures that few athletes of your level outside of the NCAA can even dream about. On the other hand, you’re a student, one of more than sixteen million college students in the USA, a learner making your way in the world, trying to get ahead, and seeking a job one day. You have to approach each role separately, find time for each, and be successful in each. Get poor grades and you are off the team. Bad performance on the field, no more scholarship. Yes, your privileged role is coupled with a lot of pressure. And, wow, you get to do this for four amazing years. Many of those sixteen million would change spots with you in a heartbeat. So, the secret is simple: know who you are, relish it, and leverage it to the max. It will be, for many if not most of you, the best years of your life.

UNDERSTAND WHO A STUDENT-ATHLETE IS: A STUDENT-ATHLETE OR AN ATHLETE-STUDENT?

This book and the secrets within it are written for student-athletes who will not go pro. Several of the authors of the book were athletes in this situation. The gender of student-athletes is a factor to consider because—although male and female athletes alike rarely manage to become professional athletes—there are statistically more opportunities (though still very few) for male student-athletes, so female student-athletes often have a better understanding than their male counterparts of the reality of being a typical student-athlete.

There are many contexts comparable to this reality. Think about music, where very few who dream of performing professionally ever establish a career as a professional musician. And, of those who do, few achieve the success they dreamed of. The same can be said for fashion designers, authors, journalists, and artists. Although some do “make it,” most need to find another path to a sustainable career and a life outside of their passion.

As a full-time student in college in the United States,² you are one of sixteen million. However, as an NCAA student-athlete, you are one of fewer than five hundred thousand. Yes, only 1 in 32 students in the USA has the status you do. You are special. You have earned privileges.

However, with great power comes great responsibility.

So, “special” and “privileged” are coupled with “pressure” and “risk.” Let us explain.

The path for most student-athletes in most sports is similar (and we’re quite certain you can relate). As a high school student, you were likely the big fish. Academically you did very well (or well enough), and athletically you were a star. You won championships, you captained your team, other teams in your district feared facing you, the media attention in school and local publications piled up, and you’ve got boxes of awards, medals, and honors that most of your friends covet.

Yes, you were a big deal. And, because you were that big deal, fortune shone on you and you got the chance to become an NCAA student-athlete. Perhaps you’re a Division I, Division II, or Division III recruit. You might be on a “full-ride” scholarship or you might have “walked on” and barely made the team. Whatever the path, you delivered the academic and athletic credentials to become a 1-in-32 student-athlete.

Very cool. You have the “power.” But, the pond just got bigger. You’re still a big fish but with a lot more swimming to do! And let’s be clear, there are fish bigger than you. There always are.

So, what exactly is the great responsibility you face? Well, it manifests itself as pressure, and it has multiple sources:

1. Your parents (grandparents, guardians): You are the apple of their eyes, they brag about you at their local curling club, golf club, favorite pub, and with their friends. They have likely invested in you over the years (athletically, academically, and even financially) to help with your training and your studies. They may also be the type of parents who exerted pressure on you to perform. And, even if they don’t directly exert any pressure, the perception of such is likely there. If you need clarification on this point, just imagine what would happen if you failed two classes one semester, lost your scholarship, and got kicked off your team. How would you tell your parents (or grandparents or guardians)? How hard would that be? How disappointed would they be?

2. Your friends (who are not teammates): Your core social group, your high school group of friends, will love you no matter what, but you’ve likely built your image and your “self” around being a star athlete, and now a student-athlete, so that expectation is there. You’ll feel the pressure here if anything starts to slip . . .

3. Your college coach: You were likely comfortable with your high school or club coach as you developed, but now you’re in college. Your coach likely recruited you, selected you over others, and helped you get that amazing scholarship. But now put yourself in your coach’s shoes. College coaches are fired often; turnover is frequent and the pressure on them to win is extremely high. This pressure is transferred to the athletes (you), who often feel a need and a pressure to perform “for their coach.”

4. Your college teammates: Again, back home, in high school or club, you were likely with your buddies or boy/girlfriends. Now, you’re with a bunch of teammates, some older than you, some competing with you, some who may rely on you for their success or who may hope you fail so they can play more. Some teammates will probably become lifelong friends and may even have the same academic major as you. Other teammates may not; they may be rivals or live a completely different life (in a different academic program). Whether friend (counting on you) or foe (wanting your playing time), teammates will be a source of pressure as well.

5. Your partner (if you have one): This is a relationship that we will delve into in much detail in a later “secret” in this book, but it is one to be cautious about. Either a relationship from home or a new one at college is a source of major pressure and can compromise any student-athlete who must already live two lives. Only a very supportive partner can work, even if that partner is also a student-athlete, and even then, this is a source of stress.

6. Your hometown media: If you are from a city of more than a million people, you can skip this one. But if you represent a small hometown, this is a big commitment and an important responsibility. You could find, like one of this book’s authors who comes from a town of fifteen thousand people, that you remain a media personality in your town’s local publications many years after your athletic career. This manifests itself in pressure to represent your town, pressure to continue to perform for and contribute to family and friends, and time pressure from the requirements of setting up calls, giving interviews, responding to questions, and maintaining a social media presence.

7. Your Athletic Department: Off-the-field commitments will come from many sources in your university’s athletic department. Media interviews. Pep rallies. Athlete councils (like SAAC). Team meetings. Anti-doping seminars. Marketing. And much more. Be wary of these commitments: they are “time-eaters” and bring their own political pressure.

These seven sources of responsibility (aka pressure) are certainly not an exhaustive list, but they are ones we believe will affect almost all student-athletes. Depending on your particular situation, you will have other sources of responsibility (e.g., a part-time job, a sick parent) and pressure (e.g., a need to travel home, sleep deprivation) that you need to deal with.

. . .

MAX DITTMER (former swimming student-athlete at the University of Iowa, Associate Business and Store Planner at Under Armour)

My parents for the most part were hands-off and supportive for whatever/whenever I needed them. I can’t imagine the extra pressure added if they weren’t the way they are, and I am thankful for that.

Academics were never a problem for me personally, so as long as I was maintaining good grades as expected, I had almost no conversations or pressure from my parents about the academic side of things. However, the pressure from them was put on me at a young age to maintain good grades. Therefore, the pressure of getting good grades just became an internal pressure.

The pressure I received from athletics was more just wanting myself to succeed and be happy. I was always very positive, and never negative. I never felt any pressure from anyone else’s end if I didn’t succeed or do as well as I hoped.

My friends didn’t add any academic or athletic pressure, but more social pressure. I always got the “come out with us,” “skip practice,” or “go to practice hung over.” From the coaches’ standpoint, it depends on the coach, but for the most part they were supportive in both areas, but definitely they were more focused on the athletic side.

For academics, the coaches would give me relative accommodations, but practice/competitions for the most part trumped all. Everything else should be scheduled around these. I remember receiving pressure during finals weeks from coaches for missing practices when we were on “break” and “no required practices” to allow for academic focus during finals week. Essentially you would be shamed for missing unless your test was during finals. That was hard to deal with. For swimming, there was lots of pressure to perform, but never negatively stated if you performed bad, just positive reinforcement when you performed well.

Teammates would pressure me to just stay eligible, that’s it. Athletically, there was pressure and expectations to perform well, come to practice and try hard. If you were slacking for any reason, your teammates would let you know about it.

The hometown media for Iowa didn’t have any backlash academically because the swim team had a great GPA, and athletically, it was mainly positive because we were never under the scrutiny that a football or basketball team would be under. But, the swim team constantly improved over my 4 years, and I do know that there was some media backlash in later years after I left with all the new facilities and a small decline in performance.

The pressures from the Athletic Department were definitely vocalized more on the academics side than the athletics. Our academic help was need-based in the sense that if you sustained above a 3.0 for consecutive semesters, you did not have to log study hours, but if you were below you would need anywhere from four to twelve hours a week. For athletics, not a huge showing from the AD for swimming. During the fundraising years for the new pool, it was more noticeable, but being a non-revenue sport, we were not the main focus so expectations weren’t as big as for other revenue-generating sports.

. . .

Even for the most successful student-athletes, life is challenging and full of sacrifices.

To delve further into the student-athlete role, we interviewed Anson Dorrance, currently the head coach of the women’s soccer program at the University of North Carolina, and the winningest women’s soccer coach of all time. He agreed with the special status of the student-athlete and emphasized the importance of realizing the opportunity and how fragile it can be. He emphasized that “there are so many things you can feed that will derail you if you have ambitions academically and athletically but also in terms of character development.” Each of your sources of responsibility must be planned for and managed in the context of the “double objective” of academic success and athletic excellence. Clearly, Secret 1 relies on understanding Secret 2!

So, what can you do? What is Secret 2 really telling us?

From our perspective, there are five things you need to do.

1. Realize that you are special and fortunate. The opportunity to both continue to progress your life (i.e., study toward the pursuit of a career) and concurrently be a high-performance athlete in arguably the top sport development system in the world is an experience to cherish and one you will miss (and often talk about) when you are older. The combination of your two lives will help you build character. Embrace the student-athlete status role and put your focus on those two outcomes, little else. Dan Butterly, Senior Associate Commissioner for the Mountain West Conference, explains very clearly why you want to realize the unique student-athlete role.

Student-athletes continue to be outstanding leaders. That has not changed over the years. There are tremendous traits student-athletes have that they often undersell on their resume or during a job interview. Team building, how to deal with adversity, excellent health and wellness, leadership traits and a zest for success. One of the great trends I have seen from this generation of student-athletes compared to previous student-athletes is how they venture outside their own sport, come together with student-athletes in other sports, and have created a significant voice and leadership group not only to make the NCAA better, but by leading, they will make their generation better too. When I was an undergraduate, I heard student-athletes from other teams often complain about all the great resources football and men’s basketball received. Now, many of those same benefits are available to all student-athletes because of the voice this generation of student-athletes has put forth.

As Butterly emphasizes, the successful completion of your plan (Secret 1) and deep understanding of the privileged role you are in (this secret) will launch your career.

2. Be a student AND an athlete. Many student-athletes in the “other 99 percent,” even though they realize that a professional career or Olympic opportunity is not probable, still view themselves as athletes first and not as a student. If you know you will not play professionally, you must view yourself as a student first (or at least tied for first) in all things and all activities. Glenn Schembechler, a former scout and coach, and now counsel to athletes, provides the following support:

High school athletes who earn a college scholarship aren’t getting it for the right reason. Many high school athletes don’t identify themselves as students first. They see it as this opportunity for just sports, with school on the side; as opposed to getting school paid for and getting to play sports. You need to identify yourself as a student first because you need to have a realistic outlook on where you are going to go after playing sports in college.

However, what Schembechler outlines is much easier to say than to do. So, you must make being a student as important as (if not more important than) being an athlete. A balanced approach is highly recommended.

Schembechler supports a couple of specific points that we want to emphasize within this secret. The first is related to the choice of major or degree or area of concentration. Often, as student-athletes, you are so focused on sport and competition that you just want “a degree.” You may not think about where your interest is for a career postcollege. The focus is on picking some classes that fit your training schedule and will allow you to graduate in four years.

But if that’s the case, you are not spending enough time thinking about what you should be taking in order set yourself up for a career postgraduation. Student-athletes are often too busy to meet with an advisor or to get to know a professor, or to even consider who their favorite professor is! Setting yourself up for success after college needs to be a priority. You need to find your passion outside of your sport. Schembechler agreed and gave some great advice: “Find something that you are passionate about so that you can wake up and give a 100 percent effort to it each day. If you aren’t passionate, you are going to fall behind quickly in anything you do.”

This advice is very appropriate, and following it is not beyond the time or resources available to any student-athlete. Before your season starts, or on a quiet weekend, spend some time thinking about what you love, what your favorite class is. Then, get to know a professor or two (or four!) in that area, get some advice, and get into the program you are interested in (one that ideally has job opportunities). And, in this effort, reach out to family members, friends, and others who know those areas, have connections, and can help advise you on great choices.

The second piece of advice we’d like to emphasize is the vital importance to get work experience during your four years as a student-athlete. Of course, this is easier said than done, given your busy schedule of academics and athletics. Schembechler advises that you have to “take advantage of the opportunities to do internships and other experiences so that you can dip your toes into the industry of focus.” This is a key point. To get ahead in most fields today (engineering, business, health professions, technical, etc.), the more experiences you have on your resume, the better you will do and the more competitive you will be for jobs.

Quite simply, four years of being a student-athlete cannot compete—in most cases—with a well-prepared graduate who is not an athlete but who has a practicum, two internships, an independent study with an expert in the field, and related summer jobs. This is not to say that one path is better than the other, but just to underline the reality that a student-athlete faces at the end of senior year. So how do you do this? How do you fit these practical experiences into your busy life? Well, a few pieces of advice.

First, you need to network with the right people, inside and outside the university. Inside, this includes career coaches, advisors, faculty members, researchers, and administrators (including deans and support staff). These are people who have your best interests at heart, contacts in your field, and a mandate to help you. But they won’t be able to help you unless they know who you are and unless you ask. Get to know them, attend events, join clubs and student organizations. Sure, you have to balance this with your training and competition, but that is no excuse. You have off-seasons, downtime, days off, and free time. The trick is to replace some of the “useless” activities like watching TV and playing video games with positive ones. Instead of going out one night, join a student club in your area of interest. Instead of sleeping in one day, go to a career fair. These are very simple choices, with very significant positive outcomes.

Second, figure out what you want to do. As noted earlier, meet with advisors, professors, and more. Find a mentor. Connect with a professor. Meet a graduate student. But take that a step further and include this in your plan from Secret 1. Write down your career choices. Your “dream job” (in real life, not as an athlete) postgraduation. Outline what you need to do to get competitive for that job at graduation and go do it.

3. Be responsible for building your own character. When you are trying to balance the pursuit of academic success and high-performance sport, it becomes difficult to focus on other elements of what it takes to be a successful person. Some student-athletes have these traits and high-quality characters but many do not. UNC’s Anson Dorrance provided the following response when we asked him about this:

From my perspective, the definition of student-athlete is that this is part of a process to become a better human being. A critical quality I think most of us overlook when we are evaluating a student-athlete is character development . . . The main priority for someone coming into college as an athlete is to develop his or her character and there are some fantastic benefits to that. I think there is a direct correlation between developing your own character and having a successful athletic and academic career.

Dorrance went on to explain that it is you, the student-athlete, who needs to take responsibility for your own character development:

Student-athletes are supervisors of their own development. They get to guide their own development and obviously most critically, their character development. They also are the supervisors of their own academic world and their athletic world as well. . . . [It] is very critical for any [student-athlete] to understand their opportunity to shape their own future based on the standards they set for themselves. The responsibility they take for themselves.

Practically, what Dorrance advises is very important. You need to take responsibility. You need to plan for your career. You need to do the research to determine what career path (major, courses, internships, etc.) is best for you and will get you a job after graduation.

. . .

HILLARY (BACH) NELSON

(former softball student-athlete at Arizona State University, Partnerships Manager at Positive Coaching Alliance)

Some people enjoy expectations and some people don’t enjoy the added pressure. I would say, for those that do, use it as confidence. Your coach or your parent, whoever is putting those expectations on you, they think you’re capable or else they wouldn’t be asking you to do this. If they are starting you in a big game, it’s because they know you can be successful. I never met a coach who tried to lose. So, if they’re putting you in there, take it as a really big sign of confidence and enjoy it. Enjoy that pressure and go out there and show them that they were right, prove them right. If you don’t enjoy the expectations, try focusing on smaller goals. If the expectation is to pitch a shutout game against the big rival, try focusing on winning every inning or winning each batter or winning each pitch. I want to throw a curveball outside. Did I hit that spot? No. OK, I lost that pitch, but let me win this next pitch. Focus on those small things that you can control, just like your effort on each play or that positive attitude that will help you keep your mind off of the bigger picture.

. . .

4. Be career focused. This point builds upon the others and and is quite simple. Think about your career, alongside your training and competition goals, as a focus of your plans, your choices, your efforts. It is about planning for life after graduation right from the get-go. It is about understanding why joining a student club in your area of interest is better than a night of television each week. In his interview, Schembechler captured this point clearly: “As a student-athlete, you need to realize that you are going to have to change your mindset to be ready for a career. It’s all a matter of who you associate yourself with that allows you to change that mindset.” In order to accomplish this, he advises that you “have to study what the market is like of the industry you want to go into.”

5. Maintain relationships outside your sport. When you come to college as a freshman on scholarship, it is very easy to build your entire social network at college around your team and your teammates. You will spend a lot of time with them, and often you won’t have any close friends from high school who are nearby. Chris Dawson, a former student-athlete, and associate commissioner at the Pac-12 Conference, explained this very clearly:

I think student-athletes can best prepare for the transition out of sport by making sure that when they’re still an active athlete they maintain other relationships and other interests to the greatest extent possible. If your whole world is your team, which is very easy to do when you’re a college athlete, then you lose your support system when your athletics career is over and you lose your sense of identity. I think that the transition can be smoother when you understand that it’s going to happen to you at some point. It’s going to be a different point for different people.

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The three things you can take out of this chapter (if you remember nothing else from what you just read) are these:

1. Have an understanding of who you are and what opportunity you have in front of you. Focus on the NOW with the future in mind and the past in the rearview mirror.

2. Build your character and take responsibility for your actions. As Jim Rohn once said, “You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself.”

3. Rise to the challenge, don’t let the pressure get to you, focus on your career, be a great student, and create relationships outside of the teammates you are with 24/7.