Читать книгу 20 Secrets to Success for NCAA Student-Athletes Who Won’t Go Pro - Rick Burton - Страница 9

Introduction

When business author Stephen Covey wrote his landmark text The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in 1989, he drew from more than twenty-five years of observing what made leaders successful. That book has never been out of print, and we suspect a major reason is that Covey made the concept of simple, straightforward advice (built around just seven habits) easy for everyone to grasp. Covey believed businesspeople, future leaders, and students alike could all become more effective and accomplished by reading his book.

As a group of authors, we came together wanting to emulate that concept but for a very specific audience: collegiate student-athletes. We wanted to prepare high school seniors getting ready to go to college as student-athletes and to assist those NCAA student-athletes already enrolled at a university or college who will soon find out there is more to adult life than just playing a sport. Many have the dream of playing sports professionally or competing at the Olympics, but many others have the dream of becoming a doctor, lawyer, or CEO.

So this book is a handbook. Not a textbook. It has been specifically written for student-athletes. It is intended for the locker room, the dorm room, the house off campus, the cafeteria, the bus, the plane, or the study hall, as well as the classroom.

The reason we want this book read in those locations is that after a few years as a college student-athlete, reality always sets in. Being an intercollegiate student-athlete means enduring a rigorous schedule of practices, classes, labs, tutorial sessions, weight training, road trips, and academic counseling.

We also wanted this book to work for every type of NCAA student-athlete. Not just students whose families have gone to college for generations . . . but also students for whom a grant-in-aid scholarship will make them the first ever in their family to go to college. Similarly, we wanted this book to serve not just students who have grown up in a highly developed American system of sport (i.e., Amateur Athletic Union teams, elite travel teams, private sport academies) but also the thousands of international students who are recruited to play for NCAA schools and must adapt not only to the myriad rules by which NCAA athletes are governed but also to living in a new country.

But why stop there? We also wanted to make sure this book was not subliminally written for a particular gender, race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic privilege, or level of skill. In fact, we wanted to consistently recognize that playing sports at a US institution of higher education is incredibly demanding. We appreciate that every student-athlete is different and will face numerous physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and mental health challenges during his or her tenure at a university.

Mental health for NCAA student-athletes is not to be taken lightly. The NCAA’s chief medical officer, Brian Hainline, who is responsible for running the NCAA’s Sport Science Institute, has been tireless in telling athletic administrators, athletes, and parents that understanding and supporting student-athlete mental wellness (as well as addressing sexual assault and interpersonal violence) are a mandate for the NCAA as a governing body as well as for all of the NCAA’s member institutions.

Like mental health, diversity and inclusion are foundational (but also confounding) issues for anyone who enters the college sports experience. Not all student-athletes, however, feel confident that the invitation to the party included their name. As one sage recently noted, diversity is getting invited to the party, while inclusion is getting asked to dance.

Most student-athletes will make their way through college and find individuals like themselves. But not everyone gets comfortable in every situation.

So we should be clear in our intention. We want everyone who reads this book to find value or to be provoked to think differently. But how individuals read a handbook, and in particular whether an individual seeks clarity for an issue specific to her or him, varies widely. Students who might come from greater disadvantage than others they see around them need to use this book as a starting block toward seeking assistance.

To draw upon the work of the acclaimed writer and social scientist Malcolm Gladwell, author of the seminal book Outliers (2008), the difference between those who succeed and those who fail is “not something expensive or impossible to find; not something encoded in DNA or hardwired into the circuits of [young] brains.” What those who fail lack is “something that could have been given to them if we’d only known they needed it: a community around them that prepared them properly for the world.”

You, the reader, may or may not have enjoyed great support, encouragement, and endorsement at home. But chances are very good that either way, most readers of this book will have needed to adapt to a new setting (college) and then find a supportive community there. We hope this book is a literary version of that process—a simple book that can provide insight, advice, and counsel, much of it from others just like you, who made this same journey.

Why tell you this? Well, at the end of the college continuum, for more than 98 percent of all NCAA student-athletes, the dream of playing professionally or for a national or Olympic team . . . of leveling up (if you are a video gamer) . . . will not happen. The end of college is the end of the elite sports journey for most student-athletes. Life after graduation awaits, and the world can be harsh.

This book is for student-athletes (and perhaps their parents or guardians) who will encounter some confusion and yearn for solutions to an age-old conundrum that collegiate student-athletes have faced since the NCAA was formally named in 1910. And that is: How do I prepare for what I am going to do next? And a corollary: How do I leverage my strengths and turn my weaknesses into learning moments?

The answers are in this book.

We wrote the book in such a way that any student-athlete can pick it up and prowl or browse through any chapter. You don’t have to read it sequentially or in one sitting or during any particular semester. Rather, you can use this book according to your specific needs. In other words, our aim was to write a self-help book for elite student-athletes. That’s you.

We believe most student-athletes arrive at their goal of playing intercollegiate sports through a great deal of hard work and discipline that allows for both athletic and academic success. To help you build on those accomplishments, we wanted to make this book flow, starting with the first secret of creating and following a student-athlete plan that could prepare any student-athlete for a more successful future.

From there, nineteen more secrets follow. They have all been written by our team of five authors, including four former collegiate athletes, two of whom captured championships; a university faculty athletics representative; a dynamic young scholar; and an executive who has worked his entire career in professional sports, rubbing shoulders with the greatest athletes of all time. We have worked together to make sure this book is easy to read and easy to benefit from.

The NCAA and its member institutions face the challenge of doing more to support student-athletes. The student-athlete, however, must also accept responsibility for preparing for his or her own future. Choosing a major with your advisor, attending classes, and learning about your chosen profession is the plan you the student-athlete must own. Simply said, “Whatever you put into it, you’ll get out of it.” This book gives student-athletes the information needed to positively influence their individual outcomes.

In the NCAA’s promotional materials, student-athletes proudly proclaim the tag line, “There are over 400,000 NCAA student-athletes, and just about all of us will be going pro in something other than sports.” If most student-athletes will go professional in something other than sports, then most student-athletes can take advantage of the secrets we share here.

But don’t just take that from us. Thumb through this book and notice the athletic directors, coaches, and former players who have offered their time to make sure student-athletes get the best possible advice.

Any contemporary book must acknowledge the great and profound differences that make all of us unique individuals. Readers will vary by personality, height, weight, intelligence, prior accomplishment, race, religion, socioeconomic status, gender identification, country of origin, historical association with higher education, and types of foods we enjoy (or dislike) . . . just to name a few differences.

To that end, this book is written with everyone in mind and with no single classification featured. All student-athletes are welcome in this book and all are acknowledged. All of us are challenged to do the best we can and to help each other out. We must learn to be interdependent (as Covey wrote). And to encourage one another.

We sincerely hope these pages will unlock a few of the mysteries contained and camouflaged on college campuses. We are confident these “secrets” can make you more successful in college and beyond. We wish you all the best,

The Authors