Final exams are over, graduation is around the corner, and
students who
have invested time and effort into pursuing sports long-term are likely
celebrating the fruits of their labor with athletic scholarships to a
university abroad.
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In a few months,
parents will send off their children to university, many abroad. For those who
invested in their
child’s athletic journey, financially or otherwise, if their
child was awarded an athletic scholarship, the sense of achievement is
definitely significant regardless of whether the monetary compensation is
noteworthy.
The feeling of
pride in parents is surely noted, but to the student, that athletic scholarship
is a completely new story.
With about half a
million NCAA student-athletes, a report published by the NCAA showed that 57
percent of all student-athletes receive some level of athletics aid in D1
colleges, while 63 percent of all student-athletes receive some level of
athletics aid in D2 colleges, revealing a significant number of
student-athletes on athletic scholarships every year.
The experience of
going off to university is an adventure of its own.
Traveling, sometimes
thousands of miles, to a new place is a mind-blowing life-changing experience
for 17 and 18-year-old students.
More than ever,
students are now responsible for their actions and their consequences. They are
returning to an empty dorm or apartment instead of their family home. They no
longer have the privilege of eating with their family or lifelong friends. No
one is
cooking their favorite meals, and if there is no cafeteria, cooking
needs to be squeezed into their schedule. Hygiene, laundry, and cooking are
tasks they must complete alone. And the thrill of being on their own, while heavily
present to start, fades slowly, and the burden of juggling life begins to kick
in.
So what about
students with an athletic scholarship? They are eager to train, perform, and
develop to move on to the next level, and you can usually find them in the vicinity
of the sports complex, looking for new “athletic” friends.
To many
student-athletes, when life feels overwhelming, sport is a sanctuary. It is
where they can vent off all the pressure and be “the player” for a short period
of time. Even after the game is over and the lights are off, the student’s urge
to stay “the player” is still there, either by seeking a meal together with
their team after the game, watching sports, talking about the match, and many
other ways to avoid being “the student” again.
Months go by, and
the tasks that seemed daunting to begin are now manageable, but what happens to
the player? The pressure to stay on the team or move onto a “better” team
starts to take center stage. And while part of the student athlete’s
development is on the student-athletes themselves, the anxiety surrounding this
issue is related to other external factors.
According to Next
College Student Athlete, several reasons can cause athletic scholarships to be
withdrawn. If a student-athlete is injured, depending on the school they attend
and whether it happened outside of games or practice, the athletic scholarship
can be pulled. Moreover, coaches can decide not to renew the athletic
scholarship for the student for the next year for various reasons, including a new
coach joining the program, getting into trouble on or off the field, poor
performance, and more.
So how does this
impact student-athletes? Recently, a student-athlete decided to post a video to
explain how she, and student-athletes in general, really feel but cannot really
express.
“As an athlete, you
are taught to keep your head down and work hard. You are taught to push your
body to new limits, strive for greatness, and to work through any physical
pain. But they do not teach you how to work through the mental pain, they do
not teach you how to deal with disordered eating, burnout,
depression, or
anxiety and they surely do not teach you how to speak up. Instead, they teach
you how to be ‘mentally tough’. Our experiences get invalidated because it is normal
for an athlete to go through something like this.”
“We are taught that
struggling with our mental health makes us weak or that we are just being
ungrateful. I know this because it is something that I have experienced.
Unfortunately, my experience is not unique, in fact I know far too many
athletes who can relate,” she said, adding that
abusive and toxic environments
for student-athletes are normalized, and resources are scarce.
“College athletics is not a system built
around the well-being of student-athletes. It is a fog system built around
short-term success so that the people in charge get paid,” and people do not
speak up because “what do you do when the source of your pain comes from
somebody superior to you? Somebody that you are supposed to trust … has a lot
of control over your life; control over your position on the team, your
scholarship, your playing time,” she said.
“For people who
depend on athletics to attend college, this is a big deal, and before you say:
‘well, why don’t you go to the athletics director administration?’ They do not
tend to care unless the abuse is physical. So for years, many of us continue to
keep our heads down and work hard. But this is not what we signed up for.”
This is an
experience familiar to many of those in the student-athlete field. Many
athletes have gone through, are going through, or will go through such emotions
at varying intensities.
Nonetheless, it is
instrumental that the
mental health and well-being of the students are always
taken into consideration when managing dreams and expectations. It is a duty
that must be shared amongst everyone involved: parents, coaches, friends, and
the community.
The scholarship to
a student-athlete is a source of pride, but it bears a big responsibility that
can be tarnished without proper support.
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