Risk & Sacrifice: The Life of a Student Athlete

Contrary to what most people may believe, being a Division I college athlete is far from easy. In fact, there many obstacles they must face in order to successfully balance being a full-time student with being a full-time athlete. One would be surprised to learn of the amount of sacrifice required in such an endeavor. Unbeknownst to many, being a member of a college sports team often requires an individual to forgo many of the activities the average student gets to enjoy over the duration of their college career. Along with the sacrifice, there is a certain level risk associated with being a student athlete. However, despite all of this, thousands of college students across the nation actively participate in Division I athletics.

Why do they do it?

It can't for the promise of huge future paydays, because according to NCAA statistics, less than one percent of all college athletes go on to play their sport professionally. With that said, I was honestly curious to find out why despite all of these apparent drawbacks, so many college students choose participate in competitive varsity sports.

Let's begin by outlining the sacrifices a college athlete must be prepared to make.

The first and most important thing that all student-athletes sacrifice is their time. At the NCAA Division I level, athletes sacrifice their time in many ways and for many reasons. The primary way an athlete’s time is sacrificed is through team practices. Under NCAA rules, teams can practice and do other team-related activities (such as weightlifting) for up to 20 hours a week during the season, a number that eats up a significant portion of a student-athlete’s time. To add insult to injury, these practices aren’t always scheduled at the most convenient times of the day.

“Once you get into the season you’re lifting three times a week on top of your two-and-a-half, three-hour practices, and six hours of study hall a week,” said Kara Charochak, a graduating senior who played on the UMass field hockey team for four years. “Typically in the fall you have your classes in the morning from 8 A.M. till 2:15 then we have practice from 2:30 until 6 o’clock. Sometimes we’ll get out at five and we’ll have to lift till six or we’ll get out at 5:30 and lift for an hour after that. It takes up a lot of your time.”

Another major way some college athletes sacrifice their time is through summer workouts. While most of them do get to enjoy the summer months with their friends and families, some of them aren’t so lucky. “I’ve missed out on more family vacations than I care to count,” says Carolann Cloutier, who plays for the UMass women's basketball team. Here at UMass, members of the football team and both the men and women’s basketball teams are required to stay back and spend most of their summers on campus and take classes so that they can practice with their teammates in the off-season. College sports have become so competitive that every team is looking for all the advantages they can find to win. Because of this, certain sports resemble full time jobs instead of mere extracurricular activities.

They aren’t alone for long though. Other UMass teams, such as field hockey, join them soon enough.

“We get here (on campus) August 7^th," said Charochak. "That’s a month before anyone else and a month out of your summer that you lose”.  Once on campus, Charochak gets right to work. “We’re doing two-a-days and three-a-days,” she said, describing her summer regimen.

The final major way athletes sacrifice their time is through travel. Unlike high school sports, where completion is mainly local, college athletics take place at a national level. This means that a great deal of a Division I athlete's time is spent traveling. This is something that many college athletes have to get used to almost immediately. Participating in Division I college sports often means that you will spend a great amount of your time busing or flying all over the United States, engaging in competition with other schools both in and out of your athletic conference. 

“Traveling can be extremely draining,” says Cloutier. “A lot of time we fly out for games as early as 5 o’clock in the morning. It’s also not uncommon for me to return to campus in the wee hours of the morning on a school day, knowing full well that I have a class at 9 o’clock. It’s tough.”

Extensive traveling also causes athletes to miss significant amounts of often-valuable class time, which depending on their instructor, can put them at a severe disadvantage. Cloutier knows this all too well.

“Nope, absolutely not,” she immediately replied when asked her if her teachers took into account the fact that she was a college athlete when evaluating her. “Even though I miss large amounts of class time because of all the travelling I do, I don’t really get any type of special benefits for being an athlete. It really sucks. We are held to the exact same standards as any ordinary student even though the constraints on our time are much tighter than theirs. Some teachers here are not really sympathetic when I miss class because of traveling, which I think is crazy because it is beyond my control. It's not like I can tell my coach that I can't go to an away game because I have class. I simply can’t do that.”

In many courses, class attendance plays a significant role in a student receiving a quality grade. In athletics, competition and travel very often overlap with class time. When a student-athlete misses a class, they usually have very little choice but to figure things out on their own. Sometimes, if the teacher is sympathetic, he or she may provide them with notes from class or give them a brief review of class material during office hours. However, ultimately, this is not a professor's responsibility and it is seen as more of a courtesy than anything else. Most of the time, teachers are not so cooperative when dealing with athletes. 

In cases where the professor refuses to accommodate them, athletes are forced to find out missed information completely on their own. This causes somewhat of a dilemma. For a student to be as successful as possible, it usually requires them being able to attend class on a regular basis. This something that frankly isn’t easy for most student-athletes. As a result, they are sometimes forced into compromising positions, and more often than not, it affects their academic performance. It's a real Catch-22. You're damned if you, damned if you don't.

Traveling isn’t the only academic-related sacrifice a student athlete must make. There is also the issue of class scheduling. An athlete’s practice schedule usually dictates the classes they can take and when they can take them. The problem with this is when an athlete is attempting to complete a degree, there are certain tasks they must complete in order to receive their diploma. At UMass, there are certain classes that are only offered in the afternoons and on certain specific days. For many athletes, afternoon or night classes do not work because of travel and game times. On many occasions, this causes student athletes to either choose a different major than the one they would prefer to take or attend class during the winter or summer semesters, which essentially prevents them from spending time with their loved ones over those breaks.

In certain situations, an athlete will even end up settling for an easy and convenient major because it is the simplest option. This conflict also places serious time constraints on the athlete to point that many are forced to stay an extra year in order to play their sport and satisfy the requirements required for them to graduate. Furthermore, there are the external pressures. Despite all of the obstacles I previously mentioned, a player's athletic eligibility is heavily dependent on their academic performance. The NCAA has specific academic standards with which all athletes must comply with in order to compete athletically. Aside from this, schools have their own academic standards. At UMass, all student-athletes are required to maintain a 2.0 Grade Point Average

Athletes also sacrifice their bodies, which is probably the biggest sacrifice they make. Something that the majority of people do not see is the day-to-day grind that comes with being a college athlete. When playing a sport, especially at the Division I level, it is almost guaranteed that you will have to deal with some type of injury or pain at some juncture of your career. If the athlete has a nagging injury he or she not only has to deal with the often distracting pain during practice or games, but that person often has to sit through class with that pain, and that could pose as a serious distraction and it could potentially affect their ability to learn. Imagine going to class while suffering from the lingering symptoms of a concussion.  

Let’s now look at the risks.

UMass athletes take a great deal of risks every time they don their uniforms. A Minuteman football player could potentially get seriously injured at any time. A baseball player could get hit in the head with a fastball and suffer some traumatic head injury. The list goes on and on. Every single school year, an athlete's season comes to a close because of an unfortunate injury, which is very hard or an athlete to cope with. The injury does not magically disappear when it is time to get to class or when the athlete has to study. Student-athletes work year-round for the opportunity to become champions in their chosen sport and when an injury erases those aspirations, it can be psychologically crushing, and that's without mentioning all of the intensive rehab required to heal the injury. 

Many athletes in college are unaware of the possible long-term repercussions of training year round at a high level. Why do so many retired athletes suffer from arthritis and joint pain?  The answer is rather simple. It stems from the injuries they suffered and the years of wear and tear on their bodies. Often after an injury, even a very serious one, it isn’t exactly uncommon to see an athlete make a quick recovery and get back out on the field or court. However, like almost all athletes, what they do know will almost surely affect them down the road. 

Cloutier tore her left ACL late last season in a freak accident and as a result, she missed all of the team’s summer workout sessions and had to undergo months of post-surgery rehabilitation to get back to where she was before the injury. Thanks to timely surgery, advances in medical technology and the fact the she was closely monitored by the team’s medical staff, she was able to make a rather speedy recovery. However, 20 years down the road she could very well face some problems with her knee. 

“I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t worried about the potential effects this surgery could have on my knee down the road,” she said. “Unfortunately I can’t control it, but it could be a battle that I will have to face later on in life.”

With injuries being as common as they are, athletes like Cloutier will most likely pay down the road for what they put their bodies through today. Is participating in collegiate athletics and possibly jeopardize your future quality life really worth it? Cloutier seems to think so. 

“I think about the here and now,” she said. “I’ll only be a college athlete once in my life and I want to enjoy it as much as possible. Whether I’ll pay for it down the road, I have no clue. I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”

Torn ACLs aren’t the only serious injury risk college athletes must face. The issue of concussions have become a major concern for players at all levels of athletic competition, amateur or professional. They are a major issue because no matter how minor the initial injury, repeated concussions can lead to serious brain damage that can seriously compromise the rest of an athlete’s life, or worst of all, take them to an early grave. In recent years, research on the issue of concussions has led some to question how quickly athletes should return in competition after recovering from a major brain trauma, if at all. Players often rush get back onto the playing field after suffering a concussion because of pressure coming from coaches and teammates and the ever-present fear of losing playing time. High-level collegiate sports have become more of a business than just an extracurricular activity for athletes. Because of this, the precautions taken towards concussion recovery are sped up when they should be slowed down. 

Earlier in the year, our class watched an ESPN Over The Lines episode that drove home the gravity of repeated brain trauma. Watching that video, I learned that concussions can have devastating consequences that many people, including myself at the time, are not aware of. The OTL episode explained in painstaking detail the risk an athlete takes when they choose to participate in athletics. Some athletes have even committed suicide as a direct result of repeated head trauma. Look at what happened to Junior Seau.

The question arises again. Why be a collegiate athlete?

Many people assume that just because you are an athlete, you automatically receive a full scholarship. That leads them to presume that that you receive a check each month, that all your meals are free and you want for nothing. That is simply not true. In reality, aside from basketball, which according to NCAA guidelines, can offer up to 13 athletic scholarships, and football, which can offer up to 85 of them, the vast majority of UMass athletes do not receive full athletic scholarships. Some student-athletes like Charochak only receive partial scholarships (approximately a quarter of her total expenses are covered) leaving them responsible for paying for the vast majority of their tuition, housing and all of the other things they need.

The even more sobering reality of college athletics is that some athletes receive absolutely nothing in return for their athletic contributions. Though the realities of being a student-athlete affect all college athletes, a significant number them must pay their tuition on top of meeting the demands of being a student athlete. At UMass, less than half of all student athletes receive scholarships of any kind. Basketball and football receive the majority of them while sports such as soccer and baseball receive as little as two apiece. Track and field receives little to nothing.

Nick Otis is a senior and a member of UMass' track and field team. He receives no monetary support or reduced tuition rates. This led me to pose a serious question. With everything that a college athlete must sacrifice, with of the obstacles they must climb and with all of the risks they must take, why would so many do it for absolutely nothing? It’s not like there’s a multi-million dollar payday waiting for them at the end of the tunnel. 

"I've never thought about it that way” said Otis. If I did I probably would have quit by now because when you think about it is pretty depressing. When I think about all of the work I put in then think about the fact that there’s basically no payout whatsoever it’s not necessarily fair.”

So why do it? It all boils down to family and a love for competition.

“Coming in, I loved that I had an instant family here,” said Charochak. “Being on the field hockey team which had 27 or 28 girls from various parts of the country and the rest of the world really helped me learn to adjust to others and better deal with people.”

“It’s a all about family” said Cloutier. “Athletes naturally gravitate towards a family atmosphere. Some of them leave home for college at 17 or 18 years of age and sometimes they know absolutely no one when they get on campus. Being part of a team gives you an immediate family, which helps a lot when you’re adjusting to everyday life on an unfamiliar college campus. There’s also the fact that most college athletes have been practicing their chosen sport their entire lives. They simply love what they do. That’s why they put up with all of this.”

Finally, Otis had a very interesting explanation as to why he had no plans of quitting track anytime soon, despite having some valid reasons to do so.

"The friends, and the camaraderie are what make being a student-athlete worth it,” he said. “I’ve also ran track all of my life and I’m good at it, so why not run? It’s just something that I’ve always done because I loved it…it’s kind of like family in a way. You kind of can dislike it, but you still love it. You can hate your mom for a little while or whatever but you still love her…I like that analogy…I think it’s accurate.”