The life of a Division I student-athlete is glamorous, easy and a privileged life that requires no real work.
This statement could not be further away from the truth. Being a D-I athlete involves a lot more work than everyday students who aren’t involved with athletics would think.
Most people believe being an athlete in college means you can do what you want, when you want, with no true consequence. They also believe this comes along with all the free time you want, minus practices and games. However, this isn’t quite the case.
“That is an untrue statement, seeing as we have to be up at six a.m. for practices at times, and not get back till 10 at night if it’s a late practice. We have a lot of requirements that take up our time, and we work hard for everything we get. Nothing is for free,” said freshman soccer defender Halle Parker.
For these athletes there are different days that require different amounts of attention.
These include home games, away games, non-game days and the off-season.
For sophomore midfielders Ellen Ross (field hockey) and Amanda Spencer (soccer) the hardest days are the non-game days because there’s always a lot more preparation that goes into what is required of them.
“On game days it’s a lot easier because we don’t have lifting to worry about, we don’t have practice to worry about…,” said Ross. “Usually I do all my homework before, so I don’t have to worry about that on game days. So, game days are a lot less stressful than other days.”
For Spencer, game days are easier due to the “relaxed” feeling she gets throughout the day.
“I know I love having home game days because my day will be over at 12:15 [p.m.] or 11 o’ clock [a.m.], so I can eat lunch and go back to take a nap from that time until three o’ clock [p.m.],” said Spencer (soccer). “Then, me and my three roommates blast music and get our bags ready and get everything we need to go to the team room at 4:30, fiveish [p.m.]. You get your jersey with your team, then get on the bus to be taken to the stadium.”
On the other side of soccer, senior forward Anthony Ugorji doesn’t like to change anypart of his daily routine no matter if it’s game day or not.
“Well, you try not to change too much because even if you don’t have early morning classes, you try to get your body up so you’re working like you normally would. Just cause you want to have your body be prepared for practice, so you’ll be ready for the game; so, there’s not much difference,” said Ugorji. “You may try to switch up how you eat a bit, just so you have some food in you…but nothing much changes, your preparation should be the same for training and game day.”
Away games are where everything becomes different for every student-athlete because that’s when traveling becomes necessary to get to their games.
“This year it’s been a lot different because we’ve been traveling a lot more. We’ve had one 18-hour bus ride and two 10-hour bus rides. We usually travel the day before the game, and we get there that night and just relax [and] all that stuff, not really do anything,” said Ross.
For senior cross country runner Nick Reed, the travel isn’t too bad because the team never really needs an extra travel day like the other teams.
“Most of our meets are just one day, we normally don’t have a travel day. Sometimes we do when we go down the day before, but most meet days [are]: get up, do a light two miles in the morning, go [at] to one or two classes depending on what time we leave. We normally leave at nine [a.m.], so if you don’t [don’t] have any morning classes you just go get breakfast. Then, on the vans on the way down there either sleep, do homework, listen to music, just talk,” said Reed.
Once the team is there they’ll normally warm-up, walk the course beforehand and get their spikes on before beginning the race. After the race, the team will get dinner then head back to Longwood, according to Reed.
All the student-athletes still have to finish their classwork before they travel away for their games because they are students first.
“Have to have a lot of good time management because you have to make all your stuff’s done before the class. Even though I’m missing the class, if things are due that day I can’t not turn them in, it’s still due for me even if I’m not there,” said Ross.
Each student-athlete gets about two to three hours to themselves, where they don’t have any prior activities for Athletics. Much like most college students, they just like to rest and relax with their teammates and friends while watching Netflix or taking naps.
According to these student-athletes, the Athletics department requires, and takes away, an estimated amount of at least 60 to 85 percent of a student-athlete’s time throughout an entire year. This includes athletic banquets, study hours, practices, games, workouts, travel and more.
The student-athletes have been going through this for years now, but as Spencer points out, “A lot of us came here for Athletics.”
