By Logan Tracy (Staff Writer)
Playing sports takes up lots of time and energy, not to mention the stress put onto you by yourself and others. I have been playing soccer since I can remember and been playing at a high level for most of it playing for school and club teams, but as a junior trying to impress a school to play at the collegiate level, I’ve never felt this much pressure.
A usual day for me begins at 6 am, catching up on homework or going for a run. I then go to school from 8:40am to 3:50pm. Since it is the school soccer season, I head to the field and train for 2 or more hours after school is over. Finally I go home, which takes about an hour. I end up getting home around 7:30pm exhausted from the day. Homework gets pushed back for basic necessities like eating and showering, leaving me with maybe an hour to do some homework before going to bed; so naturally I end up staying up a lot later than expected. My sleep schedule is constantly being changed to fit how busy the week is.
In addition to the busyness of my week, I see life as a student athlete as rewarding, but hard. The reward is playing but everything around it is extremely complicated whether its grades, college, or mental health there always seems to be some sort of pressure to put on yourself. Sometimes life as a student athlete can feel consumed by time and attempts at managing it. We all know school should take priority but that doesn’t mean we always follow that. Your focus can naturally drift towards what you enjoy doing more, which for me is soccer.
My main goal right now is to keep improving parts of my game that are weaker, and to get attention and interest from college coaches. The college scouting process can also be extremely stressful with rare opportunities to get looks from coaches. Taking advantage of every opportunity is important. But the reality of it is a lot of this process is luck: the right coach has to see you at the right time and you have to fit their play style. Your job as a player is to make luck more likely by putting in consistent performances which in itself can be a tall task with everything in your life going on to find any sort of consistency.
With the busy schedule always growing your mental health seems to take a back seat. Every moment off is spent sleeping, eating, or socializing. Taking time for yourself is extremely important yet also super difficult to do. This lack of time for yourself eventually shows when your overall mood seems to be on a constant decline. Finding little moments to yourself is the only way to feel any sort of balance.
