The life of a student-athlete is not as dazzling or glamorous as it seems. While sports movies and television shows may have it seem like such, multiple factors can make playing a sport more of a burden than it is boisterous.

A healthy diet is one of the requirements for most student-athletes to be able to stay in good shape. 

Even for students who are not a part of an on-campus sports team, it may be a difficult task to find food that fulfills all of the nutritional requirements for a student who needs not only the energy to stay engaged in classes but then needing that extra “oomph” to make it through practices and games.

There are on-campus options that try to provide accessibility for athletes as they strive to maintain a physical form for their respective sports. 

There are days when the food may not be up to the highest standards. There are also days when the choices are quite limited, considering most students are on a pretty tight budget.

Those practices and games can make finding sleep stressful. Imagine having a basketball game make it all the way to double overtime and having to exude all of your strength, energy and willpower to win a game, just to have to wake up the next morning for a class at 8 a.m.. 

It can be a miserable experience for a student-athlete with a poor schedule who just wants to continue a career in the sport that has brought them so much happiness in their early life. 

Even students who take part in intramurals are by definition student-athletes. This does not just apply to student-athletes but students trying to keep an athletic figure as well. 

Being a full-time student is a major time commitment and there are just not enough hours in the day to get a consistent workout in with such a schedule. If you include a job on top of that, it just adds to the stress factors that are supposed to be relieved by working out or playing a sport. 

Keeping one’s mental health in check through athletic activities can also be a job at times. There are many times that I and people that I know have fallen into poor mental health by not being able to find time for those activities that give us a break from everyday stressors. 

A student and life balance is needed to do any sort of physical activity on campus.

The latter of not being organized for those activities is falling into stress and burning oneself out. Which can lead to even more issues down the line and potentially dropping out completely if it gets bad enough. 

This is why stressing organization and making good decisions regarding student-life balance is integral to being a student-athlete. 

This needs to be emphasized to students attempting to further their athletic career in whatever capacity it may be. Students cannot take these factors lightly and must consider them before jumping into such a commitment, you are a student first.

Zons can be reached at [email protected].