Demands faced by Student-Athletes and Top Tips:

University is a great experience that so many reflect on with fond memories, it can be a place where you make lifelong friendships, experience huge career opportunities, and be a centre piece in the “back in my day” stories you tell your future grandkids.

However, it should be noted that university life comes with its very own challenges and demands for any individual, whether it be academic stress, moving away from home, or adjusting to new responsibilities. Throughout this experience, students can be subject to a range of psychological demands that can be influential to their mental health and well-being.

For student-athletes, this pressure can be further increased as they work to successfully balance their academic and sporting commitments. Additional pressure for student-athletes may come in the form of:

• Scheduling and Time Management: managing academic deadlines is hard enough at times, add on the balance of academic deadlines with regular training and competitions can create a lot of stress for student-athletes. Missing lectures due to sporting commitments, needing to extend deadlines due to academic and sporting clashes, maintaining a balanced nutritious diet, and ensuring you’re getting enough shut-eye are all key components to consider and stay on top of.

• Sporting challenges: with any form of sports participation there are the usual demands and challenges faced by the athlete, whether that be the possibility of injury, deselection, conflict within the team, or risk of burnout. These factors are just as present within the collegiate level sport and added to the demands of academic commitment can become detrimental for student-athletes. Thus, mastering the mental side of the game as well as the physical, in order to take on the demands of life as a student-athlete is key.

• Identity: this may be something many student-athletes don’t think about, but your time at university will play a role in shaping you and your development. It’s common for many athletes to have a strong sense of athletic identity, this being the degree of strength and exclusivity to which a person identifies with the athlete role (Brewer et al., 1991), which can cause them to be at risk of neglecting other aspects of their life to fulfil their athletic role. Though for student-athletes, they will be juggling dual-role identities in that they’re a full-time athlete and full-time student, so finding the balance of identities in order to best prioritise your time and fulfil both roles is something you will have to manage.

All of these demands are ones that student-athletes may be exposed to whilst they aim to achieve their goals of completing university, and for some, taking their sporting career further. So here are our top tips at SSU for managing these demands:

1. Identify key times in both your academic and sporting calendars at the start of each semester, taking note of your deadlines and crucial sporting events, and on when you have time to get ahead of your deadlines.

2. Use the support available to you, there will be both sports and academic staff there to support you throughout your student-athlete experience, and don’t forget, your SSU family are here as well!

3. Control the controllable, keeping your stress levels at a functional and healthy level is key, so working on maintaining a focus on the elements you can control over ones you can’t can be highly influential to both your academic and sporting performance.

4. Be realistic, do not over plan your day, keep expectations realistic to uphold motivation and limit any discouraging feelings you may experience from not ticking everything off your to-do list.

5. Prioritise time to socialise with people from a range of settings, this allows you to appreciate the role that a wider support network can have for you.

6. Keep in touch with home, being away from home doesn’t mean your friends and family are no longer there to support you. Check-in and be sure to share the amazing experience you’re living.

7. Remember your WHY… when challenges arise it is easy to forget why you are doing what you are doing, and take time to reflect on your reasons for participating in your sport.