Malachi examines how difficult juggling school and sports as a student athlete and journalist.
Being an student is hard itself, and then being a athlete on top of it makes it even harder.
Starting your day of school at 5 or 6 and then preparing for the 7-8 hour school day is already exhausting itself, now adding an additional 3-4 hours for practice? It's not for the weak. I talked to a couple of student athletes to gather their opinions on time management as an athlete and here's what they had to say,
Sohan Patel, FHS varsity baseball starting pitcher says, “The only bad thing would be coming home at 5 everyday and making sure all my school work was done and being prepared for tests. However it was something I knew I would be committing to so I was determined to make sure I was all on top of everything, on the field and off of it" For Sohan his experience was all about preparation, he knew what he was getting himself into when he decided to play baseball and because of it he was already prepared for the rigorous season ahead of him. Other athletes on the other-hand, were not prepared for the journey ahead of them.
Nick, varsity running back for Jackson High School says, “How has it been balancing my personal life, school life and being an athlete?I'm gonna be honest, it's really hard. I’ve been trying to make it work but I’ve found myself going out more than I do my work…No but seriously it's hard, late practices monday through thursday, then a game on friday, which is followed by an early practice saturday. To maintain you seriously you have to be a disciplined and focused student, and sometimes miss out on fun experiences…Not for the weak for sure."
An athlete's lifestyle is rigorous and extremely demanding, you can miss out on valuable memories but it's all for a good cause in the end. From my personal experience a schedule is the best way to go about handling everything. Everything you do gets its own time slot and you follow it religiously, and sometimes you may not get to do everything you want to do and that's ok, but this is a lesson that life is all about, you can't do it all.