You’ve got to do your best to build strong habits to succeed as a student-athlete. Students and athletes share many skills that are necessary to do well in many areas of their lives. The three things that are most important as a student-athlete are communication, time-management, and discipline. Athletes fuel their bodies with carbohydrates, protein, and water for performance and strength. Students can also fuel their brains with healthy diets and reading. As student-athletes sometimes forget the similarities in skills we have and don’t comprehend the flexibility of these skills. Even if we don’t fully understand how we can develop these skills it is important to understand how we can use these skills to succeed as a student-athlete.
You’ve got to communicate effectively as a student-athlete as in most areas of life. Positive communication as a student can look like asking for help in class, discussing an absence, or asking to borrow notes from a classmate. Examples of beneficial communication as an athlete can be asking your coach for at home drills for practice, discussing scheduling conflicts for practices and games, or verbal and non-verbal communication with your teammates on court. No matter what you do, communication is essential to our lives whether it’s texting, signing, or verbal. Understanding how to properly communicate and the information you need to communicate as a student-athlete are crucial to successful self-advocacy. To communicate efficiently as a student athlete allows you to prevent misunderstandings, improve performance, and helps you become an active listener.
You’ve got to manage your time wisely as a student athlete. Being in high school means that you will be busy and being an athlete adds to that schedule. Time-management allows you to get everything done in a way that doesn’t cause undo stress. The best thing about positive time-management is that you can tailor it to your needs. Depending on your classes, sports, and extracurriculars/activities, your time after school may feel limited. To make sure you don’t forget anything, get a planner and write down assignments, meetings, and games. There is no single way to manage time. It looks different for everyone. Our time-management, routines, and schedules are habits that we build around us. Understanding how to manage our time is to understand ourselves. For example, I could pick a certain amount of time to do an assignment because it is more challenging. Strengthening this skill allows us to finish assignments, go to our practices, and give ourselves breaks in a way that isn’t overwhelming and stressful.
You’ve got to be disciplined as a student-athlete. Having discipline is holding yourself accountable for everything that you do. We don’t naturally have discipline. It is a learned skill that we can aim to have. It can be hard to recognize that we have used discipline before, but we all have. Especially as student-athletes. In your sport, if you have consistently worked on a skill you want to master, that is discipline. As a student, discipline can be writing notes even when you don’t want to or studying for two hours when you really want to go to sleep. To become disciplined is to be consistent. You will never have the same level of energy or motivation every day. This is challenging for many. Even if you don’t want to do something, do it anyway. Your consistency is what displays your determination and discipline. To train yourself to have discipline you have to set goals . Whether they’re long-term or short-term you have to create a realistic plan and follow through on it. Following through on that plan and staying consistent shows others that you have the will and drive to succeed. Discipline is an essential skill that aids in academic excellence, resilience, and leadership.
To become stronger as a student-athlete you have to understand skills that students and athletes both have and want to work on. Having an understanding of how you can use these skills allows you to continue to grow in all areas of life. Understanding these similar skills we share gives us a positive perspective of these areas in our lives. Having a perspective of the skills we want to use in other aspects of our lives lets us adapt to a growth mindset. To become a stronger student-athlete is to choose the idea of constant growth, and to be a lifelong learner.
Savannah Tzamburakis – Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School – DMSF Class of 2030
Photo Credit: Magda Ehlers – Pexels