Is it worth it?

Is playing sports in college honestly worth it? Missing class, injuries. I don’t really care to go pro, I just like playing sports because it’s fun.

Of course it depends on how much you enjoy your sport. We have 4 kids, all of whom were good at a sport. Only our youngest had the passion to pursue it in college. He loves sports and would do almost anything to play his sport. He will practice or play 6 days in a week and then go practice basic skills on his own on his day off. To him, it is well worth it to coordinate make up work and juggle studying on a bus. It would not have been worth it to any of our other kids. Injuries have not been an issue but of course that can change in a second. You need to decide if it is worth it to you. There are always club and intramural levels if you decide you want a sport with less pressure

Agree with takeitallin. Also, the college sports experience varies widely. Top D1 programs will basically dictate your life in college. D3 programs tend to be less of a time commitment.

I will try and give you an honest run down of the differences from a former college athlete and a father of a soon to be college athlete. I played D1 football many years ago, so some of this may be football specific, but my supposition is that it is generally applicable. My one piece of free advice is that you,and you alone, will have to decide if the experience is worth it. The single biggest difference between high school and college sports is that Mom or Dad is not at every practice, maybe pushing you to work or maybe just cheering you on. In college, it is on you.

Now, my list:

The first thing you need to understand about college sports is that it is not high school. In high school, you likely played ball with your friends, guys you grew up, worked out and played with during your middle school years. There were years of relationships in many cases that simply strengthened as you went through high school. In college, you will all come together from different parts of the country and the relationships will build throughout your career. The positive side of this is that no one comes in with baggage. You will build your relationships based on the person and player you are, not who you were in fifth grade or who your dad or older brother was. At the end of the day, I was as close if not closer with many of the guys on my college team as on my high school team, but this is not the case at first and the transition can be jarring.

Second, at least in my experience, the sports scene in high school is much more omnipresent. In college, while you will have classmates who are fans, and likely many more people will come to your games than did in high school, people will likely not stop you in the halls and congratulate you on last weekend’s game, or wish you luck that week. On many campuses, sports are just one of many interesting things that happen all the time. It is not the social focus of the school the way it was in high school. Now, maybe at Alabama or Michigan the weekend’s football game is much more of a social focus than a normal school, but in that instance the athletes are in many ways segregated from the general population. There just is not the day to day personal interest in your sport that there is in high school.

Third, college ball is likely much more demanding physically, mentally and as a straight time commitment. One thing people often over look is that generally speaking, the talent band in college really narrows. Most college athletes, when they arrive on campus, are used to being better than many of their teammates or competition. That is why they are moving on to the next level. In college, most of the members of your team are going to be rough athletic equivalents. The difference in many cases is how much extra work you are willing to put in to separate yourself to get on the field. The game is much more complex at the next level, the coaching is much more exact, and film study becomes a huge part of the game. So does individual technique work. All of this translates to more time spent on your craft. Of course, the more time you put in, the better you will be, and if you do it right, you will be doing things on the field after a couple years that will make you smile. You will be tested. If you love the game for its own sake, being able to play it at a level you didn’t know existed when you were in high school is really something. Not many can play competitively in college. If you decide to do it, you will understand why.

Fourth, and this may be a bit controversial, but all of the tiger parenting stuff is (finally) gone. “That” Dad, the one who thinks he knows more than the coach and is vocal about it, is gone. There will still likely be complaining about this and that, but it will be at the tailgate before the game or in the stadium, and you won’t have to deal with it. Very rarely is the coach’s kid the quarterback and his best friend’s son the wide receiver. The best guys are going to play in college, with very few exceptions. That can be brutal, but it is also honest. You will learn that what is important is the work and the discipline. The guys you will respect will be the guys who bust their butts whether they are on the field or not. That is a very important lesson.

Best of luck.

Great post, Ohiodad51. I’m forwarding it to my son who will in the next year be making the choice between D1 and D3 swimming.

Great post Ohiodad! My son plays soccer, but your post still rings true in a lot of ways. One positive to add to the whole “is it worth it”…

The camaraderie that is often developed through college sports is really something special. My son plays a fall sport and as a result, has to be at school at least 6 weeks before the fall quarter starts. All of the fall athletes (male and female) are housed in the same dorms (for those living on campus) until a week or so before school starts, when they are able to move into their regularly assigned dorms. When my son arrived on campus as a freshman, he was immediately immersed into this atmosphere of all of these athletes from different sports being thrown together and living together for weeks before the other students arrived. He practiced for hours a day with his teammates, and then spent his “free” time, eating and living with the same teammates and other athletes. By the time school started, he already had a great group of friends who were also going to be juggling sports and academics and with whom he had a special bond. During their season, they spend hours together practicing, playing and traveling and really getting to know each other in a way most students probably never see.

My son chose to live with random, non-team members his freshman year, but ended up next door to 2 of his teammates. All of them really bonded and he has a great mix of friends both athlete and not. His freshman year, his friends included not only other freshmen, but athletes of all ages. He already knew the campus inside and out by the time school started. He has formed great connections, and now that some of his teammates have graduated, it helps to have those connections out in the workplace. He plays at a D2 school that values academics more than sports and doesn’t reward their athletes as much financially, however there have been other perks. As an athlete, he found it was easier to get a job on campus. Employers off-campus also seem more receptive once they learn he is a student-athlete. He gets priority registration every session. He can drop his laundry off and it will be done for him.

As far as negatives, there is nothing that he considers negative. From a parent’s perspective, I will say that he spends more of the year on his sport than I ever expected. While he plays a fall sport, they still train all winter and then participate in a spring league so have regular practices and games all spring. His academic load this spring is killer and he is doing little other than his sport and studying. I wish he had more time to try out other interests and explore new things in college, and to me the fact that he doesn’t is a negative. However, he is perfectly happy with his choices and is loving every minute. For him it is totally worth it.

They used to house us in the freshman dorms during summer camp (right next to the stadium). This was back in the day when summer football two a days were a month long, so we were there for awhile. I still fondly remember a bunch of guys crowding into the basement lounge on the odd night off and inhaling Venari’s pizza and Busch beer while watching Star Trek reruns. Lots of good memories. Sports are more than the games. Always have been.

@KayeLexus, how about a view from a college female athlete, since it appears you are female?

I played D1 in college, and from a female’s perspective, it was completely worth it. Women athletes, who love sport for sports sake, desire to push themselves to the next level, thrive on challenging themselves against other elite athletes, and take pride in making a sacrifice for the benefit of a team, find they have much in common with other women athletes and relate on a deeper level. You may have noticed in high school that the female athletes had no time to spend on pettiness. They were focused and not inclined to idle gossip. You’ll find those women on a college athletic team. I wouldn’t have missed the camaraderie and excitement for anything. But these days you can find the same type of women and have just as much fun on a club team or serious intramural team. One way or another, just keep enjoying your sport!

Soccer is rather easy to keep up with, without playing in college. Some sports are not easy to keep up with if you don’t play in college.

But seriously Barfly - "You may have noticed in high school that the female athletes had no time to spend on pettiness. " Really? Both in my son’s HS and my HS, the girls who played sports were at least as catty as the ones who did not. I think sports, especially at the HS not college level, takes all kinds.

My son will be playing club sports at his college, and now that he was deemed “not a fit for the varsity team” he is adjusting very very well. He really doesn’t know if he wants to commit 40 hours per week to a sport with no flexibility (he has done 20 - 40 hours per week in the past, but mostly on his own schedule), especially with a LD.

Love your post, Ohiodad.

I didn’t play, but roomed with athletes. My observation was that while it took a lot of their time, it gave them an instant family and identity. They did have to be more organized than the rest of us.

One S will play in college. He is also wary of the time commitment, but looking forward to being part of a group, and as Ohiodad mentioned, having a fresh start in the group. Other S doesn’t play and has found a home in intramurals and in participating in road races/triathlons.

^^^“not a fit for the varsity team” can often just mean that the team already had too many players at that position, that the coach had a different (not better) style of play in mind, or that a local player that the coach is more familiar with got the spot. It is often no reflection on the abilities of the player in question. We have seen club teams which include players who are obviously good enough to play on a Varsity team, but have chosen club for whatever reason (less of a committment, chose the school for the academics and is not a “fit” for that particular varsity team, etc.) Club sports offer the opportunity to play at a very high level while having time for other activities in college. The best of both worlds!

As far a time for nastiness, I feel like at least for soccer, kids who played only HS soccer were doing it more for fun and had time to be pretty normal students, whether that included pettiness, kindness, or any other attribute. Since soccer is recruited out of Clubs, those kids were the more serious athletes who really didn’t have time for much else besides school and sports. I’m sure it varies by sport. Of course you will get all kinds of personalities within a sport, but the student-athletes who are successful generally are the ones who learn to contribute positively in ALL ways to their team, not just athletically. My son spends a lot of time with members of the women’s soccer team and sees a cohesiveness similar to what he is experiencing on his team. They are there to be serious athletes and don’t have time for drama.

Plenty of drama on my daughter’s college team, but most of it is off the field, roommate stuff. This would have happened with any roommates - dirty dishes, loud TVs, eating each other’s food, not waiting before going on a food run - but since DD was rooming with teammates, it was amplified. Next year she’s living with other athletes (good for scheduling) but not teammates.

Also drama when one player ‘dogs it’ and makes others redo work outs. Thanks coach.

That is my experience also, @takeitallin.

Yep, @rhandco, really. The serious female athletes in high school (and I mean serious - the ones like the OP who had options to play in college), and college athletes, are busy, and driven, and confident, and I have seen much less drama in that group of women/young ladies. (It may be true also of serious musicians, etc. Perhaps just having a time-consuming passion is what cuts the crap-quotient. But my experience is with athletics)

But my point is just that the OP, an athlete, may truly enjoy playing her sport in college, if not D1, then intramural or at some in-between level, not just for the love of the sport, but for the friendship with similarly minded women.

@KayeLexus, two good reasons to play your sport in college are for the scholarship money and the fun. If scholarships aren’t the issue, then do it for fun, as long as it IS fun. My son just decided against playing his sport in college, and while it was a difficult decision, as soon as he made up his mind, he knew it was the right choice. He is planning to play intramurals and looking forward to playing ALL his favorite intramural sports, instead of just focusing on one sport on the college team.

My son also was a pretty heavily recruited athlete and went on 5 official visits. In the end he decided to not participate in college. He really listened to the college athletes on his visits and decided he wanted to have more time to pursue other things. He was visiting big D1 schools so it would have been an “own you” situation. And in a non rev sports so his scholarship offers were very small. I agree that each person needs to decide on their own. Since my son made the decision he has not looked back.

I competed in college & enjoyed it because it rounds out one’s life. Must be organized w/ regard to schedule of classes like avoid 8 am. Athletics is different now then the past. Coaches are paid to win & build pros, Olympians, & trophy shelves so getting on a team is difficult. It unfortunately is no longer about amateurism. Considerably harder if in field of engineering.

My daughter found a lot of benefits to playing in college. First there is the scholarship money. We consider this her job and she doesn’t have to scoop ice cream or work in the cafeteria or pick up trash in the Union. Second, there is the structure. She had study tables (required) first semester and it really taught her how to organize her time and course requirements. She loved the structure. Third (and this is for the parents) the NCAA has rules about alcohol before practices/games, no drugs, no arrests, etc. I loved it! My daughter is very young (was only 17) and immature, and this gave her an excuse to say “Sorry, can’t go to the party as I have a game on Saturday.” Other benefits? Instant group of friends on move in day, help getting the classes she needs at the times she needs to work with practices (it was a miracle how that spot in the physics labs opened up just when she needed it to), medical treatment, knows her professors because she sometimes needs to miss a class, stays in shape. And she knows all the other athletes, especially the boys!

It’s a lot of work, no doubt about it, but there are a lot of benefits. One teammate is not playing next year. She didn’t think the coach gave her enough playing time. Each player has to make her own decision.