Hey guys, I have dreamed of playing soccer in college. I truly love the sport, but academics come before soccer for me. I am a good player, but I am not great. Therefore, I can compete at the NCAA lower ranked teams in D1, or at D2 and D3 schools. I will be a junior in high school next year so I need to start to get recruited. I make good grades (3.9 UW and 5.52 W GPA) in high school, I take all AP classes, and I am involved in many clubs. I am not 100% sure if I want to continue on with my soccer career in college because I do not want it to interfere with my academic development. I aspire to become an oncologist and I am nervous that I cannot be a college athlete and a thriving student at the same time because being a collegiate athlete will be too time consuming. Don’t get me wrong, soccer is one of my passions, but I want to be successful in my life, and I am worried soccer in college will consume too much of my time. Are there any former/current collegiate athletes or others here that can give me some advice?
My son is a BSE concentrator at Princeton and plays a sport at the D1 level. His school work load is extremely heavy (not unlike a pre-med might be). Being a college athlete is very demanding (particularly in a heavy major) so if you are considering going that route you need to be fully committed to the demands made on your physical and emotional energy. Having said that, it can also be a good break from studying to work at a sport. You learn exceptional time management skills balancing a heavy athletic and academic load and how to be a great team player in the midst of significant stress. Your grades will take a hit at times during competition times but again, this is simply the reality of the student-athlete. Now as a rising senior, my son has improved steadily academically to the point where he is near the top of his class, but it has not come without the requisite ‘blood, sweat and tears’. There have been some rough stretches so you need to be prepared for a marathon, not a sprint. And yet I would say (and I am confident he would too) that he would never have developed as much character and grit without his sport. To me, that counts as being ‘successful in life’ more than anything.
Thank you so much!
As noted, playing college sports isn’t easy but there is evidence that college athletes, at least ones at academically selective schools, tend to do better than others post-college at least in terms of income. William Bowen (ex-president of Princeton) and colleagues have looked at this, although ironically their original purpose was to argue against admissions preferences for athletes.
Another thing to think about is that being a recruited athlete can have a significant impact on admissions, even at academically selective schools like the Ivies . . . not easy at all to meet the recruitment standards academically + athletically, but for those who do it means competing in a smaller pool than most other applicants.
Oh wow I had no idea! Thank you
You might consider D3 as that is the scholar athlete philosophy and they will put academics first.
I agree. I have gotten recruited by some ivies but I really have my mind set on Emory University.
You need to be very motivated and very organized. I think playing a sport kept my daughter’s academics very structured her first year. She had to schedule classes, meals, practices, events and that left only certain times for studying and so that’s when she studied (she had required study tables of 10 hours per week her first semester, so those were scheduled too). She’s studying engineering, so loves schedules and structure.
There are pros and cons. Pros were that she got the schedule she wanted/needed with a little help from her coaches, had friends immediately upon arrival at school, had activities, had an excuse for missing some things she didn’t want to do (sorority meetings, some school social things), got a lot of physical activity to release stress. Cons were that by the end of the season, she was exhausted. Exhausted. No spring break, no spring weekends away, no music fest she wanted to go to, no working during the school year.
Read Malcolm Gauld’s book, “Show Up, Study, and Serve: College Success Guaranteed.” It is a small book that takes about an hour to read. He makes the point in the Serve chapter that students who are involved in more than just academics, whether it is sports, music, a job or volunteer work, tend to do better in college academically. He was a lacross player for Bowdoin College so he has some personal experience. You can play a sport and do well in college academically.
Alright! Thanks
thank you for uojr insight! Twoinanddone
My son plays soccer for a large academically competitive D2. It is is definitely something that requires dedication and passion in order to succeed. He is a rising junior in a pre-med track and after a tiny bit of a rough patch his first year while he learned to juggle academics and sports while living away from home from the first time, he has done very well academically. Like others have said, I think he is more focused as a result of having to budget his time so carefully. It is a year round committment- arriving at school early to train for the season, fall regular season, winter training, and spring tournament season- but he loves every minute of it. One of his friends this year quit after the regular season saying that college soccer is not fun - that it was more like work - so it is definitely not for everyone. For my son though, he loves the camaraderie, the competition, the rigid schedule and everything about it. The cons are that, like twoinanddone pointed out, he is exhausted by the time school is over in June. He still has time for some social activities, although many of them revolve around soccer. He does not have time for a fraternity but that is not something that interests him anyway.
I am not interested in sororities either! Thanks!
My Son runs XC for a lower D1 program - the weekly time commitment is about 25 hours per week. In the Fall his Monday - Friday Schedule will look something like this:
6:30am - Alarm (if you need the trainer the alarm goes off at 6:00am as you have to be there by 6:30am)
7:00am - practice starts
9:00am - practice ends
9:00am - weights (2 or 3 days a week)
9:45am - weights end
Grab breakfast
10:20am - Class
Grab lunch
3:00pm - Classes end
4:00pm - cross train (swim usually)
5:00pm - cross train ends
6:00pm - mandatory study hall (8 hours per week)
grab dinner
9:00pm - study/homework
Saturdays and Sundays are easier as if they do not have a meet they will have a long run off campus,they will meet at 8:00 and be gone till noon usually