Possible to balance Industrial design and athletics?

Hello there!

My daughter is very interested in the Industrial Design program at University of Cincinnati (strong math/science skills and artistic skills) for next year (currently a junior). It is one of the top-rated ID programs and challenging. She is also interested in pursuing her sport at the college level…and U of C would be a good fit…

My question is - is it possible to juggle a design major (lots of studio assignments and coop every year) with the travel schedule of college athletics? Are teachers/ coaches accommodating? Or is it like High school where the kids are caught between the demands of their team and teachers?

Thanks so much for any help!

Depends on the sport. If it is a spring sport or a fall sport, she could do co-ops in the other semester (if coach will allow it because most sports do have practice in the off season) but if it is a sport that straddles the semesters (like basketball), it would be very difficult. My daughter’s school offers co-ops, but she’s chosen not to do them. She could, and I think her coach would allow it in the fall, but it would be difficult to arrange the scholarship for the 5th year if her athletic eligibility was used up. The co-op program at her school has one spring-summer combo, and one summer-fall combo. The school would allow her to do two fall combos because she plays a spring sport, but she just hasn’t been interested. Unlike Cincinnati, the co-ops are not required.

Relative to HS sports and teacher expectations, d1 athletics is much more demanding. Never in a million years, would have considered HS being “caught between the demands of their team and teachers.” I’d suggest if that is how you characterized HS, d1 athletics is probably not a good fit - certainly not for a demanding major.

Expect to spend ~20 hours per week + travel in season on training, games and meetings. Out of season, demands on your time are less, but you will likely still be spending 10+ hours per week training. Took a quick glance at some of the teams, and travel is extensive. Women’s soccer, for example, played in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Texas (2 trips) and Virginia. For some of these games, you’d expect to leave campus on Wed night and return Sunday!

Good idea to look at the current roster and see if any player is in a co-op program. For my daughter, there are only 3-4 teammates who are in engineering at a school where 55% are in engineering. The structure of NCAA athletics has been great for her, but some kids do find the workload to be too heavy.

I’d say the time commitment is MUCH more that 20 hours in season. 20 hours is the ‘official’ time, but doesn’t include weight training, captain’s practices, travel, some meetings. My daughter only has one out of state trip this year, when they’ll leave late on Thurs and return late on Monday, missing Friday and Monday but it is Easter weekend so some classes might be cancelled anyway. They have 3 trips to other schools in the state, some only 1 hour away. It’s really important to know how much traveling the team does. I’d say 20 hours per week is about average in the off season. About 9 of that is with coaches, the rest captain’s practice, lifting, running, and all the social crap they are require to do - car washes, volunteering, ‘team building’ like swimming and paddleboarding or going to the beach, photo sessions, reviewing rules and NCAA policies. For freshman year, my daughter also had 10 hours of study time she had to log in at the library (she loved it, others hate it), but that is removed once they make a certain gpa.

It is a lot of time, and if you don’t like what you are doing, it’s going to get old really fast. My daughter’s team lost 5 players from last year who just didn’t want to play anymore.

Apologies in advance for the long response, but this question hits home for me….

It really does depend on the school, the sport, and what flexibility the school will allow in the curriculum she is interested in. My suggestion is to go with her, meet with a dean of the school and explain what she wants to do and see if they can make it work, before applying or enrolling. Finding the right balance between academics and athletics is something you are going to need to figure out for yourselves.

My son needed to work with the Dean of the Engineering school to get permission to vary from the universities’ prescribed course map (i.e. what class is taken what year/what semester). His current school (he transferred) is very accommodating and let him change the order of some of his classes so that he has a lighter course load and only one lab class during his competition semester. They also let him substitute two electives for other courses that were offered in summer school. He will take 8 credits each summer in order to stay on track for graduation in 5 years for what is typically a very rigorous 4 year major. You will need to have someone in authority on the academic side sit with you both and map out what is feasible for an ID major, when to take what class, when to fit in a coop, etc. I call out “someone in authority”, because you will want all this in writing! Prior to transferring my son spoke to another school where academic policies where very different and inflexible, and had he gone there he would not have been able to keep the major he wanted and still be on the team.

As others have said, my son’s D1 team travels almost every weekend. This semester he will be off campus for 7 consecutive Fridays, leaving either Thursday night or Friday early am, and if he had a required lab class that met on that day, or in your daughters case, a studio class, there is simply no way to make that up.

The athletes at most schools get early registration so it is a little easier to get a schedule that accommodates practices, but once you get into upper level specialty classes, which may only be offered once a year or have only one section per semester, your options are limited. It also helps that my son is a track athlete, which does not require him to practice with the rest of the team every day, but if your daughter is on a team sport (soccer, softball, etc.) she will need to talk to the coach and see how rigid the practice schedule is and what his/her policies are.

Granted every school is different, (and I have no experience with U of C), but the responsibility for finding the right balance will fall on you and your daughter. In my family’s experience the balance is more difficult than HS, both the academics and athletics are more demanding. In our case, both are contributing to the tuition bill and there is more at stake.

Thank you everyone for your very helpful replies!! I appreciate you sharing your own experiences with me…

@twoinanddone - thanks for suggestions on managing a coop requirement…Unfortuately, my Ds sport is part of the NCAA Winter season (straddles the Fall and Spring semesters at school)…Just can’t see how that would be feasible…and it looks like they are required to take 5 coop semesters before they graduate…

Thanks also for the realistic assessment of the time commitment…I was going purely off the NCAA site that says 20 hours max in season, and 10 (?) out of season… Ha! ha!! Didn’t think of meetings/conditioning and training/social stuff etc…and had never even heard of ‘Captain’s Practices…!!!’ Thanks! Tried looking at the roster to figure out if anyone else has coops, but many of the students don’t list their majors…That will definitely go on my list of questions for Coaches…

@Dreadpirit, thanks for the suggestion re. checking into travel schedules…That is another question that I will be asking coaches…Looks like U of C is all over the country…for some reason I assumed it was more regional travel until post-season championships…

As for my comment re. the students being caught between HS team and teachers, maybe it differs from HS to HS? At our school, her coach sets his rules/schedule, but doesn’t really pay attention to clashes with the academic schedule and tells the athletes they need to deal with their own teachers…the teachers do not respect the student-athletes at all, and seem to have no understanding how hard they work…The Honors/AP teachers openly say that extra-curriculars, particularly sports,are a waste of time … When my D told her Chem teacher she had qualified for States at the end of the week, he responded with the comment “Seriously, you’re missing class again?!” He then talked to the entire class about how you can’t be a good student if you are “distracted” with other commitments…! (And she has made consistent A’s in his class!) Another teacher refused to let her leave class early for a meet - so she missed the bus and her coach was mad -and I had to pick her up and drive her to the meet… D is not allowed to make up a test when she returns from a meet, but has to do it earlier, or else it changes from multiple choice to essay! Essentially, I didn’t really mean the work-load of school/athletics was hard, but rather that my D gets caught between teachers and coaches, and put in the stressful position of keeping them all happy…

@OnTrack2013 - Many thanks for sharing your son’s experiences…I am glad he was able to transfer and can now enjoy both Engineering and track… I will definitely be following your advice to sit down with a Dean/University official to figure out if ID and sports are feasible before we apply to schools…and then to get it all in writing! Sounds like schools vary in how flexible and accommodating they are to athletes…sounds like D maybe able to get the major and sport she wants, just not at the school she wants (or vice versa!). Thanks for your help!

@FLMom2Four - wow - I’ve never heard of a HS with that response.

DD had her AP Chem teacher as her soccer coach - so they both left early on game days. Everyone on her travel team would routinely miss 2-3 days for Friday-Monday tournaments 3+ times per year, never heard anyone having any real trouble - one of her teammates was in South America for 3 week for National Team duty.

UC belongs to the American Athletic conference, teams include: U of Central Florida, U Connecticut, East Carolina, Houston, Memphis, Navy, U South Florida, Southern Methodist (Dallas), Temple (Pennsylvania), Tulane (Louisiana) and Tulsa. I’d expect visits to those schools at least every other year, depending on the sport - so lots of travel!