College Athlete Stress

Words: 1293
Pages: 6

Sports are always a big thing in college. Whether your school revolves around Friday night football games or you do not even have a football team, school spirit brings together a campus. Everyone always praises college athletes; they are looked up to for bringing home trophies, but no one really thinks about how hard it is to balance school work and athletics. Stress in college is inevitable, but athletes have a tighter packed schedule which increases their number of stressors. A person's mental, emotional, physical, and social health are all intertwined, which is why there is more than the obvious physical strains on the body.
The time commitment of an athlete is overwhelming; from the early practices, to the away games, to the extra gym
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But when training overwhelmed an athlete and the amount of time crossed into other parts of their lives, like sleeping, more harm to the body is done. Sleep is crucial to keep the body healthy, so when you are consistently physically drained and stressed you do not get enough sleep. Robbins, Madrigal, and Stanley (Davenne, 2009) provide research from the Journal of Sport Behavior that has shown, athletes require more hours of sleep than the average adult; however, a majority fall below the average (n.p.). The everyday wear and tear on their body drains them of their energy. More sleep, allows extra time for maintaining homeostasis in the body. It is highly …show more content…
With all the time dedicated to the team, athletes have very limited time to focus on school. Schoolwork often gets pushed off, for a few hours to the weekend, to the end of the semester, and their grades suffer. More importantly, if an athlete is on scholarship it can either motivate them to work harder or add another layer of stress because they have to keep a higher minimum GPA. Wolverton (2005) states, “a growing number of institutions are petitioning the NCAA to allow freshman athletes with low grades and poor standardized-test scores to play college sports” (n.p.). Schools tend to overlook grades because they want to keep their players, but this only hurts the athlete. Lately, a higher percentage of athletes have been falling below the GPA marker. In efforts to increase academic performance, some universities have now started making study hours mandatory and offering free tutoring; the goal it to see performance rise, and if it does the institution receives financial compensation (Wolverton, 2005, n.p.). The NCAA did a survey of DI and DII athletes in multiple different sports, to see what they regretted most during the past season. A few of the categories included sleeping habits, eating habits, work ethic, and confidence levels. It was found that 48% of the participants regretted their work ethic (Robbins, Madrigal, & Stanley, 2015, p.