Assiduous College Athletes

Not many people know the onus of being a student athlete in college. This burden
set on them has caused the graduation rate of scholarship players to average at
about fifty percent from 1995 to 1998. In order to be eligible to play, the ath
letes must be full-time students , which means taking at least twelve units a se
mester. Because these athletes are taking so many classes, they must make time f
or a considerable amount of studying and homework. Then add up the amount of pra
ctice their sport requires and I doubt they will find a second to rest. Student
athletes are the hardest working students in college.
Most student athletes have a demanding and rigorous schedule. This is pa
rtly because of the required twelve units minimum a semester to qualify as a ful
l-time student. Without the full-time student status, they would be ineligible t
o play sports. That means at least three hours a day
of cour
ses on average. My schedule is similar to this, in that I am taking fourteen un
its this semester. It averages out to about three and a half hours of class a d
ay. Scheduling the class times can also be a burden. It took my friend, Chris
Carter, who plays baseball for Chapman University, two weeks to plan his class s
chedule around his job and his training. An athlete cannot have class on Friday
s because some games occur on Fridays. Therefore, it makes it even harder to p
lan. My physical therapist, Jim Hairston, is a teacher at Chapman University an
d he said that many of his students who play sports have a harder time staying a
wake because of lack of sleep. These could all attribute to the recent fall in
the graduation rate.
Another conundrum student athletes must face is finding time for studyin
g and homework. With classes half the day and training the other half, that lea
ves the night for studying. Most athletes do not get started until about eight
o clock because of late practices.
Mr. Reames, a teacher at Foothill High School, said that we should expect to spe
nd about four hours a night studying , and that does not include homework. Even
if the athlete had only two hours of homework he would not get to bed until two
o clock in the morning. Many students have jobs to support them because they do no
t have full scholarships. Jobs take even more time away from study. Chris Cart
er is juggling baseball, school and a job. He says that he had to cram classes
back to back in order to make time for work before doing homework and studying.
Last April, the NCAA released information from a study completed in 1999, that
stated the average student athlete gets between six and seven hours of sleep a n
ight compared to the recommended nine hours of sleep a night. Those two hours c
ould be the difference between attentively listening and absorbing the material
presented in class or trying to stay awake and absorbing only half the material
presented. Obviously, these time consuming activities take away from needed slee
p and make the student work harder.
The sport probably takes the most time per day out of the three main tim
e consuming activities. For baseball, an athlete must make a year long commitme
nt to train and do whatever it takes to ready yourself for the season. This inc
ludes weight-lifting, which many colleges have early in the morning. Some start
as early as six o clock in the morning. One might say this gets your day started e
arly, but it is only depriving the athletes of more sleep. Vince Brown of the F
oothill Knights baseball program, starts his team weight lifting at six o clock in t
he morning and says he likes to run his program similar to college programs. In
addition to morning weight lifting, there are also afternoon practices that go
from about three or four in the afternoon to six or seven at night.. This makes
for quite a bit of training each day. The June issue of Baseball America state
d that most college baseball programs average about five hours of training a day
. If training hours (5), class hours (3.5) and study hours (6) are added up, tha

t is around fourteen and a half hours of hard work a day, and that does not give
time for eating and travel. Weekends could normally be another option for stud
ents to work, study or do homework, but student athletes have practices or game
s that take up most of the day every weekend. Cal State University of Long Beac
h s baseball program has games or practice games every Saturday and Sunday throughou
t most of the school year. With weekends taken, mornings taken and the afternoo
ns taken, that does not leave much time for anything else.
Monday through Thursday, student athletes have about fourteen and a half
hours of hard work and Friday, Saturday and Sunday they have about twenty one
hours combined. Added together, that is seventy nine hours of intense work a w
eek. That is almost twice the amount of work in a nine to five job. Could you h
andle almost eighty hours of work a week?

Category : Sports
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