Student-Athletes Balancing Life

by Sydney Duckworth

Student-athletes lead a busy life and depending on the person, are more busy than the average high school student. I interviewed a few Student-athletes about their life and how they balance everything from school, social life, work, their health, and, of course, sports. Fifty seven percent of high school students participate in at least one sport, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. The National Institutes of Health said that anxiety and depression have increased among Student-athletes for the past fifteen years. That explains why lots of high school athletes have trouble addressing their mental health struggles.

Levi Lemen, who played on the Varsity Girls Soccer team in the 22-23 school year. He plays goalkeeper and finds it to be very mentally debilitating as he often gets blamed for mistakes regarding goals. “Soccer consumes almost all of my time,” Lemen said, expressing that he feels stressed balancing multiple aspects of his life.

This isn’t just felt by soccer players. A few volleyball players expressed feeling the same way. Paulina Wadill-Sosa recently played for Mauldin's Varsity Girls Volleyball team in the 23-24 school year and voiced her stress during the season and how it consumed her time more than school.

But on the contrary, Ethan Hager who has played on the MHS Varsity Boys Lacrosse teams for the past 22-23 school year and is planning on playing again for the 23-24 year. He felt that he wasn’t very stressed during the season. “I do most homework at school,” he said.

But some student-athletes have a different struggle. While some students might be stressing about balancing academics and their sport, some are worried about their performance in their sport more than academics due to negative comments from their peers. For example, the recent 23-24 MHS Varsity Football season ended with our team going 0-10. This resulted in a decrease in student morale and a lot of students blaming the players for an awful season when at the end of the day they’re just 16-18 year old students that are balancing their life just like everyone else.

So, what’s a solution to fix student-athletes’ stress rates during their playing season? Multiple students thought that schools could make more efforts to help student-athletes balance their life and stress levels better:

“I think emphasizing putting school before sports and emphasizing the importance of other aspects of life and putting less pressure on athletes to be perfect would really help with the stress being a student-athlete includes,” Lemen said.

“Give students extended due dates if they play sports,” Hager said.

Schools need to begin taking into consideration that these are just kids at the end of the day, they should be treated as such, and need accommodations to succeed in high school. A good amount of student-athletes love doing their sport and should not have to worry about getting bad grades and having to quit what they love because of the amount that they need to balance with being a student-athlete.