Student before athlete? Or athlete before student?
Monday, April 29, 2024
When you hear the term “student-athlete”, you most likely do not think about the specifics of the term. To break it down, a student-athlete is a student who is an athlete. Student comes first, then athlete second. Today in college sports, it is very common to see that term get flipped around to where the athlete comes first and the student is second.
Athletics can take up so much of an athlete’s time that they may feel like academics are not nearly as important as their sport. Being a collegiate student-athlete is something that is not for the weak. Between 6 a.m. practices, weight room workouts, getting treatment in the training room, and to having to attend study hall, some may forget that student-athletes also have to be students.
Coaches tell athletes that being a student comes first, and the coaches at Xavier enforce to the students how important having good grades truly is. The student part of being a student-athlete is just as important as the athlete part.
If a student athlete’s grades are not right then they can be ineligible, if they are ineligible then they can not compete, if they can’t compete, then there is a good chance they can get some type of scholarship reduction or cut from the team completely.
“I’ve seen how so many of my teammates think that their only way to college is just by being a good athlete and that’s all. Being good at sports gets you to college but being a student keeps you in college. If you’re not good in the classroom, coaches don’t care about what you do on the field, they will kick you off and find a replacement,” said Chase DeLoach, a sophomore finance major from Atlanta, Georgia.
In reality, everything about being a student-athlete ties together in the end because of the fact if you are not doing the student part, you might not even have the chance to do the athlete part.
At a rigorous school like Xavier, this can definitely cause some issues. Some athletes have to deal with having such crammed schedules during the week that they might be so tired they do not even attend all of their classes. For instance, a student-athlete may have practice at 6 a.m., get out between 7:45- 8:00 a.m., then have weights at 9 a.m., get done with weights 10, and have classes to go to from 12 to 5 p.m. for the rest of the day.
Xavier is known for being a medical school, which means many students are some type of science-based major, and balancing those challenging classes with all of the time that athletics takes up can lead to a major imbalance.
For Kylar Coleman, a freshman public health major from New Orleans, it is difficult to balance dreams of medical school with their track and field achievements.
“Balancing being a public health major with a minor in biology while also being an athlete has not been an easy task for me. At the beginning of the semester, I struggled with managing my time effectively and utilizing the resources available to me. However, as we near finals week, I feel as if I have a firm grasp on what needs to be done on the track and in the classroom,” Coleman said.
“For me, the track has gotten in the way of school in a couple of ways. The track team practices every day and has weights 3x a week. We practice from 6-8 a.m. and some of us have 8 a.m. classes. Also, most of my big assessments have been in the morning, so I have to fully prepare myself the night before without staying up too late because of 6 a.m. practice.”
