The Forgotten Issue For Prospective College Athletes -- The Freshman Year Adjustment

When I coached in college, a lot of college coaches I knew used to say the following about freshmen athletes:"the best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores." That may sound harsh, but there is some truth to the statement. Most athletes when they arrive at college have no idea what it means to be on a college team. They have to adjust to a new environment, a new coaching staff, an academic environment that is unfamiliar (and for many much more rigorous than they are used to) and typically living on their own for the first time. Most freshmen athletes struggle. Many struggle so much that they never show in college the promise that their high school potential indicated. The top recruit on my college team never made it through his freshmen year and despite running a 4:17 mile in high school never ran that fast again.

One of my college teammates sons just finished a spectacular fall season of sports at his college. No he did not win the Heisman Trophy or become an All-American, but given what he went through to get to this point -- becoming a starter on his team and an all-conference performer -- I believe there are a number of lessons that others could learn from his experience about how to be successful in college athletics. He is a DIII athlete, and he was an accomplished high school athlete who was recruited by a number of colleges and had high expectations of continued athletic success in college. So in many ways, he is like a lot of athletes I see leaving North Shore or New Trier or Loyola Academy -- our local schools -- heading off to play collegiately. His accomplishments this year were especially nice because they happened during his senior year in college, and they occurred after seemingly being overlooked by his college team's coaching staff for a number of years.

Here are the details of his college athletic experience.
His freshmen year he gets injured right before the first game. Due to the injury he elects to undergo surgery and forgo the rest of the season. Never plays in a game and has to go through 6 months of rehab before he can play again.
His sophomore year he mostly sits on the bench during games but gets occasional playing time when the game is already won.
His junior year he practices but sits on the bench during games. He gets no playing time. The playing time that he got his sophomore year during clean up time starts going to younger players
His senior year, he gets to play a little in the first game through an unusual turn of events and proceeds to make a game saving play. During the second game of the season, he is not a starter but is put in as a substitute when a player who starts ahead of him goes down due to injury. He demonstrates that he deserves to start from that game forward and leads the league and ties a school record in a particular stat. That earns him an all-conference designation.

As I followed his season this fall, it confirmed to me that the secret to success in college sports is consistency of work, persistence over time and persevering through struggles. As freshmen athletes return to school after break this weekend, this would be my advice.

If you feel you are struggling -- not getting the opportunities you feel you deserve, having trouble adjusting to college work and expectations -- embrace your struggles. Most freshmen athletes struggle so you are not alone. There is a lot of evidence that learning to work through struggles is the secret to success in life. And sadly, there are likely to be far greater struggles in life for you than you are currently facing. So look at these struggles as practice for the future and even if you can't quite embrace them, confront them.

Adjusting to the expectations of new coaches is hard. It is important that you are regularly talking to your coaches -- not emailing and texting. Face to face conversation is the only way to get an understanding of what a coach wants. Coaches are supposed to be great communicators, but many are not. So at times you may need to draw your coach out a bit. Also do not worry about having disagreements. Through disagreements and working through those disagreements eventually understanding comes.

There is a lot of movement in college coaching staff's. It is quite common for you to be recruited by one coach and have another coach to work with when you arrive on campus. Especially in sports where there is a lot of subjective judgements going on, this can be hard. Your role can change on the team as can your ranking within the team. The experience of being on a college team can teach you that life is not always fair.

Being on a college sports team, though, is much more about other things than whether you become a star or meet your performance expectations. The purpose here is that you become the best you that you can become. I look back on my college athletic experience as an extra supplement to my education that most of my classmates did not get. Yes, it was a lot of work. But I felt I got so much more out of my collegiate experience than my classmates did who were not on teams. I had this experience every day with guys who had similar interests that I had. We learned to work hard. We learned to get along. We learned to work as a team.

This morning, I saw this blogpost: A Parenting Perspective That will Change the Face of Youth Sports What I liked about the post was that the writer explained what she felt her children got out of all the hours they spent involved in sports. Much of it for me is also the life long relationships and friendships that are developed from being on teams. Those are priceless.

As I have written before, the question I hear a lot about sports today is, "is all the time really worth it in the end?" Maybe you should be doing something  else with your time if sports are not initially working out the way you expected.  Likely, every situation is some what different. But in general I feel it college sports are worth the time. But hear is what I always ask. "Do you love what you are doing?" If you love the activity, then the time is worth it. There will be plenty of times in life when you will have to spend lots of time doing things you do not love.

I think that was the secret to my college teammates son's season this year. He ultimately succeeded because he loved being an athlete. He did finally get to prove himself on the field. But even if he did not get that chance, he gained so much from being part of college sports that will help him the rest of his life.

Hang in there and keep working hard.