What life is like after college athletics
The alarm sounds. Roll out of bed, slippers on, walk to the locker room half asleep. Uniform on, warm-up, lift. Eat peanut butter toast. Train, shower, eat, go to class. Do homework. Eat dinner. Go to bed. Repeat.
Every day student-athletes fall into the same routine. This strict routine develops pristine athletes, creating champion teams that work together like a well-oiled machine. About 200,000 NCAA athletes compete at the Division I level and 2% of these athletes go on to play professionally (NCAA.org). To become a college athlete these students have put in endless hours of rigorous training towards their sports. Many athletes struggle with finding a balance of identity outside of the sport. According to the National Library of Medicine, “athletic identity refers to the degree of strength and exclusivity to which a person identifies with the athlete role or the degree to which one devotes special attention to sport relative to other engagements or activities in life.”
Sports consume and dictate every day of these athletes’ lives. They have to consider their sport when they plan what to eat in a day, how much sleep they will get when to do homework so there’s a balance, but then also manage an outside social life. Participating in college athletics is a demanding lifestyle. Most athletes begin when they are so young that it’s hard to grapple with life without sports.
Alexandra Ruiz, a former DU Gymnast, began participating in gymnastics when she was three years old. “My mom put me in gymnastics just because I was always running around and climbing on my bed and things. She did gymnastics for a little bit when she was young. So she put me in and I just fell in love with it, right then and there. There was some talent there, so I just stuck with it and it’s been 20 years.”
As Cade Austin, former DU men’s soccer player began playing soccer at five years old and joined the youth competitive Broomfield Soccer Club at ten years old. Furthering his career with the Colorado Rapids Youth Club and continuing to DU. As the first walk-on in the history of the DU men’s soccer program, Austin has the experience of navigating college life before joining Division I soccer. The hardships of juggling the academics of majoring in Computer Science with minors in math and leadership as well as the strict soccer training schedule gave Cade an unforgettable college experience.
Both athletes came about their careers at DU in different ways, but both experienced the pressure of the pursuit of excellence. As one of the first walk-ons in history, “I think it was an amazing experience. I wouldn’t change it for the world. But it was also incredibly exhausting and dominated my life. And that’s why I didn’t stay for all three years” says Austin.
After putting years and years into their sports, Ruiz and Austin, like many other college athletes, address the difficulties in separating their identities away from their sports. These sports have paved every aspect of their life since they began pursuing them. Ruiz explains how “This is your love even though you’re done with it, you still love it, but you’re not doing it anymore, and it’s hard to separate yourself from it. You just channeled so much of your life and energy to this one area and now it’s trying to figure out where to put all that or how to compensate for that, it’s really difficult.”
Ruiz decided to utilize her extra year of eligibility from the pandemic and extend her gymnastics career to have a 5th season. Ruiz says how “at the end of the day when I was considering taking the fifth year and not, I was like I love these people so much and this has been such a once in a lifetime opportunity here. It’s been a great experience. And I was like, how can I not take one?” Ruiz had the opportunity to continue her love for gymnastics and delay entering the real world, so she took it.
Austin pursued a different path, leaving his soccer career behind and hanging up his cleats.“For a long time starting in October of 2021, I was going to transfer and I went about that whole process knowing I wanted to leave DU. I thought I wanted to keep playing soccer. It wasn’t until March that I realized that the world is much more open. I don’t need to keep playing soccer and the only reason I wanted to keep playing and the transfer was just ego-based, to show that I could do it”
Both athletes faced the challenges of letting go of the identity of a college athlete. The most recent Gallup studies had shown that “college students who participated in athletics tended to fare better than nonathletes in their academic, personal and professional life during college and after graduation. Former athletes have the “built-in support system” provided throughout a student’s college experience, such as mentorship from peers and coaches and direct access to academic support.”
These athletes are supported throughout their college experience with financial aid advisors, free tutors, designated study hall time, free sports psychologists, nutritionists, a stipend of money per month, free food, special times to register to have the perfect schedule, and student-athletes even get their laundry washed for them. This large support system for athletes proves to be beneficial. However, one negative aspect of this structure for student-athletes is that they are spoon-fed every right move and decision throughout their college career. Having all this support lets a lot of the athletes hit cruise control and let their organizations and schedules make all their choices. This can create an even bigger challenge of identity crisis when leaving the sport. Once these students graduate they have to begin making their own choices, creating their schedules, and finding their identity outside their sport.
Ruiz felt uneasy discussing the future after finishing her fifth-year gymnastics season. However, Ruiz decided that after college she will pursue a regimented life in the medical field.“I graduated with a degree in bio, so I’ve been thinking of medical school. I have been applying to some medical schools over the course of this year. My family’s been involved in the medical, then also just being an athlete and experiencing so many injuries, I want to help other athletes. I think you appreciate and understand the value of the medical field. I think I can find, ways and areas in that field, to find something else that I’m passionate about again, and just devote my time and my energy”
In contrast to Ruiz, Austin decided to blaze a completely different trail for himself. The fear of the unknown loomed over his decision of hanging up the cleats. That same unknown excited Austin and inspired him to start a new chapter. After three years, Austin graduated early, packed up, and backpacked across Europe. “The biggest influence in my decision was reading the book, The Alchemist. The sentiment of that book is that your only two obligations in life is to pursue your personal legend, which is to pursue what you truly care about. Alchemy is the process of melting everything away until only gold remains. So it’s kind of like choosing a less stereotypical path, I was going to just melt away some of the excess stuff I’ve built about who I was as a person, keep learning about the things I truly care about, which is basically people.”
Austin uprooting his life from the strict schedule of athletics to freebird across Europe left him with some existential questions. A change of mindset is needed when ending a sport. Transitioning from the “play, compete, push, repeat” mindset to developing a new mindset that doesn’t require exhausting yourself and endless competitiveness, seems abrupt. One day the whistle blows, and it’s all over.
“Traveling to a completely new country and city pretty often, I’m staying in a room with 10 to 12 strangers who all speak different languages. I have to be completely responsible for telling them who I am as a person. That question comes up and you realize how much you don’t really know. You start to think, what do I tell strangers who have no idea who I am at all? There’s no expectation of what I tell them. Everything is up to me.”
Although Austin may not be training every day, the lessons soccer taught him are carried with him throughout his day-to-day life. The ability to have tenacity, to be brave, and pursue everything with maximum effort. With traveling he was faced with alternative obstacles to tackling players and defending goals.
“I flew into Madrid first, when I first got to my hostel in Madrid I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I knew nobody in the city and it was just like, how am I supposed to go about this? I was super anxious and scared about meeting new people. But after I got in my room, I met this guy who’s from Yemen. He was doing the same thing as me except he was 29 and an architect from Germany. We ended up opening up to each other. Sharing a lot of common interests through soccer and Arabic language as well as our passion for Islam. We ended up being really good friends for the day. Even though it was just a day meeting him, I learned so much about how you can make a true friend in one day.”
Solo backpacking in Europe comes with the double-edged sword of having no obligations, no priorities, and no plans. The greatness of adventure and possibilities are endless, but also the feelings of loneliness can be overwhelming. Traveling to unfamiliar countries and staying with strangers from different cultures forced Austin to define himself outside of his athletic achievements. It posed a question of who he truly was as a person beyond the soccer field. This introspection led him to reevaluate his priorities and shed the excess layers of identity he had built around himself.
“I missed my train to Valencia coming from Madrid, getting caught up playing soccer and when I got to the hostel it was pouring rain and I was just sad and exhausted. I didn’t meet any friends. So I just went about by myself and that was the first time I was truly by myself. It was just very interesting to have that experience of being in a city full of people and feeling very lonely. I think those kinds of lulls are what makes meeting special people that much more important, impactful.”
Stripping away a solidified home and the value of comfort, left plenty of room for the self-discovery Austin sought out. By embracing the uncertainties and shedding the predefined identity associated with his athletic pursuits, Austin sought to uncover the truest version of himself. The solitude and freedom he experienced while backpacking across Europe allowed him to explore his passions, interests, and personal values. It provided him with the opportunity to define his path, unburdened by societal expectations or external validations.
Both Ruiz and Austin faced different paths as they diverged from their sports, but both athletes relate in how their sport has influenced who they are to this day. Leaving the high fives from your teammates, the “good jobs” from your coaches, and the regimented schedule of college athletics behind is daunting, especially after experiencing almost every up and down in college alongside their teammates. Yet college sports taught these athletes the grit, tenacity, and passion necessary in life to take on any obstacle.
The pressure to quickly fill the hole that graduating college creates is unreasonable. 98% of college athletes do not continue to play professionally, but that doesn’t mean they should just jump into a corporate job post-college. Austin explains how even after backpacking Europe he is still on his journey of self-discovery.
“I still don’t know what I want to do. I still don’t know how to maximize my fulfillment of doing a job, but the idea of blindly going into a corporate job because that’s what I was supposed to do is terrifying, and I didn’t feel like it’d be right. I thought this would be a better Buffer period to have the chance of doing what I always wanted to do, a solo excursion. I don’t think I’d ever have that opportunity again. I know jobs always come and I know at one point I will get a job and do all that stuff. But as for now, I need to go and do something different.”
Snapshot of Taylor Wells 