Sure you learn how to hit a slider, get a mid-range jump shot, and block down field, but there’s countless other things you learn from playing a sport at the college level. There are countless articles out there detailing how you learn teamwork and a variety of other cliché responses. This is not one of those posts.
If you’re in search of tried and true then you’ve stumbled across the wrong article because here are 2 unexpected lessons you learn from playing collegiate sports:
Perseverance
Whether you’ve had to wait patiently for an upper classmen to graduate, overcome an injury or merely get out of a week-long slump chances are you’ve had to persevere.
Many college athletes grow up being the best Little League players, the best high school players; their shelves adorned with trophies, but at some point you realize that life isn’t that easy and it’s not about seeing how many trophies you can accumulate. Rocky said, “It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward,” and that’s what the real world is like. That’s what you can learn playing a college sport.
There will always be setbacks, but it’s how you react to that adversity both on the field and in life that matters.
Time Management
It’s hard for people that have never played a sport to understand, but it’s usually safe to say that college athletes invest more time in their sport than most people working a full-time job. Usually you’re finishing your morning weight room sessions or your first practice about the time most college students are waking up. You might have classes from 8-12, and have time for a quick lunch before you have to be on the field, court, etc. by 1:30. You will practice until 5:30, shower, eat dinner and then start in on homework. This is before traveling, missing classes, and make up work ever begins.
This is also before your social life ever starts, and what fun is college without some semblance of a social life, right? The point is that while the adjustment is hard for many young student athletes, at some point you learn that you have to focus and utilize any windows of down-time to get work done.
I once played with a guy who went out every week night and still made great grades. When I asked him how he accomplished this he explained that when he had 15 minutes here and there or got to class a few minutes early he used that time to do homework instead of check his Facebook status or visit with classmates.
You’ll inevitably find a routine that works for you as well, and when you do you’ll be significantly more polished than your peers when you have to get that important document out in the 15 minutes you have in between that weekly meeting and the importance conference call with potential client X.
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The thing is there are way more than 2 unexpected lessons you can learn from playing collegiate sports (or any sports for that matter), but I just wanted to jump start the conversation. Use the comments section and share with us what lessons you’ve learned from playing sports (aside from teamwork of course, we’ve seen that one enough).
