Trying to earn an athletic scholarship is both physically and mentally draining for an athlete. Young athletes must learn to mature faster than their peers, as they must learn elevated time management, leadership and communication skills if they want to be recruited. Every day for an athlete is truly a grind.

Imagine how great it would be and feel to play the sport you love, and at a great college that you love, all while earning your degree to do something that you love when it is all over. Personally, I couldn’t imagine anything better.

If a student athlete is smart and has the opportunity to attend a college that is more academically suiting for them than a college that is offering them an athletic scholarship but isn’t as rich in academics, I think the athlete should attend the better academic university.

Sports are not forever. There was life before them and their will be life after them, and I think student athletes lose sight in this when they are chasing their dreams. I am a firm believer that you have to put yourself in the best position to be successful in life, and even though I wish I could play sports forever, I understand that this is impossible.

Though for some athletes this is different. Sports could help an athlete get into a higher academic college that they may not have been able to get in before.

I am a good student and could get into a good university without an athletic scholarship, but because of softball, so many academic opportunities have become available to me that wouldn’t be possible without it. I’m smart, but not Ivy smart. But with softball I am. Although the Ivy League schools do not give away athletic scholarships, they can still get a student athlete through admissions and into the school is they want them to play for them, even if an athlete wouldn’t typically get into the school.

A lot of my friends who are non student athletes and are “smarter” than me believe this is unfair, but personally I do not. I don’t think these peers are that much “smarter” than me. I just think they just have a lot more time to focus on school than a high level athlete like myself does.

Athletes when entering into the recruiting process and trying to earn an athletic scholarship do not sell yourself short, not athletically or academically, you never know what opportunities may become available to you.