The Reality of a Student Athlete
Kaeden Johnson is a football player for Lutcher High School; he plays wide receiver for the Lutcher Bulldogs. At the same time, he is an honors student for the school, taking 5 classes. The classes include: calculus, English IV, chemistry, world history and JROTC.
Johnson said it is extremely difficult trying to balance all of this workload, especially since he’s only in high school. This is something he’s been doing since he was a freshman. Johnson is currently a senior.
He said, “It’s really hard to keep up with everything. I wake up at like 5:30 in the morning, Monday through Thursday and I don’t come home until 5:30 in the evening because of football practice.”
This type of schedule for someone in high school can be mentally draining. Johnson said, “I’m always coming home tired as well. Then I have to do all of my homework, study, and then study the plays. Making sure I’m preparing myself for our games on Friday.”
Even whenever the weekend hits, high school football players still find themselves to be extremely busy. They have to wake up early in the morning for film sessions on Saturday. “Those film sessions are extremely long because the coach wants to break down everything we did, right or wrong. If we won a game, film sessions can be up to an hour but, if we lost, the film sessions were up to two hours long,” Johnson said.
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Former high school student, now college student at River Parish Community College, Jonathan Christy shared his experience being a student athlete in high school. Jonathan was a soccer player for St. Charles Catholic High School. Much like Kaeden, Jonathan also recalls having long school days and only really having one free day.
“I remember having long days during the week and weekend. The travel for every soccer game was insane. And then you put that on top of my schoolwork? It was crazy. But I feel like what really helped me was that I had good parents and a good support system. If you don’t establish that then you can really mess up your education,” said Christy.
“My mom and dad helped me plan out everything. I would do an hour of work, then two hours of rest during the week. My mom especially helped me plan out what subjects to work on during every hour. This way, I had all of my homework and studying completed by the end of the week,” he added.
Charles Baptise graduated college from Northwestern State University with a 3.5 GPA while being a part of their football program. Baptise said, “I come from a Christian family, so praying to God played a huge role in how I was able to balance school life and being a football player.”
Having friends and creating study groups helped out Baptise during his college career. By creating these study groups, it helped him in his classes and make good grades at a high level.
“I know plenty of kids who fall into a depression during college, and even during high school because they’re playing a sport. It’s really sad, too, because for our entire lives we were told those were supposed to be our best years of life and to them, it’s not,” said Baptiste.
It is important to know that the battles student athletes do go through. It is extremely difficult to balance so much all at once; your studies, your sport and trying to maintain some sort of social life as well.
