Athletes need to make a decision at the end of their high school career: continue with their sport or part with it behind when they go to college. The decision to be finished with a sport has been a difficult one that athletes have been faced with when they reach the conclusion of their final year of high school. This choice relies on many factors to consider and is a tough decision to make, but ultimately many do decide that senior year would be their last that they will play their sport. This decision has brought both relief and a sense of lost identity to athletes.
For many, the sheer volume of work required to stay competitive leads to inevitable burnout. The “student-athlete” lifestyle, defined by early morning lifts, late-night study sessions, and physical exhaustion, eventually takes its toll. When the final whistle blows, the primary emotion isn’t always sadness; for some, it is the relief of finally being free from an extreme workload.
Most athletes have played their sport for the majority of their lives, when they finally part ways with their sport, it can trigger a crisis of self. Their lives have been a clockwork of practices and games. When that cycle stops, the sudden void can feel surreal.
Senior Lincoln Oltmanns has played baseball for a large part of his life. When an athlete plays a sport for the majority of their life, it becomes bigger than just a sport. Oltmanns remarked, “It’s just what I do every day. I wake up and think about it and I go to sleep thinking about it, so it’s just a part of my everyday life.” While this level of dedication can be rewarding, it can also consume an athlete’s every waking moment, sometimes at the expense of their mental health.
The day to day routine is tedious and can be difficult, and the transition to college often requires and shift in priorities like for Senior Dallas Barba, who has played volleyball for six years, but he mentioned that in college it would be difficult to focus on both school and his sport, so he decided that this would be his last, ensuring he could focus on his studies. Given the heavy academic workload facing college students, it is a pragmatic and common decision.
Despite this Barba has learned a great deal from the sport, he said, “It just made me realize how team sports, like the mentality of it, and how it really works. It’s kind of changed me, like my personality. I’ve kind of developed mine around the other people around me that I grew up with.” These years taught him teamwork and determination, lessons that remain long after the uniform is turned in.
Sport specific skills may fade, but the character that is built from being a student athlete and a teammate does not. Senior Sean Camping understands this after he played football for seven years. He explained that while he fell out of love with his sport there are things that it has taught him that has changed him, Camping said, “I’d say that it definitely made me more mentally tough going through a lot of that and physically tougher…we’re working out all the time.”
The hard work, late nights, and missed social events have come to an end for these athletes from the senior class. They leave in May with many lessons, memories, and a fresh start in a new atmosphere. While senior athletes have made the decision to be done with their sport it comes with a bittersweet ending.
