This One’s on Collegiate Athlete Retirement

I don’t have my certification in collegiate athlete retirement, but I have been through it (twice) and I feel like that qualifies me to share my thoughts and offer up some advice. As another school year and many sports seasons come to a end, I have a lot of younger friends who are just finishing up their careers. I have tried to ask all of them one simple question: “how are you doing?” because I know that when I was at that point, I was in fact not doing okay, and didn’t know what to do with any of my emotions. If you weren’t an athlete it can be hard to understand how difficult this truly is and the significance behind it. And if you are currently an athlete, I believe that you really don’t understand the extent of your career ending until after it has already happened.

It goes something like this: you play your last game, you come up short and when the game is over you (might) immediately cry because you know your sad, you know that’s what you should be doing, but you don’t really understand yet. You spend the rest of that night hugging your teammates, coaches, and maybe family, just trying to soak it all in. You take your jersey off one final time, and (maybe) cry yourself to sleep. The next morning you wake up and it starts to hit you, it’s really over. As much as your younger teammates and coaches love and care about you, it’s not over for them, and they have another season coming up to look forward to. The only people who can really empathize with you are your fellow seniors. Even then it’s hard to communicate what you’re actually feeling because it’s unfamiliar for all of you.

You might begin to experience feelings of emptiness, loneliness, and just purely feel lost. These feelings are real and they’re valid, and they can last a lot longer than you ever expected. I understand that everyone’s situation is different, especially this past year with Covid-19. Not everyone’s season or career ends the way they were hoping for (considering we can’t all end as national champions), but some are coming off tougher years and they aren’t as upset to be done. Some athletes are ready long before their season ends, so it might not be as tough of an adjustment as it is for others. But I believe that it still hurts to an extent. If you weren’t lucky enough to have an overall good collegiate experience, my heart goes out to you for that, and if you were-my heart also goes out to you because I know exactly what you’re dealing with.

I wouldn’t say my retirement was flawless, considering I deeply struggled with it for about a year as I have mentioned in the past. I also ended up playing another sport the following year so I didn’t really ace the whole collegiate retirement thing the first time. Take my advice with a grain of salt truly.

The main thing most of my friends/former teammates have said when I ask how they’re doing is “I don’t know what to do now.” Of course they’re sad about everything, but when reality sets in a couple days after the final buzzer, you realize that you don’t know what to do with yourself or your time now. This is totally normal. For the majority of your life, as an athlete you’ve had your entire day lined up for you from sunrise to sunset, and found time for yourself in your spare time (if you had any). But now, all of a sudden you have ALL of the spare time. It’s honestly very overwhelming and hard to figure out how to structure a day without practice, weights, study hall, meetings etc. For the longest time, all of this came first and you plugged the rest of your life in around it, but now maybe for the first time, you are your priority. This is uncharted territory for most, and it’s pretty intimidating.

Most will graduate not long after the ending of their career, which makes it easier to move on. Some will still have time left at their school afterward, whether it be a semester or longer. Like I said, everyone’s situation is unique and can’t all be treated the same. I don’t have all of the answers for how to perfect retirement, but I have a few bits of advice that might help…

  1. On working out - keep doing it if you want to and it’s something you truly enjoy. If not, stop. Simply take a break for a while and allow your body to actually rest for once until you’re ready to go again.

  2. Find a type of exercise that you ENJOY. You do not have to do the same workouts you have always done, and you have all of the freedom to try a new group class, start running more, or idk become a professional rower.

    Also just a side note: it doesn’t matter how high you can jump, how fast you are, or literally anything else. That may be freeing for you to try new workouts, or it might scare you!! Not sure, just something to think about.

  3. Make a list of the things you’ve always wanted to do, but have never done them because of your sport. Big or small things, start doing them.

  4. Find something you enjoy doing and a newfound passion of yours that you might not have had the time to discover beforehand. Do a lot of that.

  5. Spend more time with people. Focus on your family and friends, and try to fill your spare time with others to help fill the void. (If you’re an introvert, maybe try the opposite).

  6. If you’re like me and the ending of your career was too abrupt and you weren’t ready to let go, try to stay around the sport for a while longer. Find a way to be involved and still play when you have the desire to.

    For example, get your fellow seniors to play intramurals in your sport and just beat up on everyone else for the sake of your pride and to feed your competitiveness.

  7. Sleep in for once.

  8. Go easy on yourself. No one is expecting you to be okay and just move on right after it ends. Have some grace as you enter this new phase of life and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for how you cope.

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