How Students Balance Sports, Academics, and the Rest of Life

Written By: Syd Zopff

01/2/24

Life is a balancing act. Maturing is figuring out how to balance your personal and professional lives. Students have to balance their personal, academic, athletic, and professional lives. This struggle is one of the most relatable issues for students.

Scholarship Athlete is a term used to describe student athletes who excel in both their academics and sports. Often, these students pursue their chosen sport into college, continuing their split schedule. Even if they don’t pursue college, the lessons learned from having so much to juggle are priceless.

Lauren Gallagher, a rower for the Liverpool crew team and Syracuse Chargers club team believes that it is worth being a Scholarship Athlete. “It’s rewarding because I'm making money and getting good grades,” Gallagher said. “It's also very tiring and you have to make a lot of sacrifices in your social life.”

Managing all of life’s different activities means that you’ll have to make sacrifices on some fronts. “You have to make decisions like if you are going to study for a test or go to practice, and it affects how your peers and coaches see you,” Gallagher said. “It's worth it though, I wouldn’t want to stop rowing, working, or school.”

Although Gallagher admits that there are some challenges, she says that it is very rewarding to be able to do so much. She wouldn’t stop doing one for more of the other. Being an athlete on top of everything else a student usually deals with forces Scholarship Athletes to learn how to make hard decisions and balance time.

Lauren Ragonese, Liverpool Volleyball player and 2022 Section III Softball champion, believes that time management is important to success. Ragonese says that designating time for each of her activities is crucial to her being able to participate in them. “I think because I've done it for so long I've learned how to find free time for myself and friends,” Ragoneese said. “To manage the time that you have so when you're at practice, you practice and if you're at home, you're studying.”

Ragonese also works, which adds another layer of challenge to her scheduling. “It was kind of hard because I didn't have a lot of open hours to work,” Ragonese said. “Once my season ended I could work more and it became less stressful.”

Such a full schedule is impossible to not be stress inducing. Ragonese is the textbook example of a scholarship athlete. Not only is she well-involved with sports around the year and is enrolled in difficult classes, but she goes above and beyond by working. Another defining characteristic of scholarship athletes is pushing beyond what is expected of them.

Gracie Giamartino, a coxswain on the Liverpool Crew team and active member in all things Fine Arts, thinks it takes sacrifice to be a scholarship athlete. Giamartino opens by saying that being active in so many different activities is difficult. “It's definitely a challenge, and to go off that, each year comes with new challenges, such as last year when I was in Fame and Casting Hall at the same time and would have to miss one of them to go to the other one for a week,” said Giamartino.

Giamartino explains that knowing your priorities is a huge part of scheduling your time. “It's a lot of knowing what to prioritize and when, especially since I was and am in a lot of hard classes,” Giamartino said. “This year, since I’ve been working at Starbucks and because I’m applying to college, I actually had to choose to not participate in Casting Hall, which was definitely a difficult decision as I’ve done it for the past few years.”

Having to find the balance between so many things can be difficult for anyone, but the common thread across all of the Scholarship Athletes is they wouldn’t have it any other way. “Overall it’s rewarding to be so busy and to feel like I’m pushing myself to be my best, but it can also be stressful and tiring at times,” Giamartino cements.

Sacrifice is a key-word when discussing scholarship athletes. It’s impossible to perfectly balance everything that needs to be done in a single day, week, or month. Giamartino mentions prioritization which is the defining factor that makes this type of student athlete stand out from the rest. It takes a great deal of maturity to be able to first know what you need to spend more time on, and then actually plan around that accordingly.

Taylor McCoy is busy year round with track, soccer, and rowing, which she balances on top of a job and impeccable grades. She also juggles her involvement with fine arts, playing clarinet, and being in Tri-M. McCoy is very honest when it comes to whether she thinks participating in all of her activities is a challenge or not. “Of course, are we kidding! It's gotten easier over the years, I was stressed out as an underclassman but it’s easier now,” said McCoy.

“It’s definitely overwhelming from an outside perspective but I’ve always been pretty good at time management which is why I can do all this,” McCoy said. “I have a calendar which allows me to know what I'm going to be doing today and during the week and what days I have open.”

When asked if she felt she had to make sacrifices in order to keep up with everything, McCoy was adamant in her answer. “For sure, especially when I was younger and had to travel a lot.”

Christy Bui, a tennis-doubles pro and leader of many school activities, such as National Honor Society, was eager to say what she thought it took to be a scholarship athlete. “I think it takes talent to balance so much, especially in senior year. It takes strength and discipline to balance everything.” Tennis is a Fall sport; so, keeping on track with school as it starts up and a sport is a lot.“I had to sacrifice school activities for work. School activities are something extra to do on top of my main priorities like work and school.”

Bui also believes that knowing what to sacrifice and prioritize is an integral part to being a scholarship athlete. “I had to put aside studying to go to practice because I didn't want to be the one to drag the team down.”

Even though it is rewarding to be able to do so much, it’s important to keep yourself as a priority. As in Giamartino’s case, she left Casting Hall because it was best for her. For Bui, she didn’t want to be a burden to her teammates and cut her hours at work for more time to practice tennis. Understanding yourself and what you are able to do and manage is where the maturity part of being a scholarship athlete comes in.

Sacrifice, time management, and prioritization are the main three things that connect scholarship athletes. Along with, of course, stress. Mental health has become an ever increasingly common issue for everybody. Students, with the stresses that school can bring, are often faced with mental health challenges. Scholarship athletes are no different. It’s important to stay up to date with all of your activities, but staying up to date with yourself and your mental health is most important.

With the stories from local athletes, and the context of what it takes to be a true scholarship athlete, it is nothing but commendable to be identified as one.

A special thanks to Lauren Gallagher, Lauren Ragonese, Gracie Giamartino, Taylor McCoy and Christy Bui for making time in their busy schedules to be interviewed.