Being a student athlete is hard. I would know since I do school sports all year round. I participate in cross country in the fall, basketball in the winter, and track in the spring. The breaks between are not long; honestly, they’re kind of nonexistent. This year basketball ended on a Friday and track started the following Monday. It’s exhausting.

Keeping good grades while participating in sports is another story. It involves late nights and quiz retakes for me. I wake up, go to school, go to practice, go home, eat, shower, and do homework. I am in honors classes, which means the homework is harder and takes longer. That being said, teachers expect more from student athletes. When I do bad on a quiz or assignment, it makes me feel so embarrassed. I don’t really want to go back to that class, but I have to. I joke to my friends about getting a bad grade on a quiz and then having to retake it, but it makes me feel dumb. It makes me think about what my grades would look like if I didn’t do sports. I think that the reason I have good grades is mostly because of sports, because I use it as a motivation to get good grades. If I don’t have good grades, I can’t play the sports I love.

On top of that are the athletes that have jobs. I am one of those athletes. Balancing school, work, and sports is stressful. I just started working, so I haven’t even had that many hours and it’s still stressing me out.

Being a student athlete doesn’t give me that much time to do things outside of school. I want to hang out with your friends, but I have practice so I can’t.

Another thing that’s hard about being a student athlete is wanting to please everyone. I want everyone to be proud of my performance both in school and on the field, and that pressure gets to be a lot.

While it’s a lot of stress, though, I think it’s worth it. The feeling of taking first in a track event or winning a basketball game is amazing. It makes me realize that all the hard work is paying off.