As the fall sport season begins, the hustle of keeping decent grades and maintaining a happy and healthy mindset can be a challenge. While also wanting to dominate in athletics, coaches have their expectations for school work. 

“For tennis, there are only three things that come before it. That is grades, church and family. So those are the things that are required to put first, but anything after that is tennis before everything else.” Kailey Howell, 10, said.

Athletes have learned to adapt to their busy schedules; finding an organized system of keeping track of future events, assignments, and tests can be a way

of anti-stress starter for students. 

“I mostly just use a sticky note, and write it down,” Madison Brown, 10, said. 

Student athletes all have a different way to cope with stress and mental health. Some require more help and resources.

Sports seasons shuffle through quickly, for some multi-sport athletes, academics come first. Throughout the years, some stressors are not just big rivalry games, but daily school work, and other outside extracurricular events. 

“A lot of the time, [athletes] have practices or games that go to the later part of the evening, and sometimes other events that we have. By the time we get home, you already need to be doing homework, and so then it’s super late,” Brown said, “I think it’s helpful to try and get as much done in the school day as you can, and then when you’re at home, prioritize things that need to get done first.”