Similar to many activities, staying focused for a big game can make or break an athlete’s performance. There are many distractions that can affect an athlete’s performance when it comes to game time, especially that of a student athlete. Being a college baseball player myself I have experienced plenty of distractions. These distractions have ranged anywhere from a fight with a girlfriend, to a final exam in which I needed to ace in order to maintain the appropriate GPA.
I often found myself stressing out about anything thing and everything my first year of college. I had just moved from a small town in Florida to one of the biggest cities in the world, New York. I found myself overwhelmed at first, but knew what I was there to do, which become a student athlete.
It wasn’t until the spring semester (baseball season), until I began to feel the pressure of juggling all these activities at once. I had one semester of college behind me and had an idea of the curriculum, but had no idea how stressful playing 50+ games, traveling, keeping a social life, maintaining a long distance relationship and keeping up with school, was really going to be.
As you can imagine it was hard for me to focus with all of this going on. So I sat down with my coach and brought this to his attention. I learned to manage my time wisely and if needed, coach allowed me to miss a day of practice to meet with a Tudor. Once I really began to get my priorities in line and focus on the baseball field I felt that I performed at an elite level. I ended up starting centerfield my freshmen year and ended the year leading the team in homeruns as a freshmen.
Once I became focused I was able to compete to the best of my ability and play against some of the best college athletes in the country. This is an experience that many student athletes come in contact with and was a great lesson on time management and the ability to focus on and off the field.
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I totally understand what you went through. In high school I had many of the same problems as you did. I played from my high school tennis team. It was very competitive but took a lot of time out of my life. I needed to practice as much as I could but still keep up with my school work and keep my GPA high. I too often found myself stressing out about anything thing and everything. When there was a match the day before a huge test, there were no excuses to skip the match just to study for the test. I had to schedule my life around tennis so that I can do everything well. Focusing on tennis was hard enough. Any distractions would have thrown my game off. This was a good lesson in my life. I learned how to manage my time and still accomplish everything I wanted. I am able to focus on and off the court. Overall, I totally understand how you feel. Playing a sport and running everything else is life is hard to do.
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