Looking Through the Eyes of Student Athletes

Collegiate athletics play a tremendous role in the average student’s life on campus, whether it be attending wild tailgates at homecoming games or playing recreationally with friends. The general community around the university can have differing perceptions of student athletes. Some people support student athletes and love the entertainment aspect of college athletics, and others think that sports in college are a waste of time, since most student athletes don’t go professional after college (Tucker 2016). For the elite student athletes themselves, college life becomes different and more intense. Student athletes must balance their academics, athletics, and social lives while trying to take care of themselves as well as dealing with pressures placed on them by coaches, teammates, and the university’s community. The participation in college athletics makes for a hectic everyday life and can impact the well-being of student athletes in multiple ways. Some of the student athlete’s areas of well-being that are impacted the most are mental health, physical health, and academic performance. These categories are all interconnected within the lives of student athletes. Like all things, there are both positive and negative impacts on well-being prevalent among student athletes