It’s so mundane to hear if you want to play your sport at the next level your grades must be good, you must have a good attitude, and you must have a good work ethic, especially for college athletes. It seems like that is all they hear, or is it that maybe they don’t hear it enough? Let’s walk through it.
Work Ethic
Playing in college takes a different level of work ethic and commitment. I mean you find out very quickly how much you love your sport because the schedule is very rigorous. It’s early morning workouts, then class, lifting, then training again, and study hall. Sometimes your day starts at 5am, and it won’t end until 11pm and later than that if there is extra studying involved. By this point, you are probably wondering when do I get a break?
A lot of times in high school you are not prepared for this type of lifestyle. If you aren’t, you will get blindsided once you start your college routine. You may think that you don’t have to study or train as hard because of how easy high school was. College coaches and professors don’t care what your excuses are or if you leave. You will always have someone who is out working you if you don’t step up your game.
Attitude
This plays a huge role not only in sports but in life. If you have a bad attitude, people don’t want to be around you and colleges won’t recruit you. Or, on the off chance you do get recruited, you won’t last. Attitude is everything in being successful.
How do you gain the right attitude if you’re not feeling it?! One thing that always works for me is telling myself everything I am being grateful for that I currently have in my life and repeat it in my head or out loud until my attitude changes into positivity. Go volunteer in an area that you love. If you like basketball go to the YMCA and be a coach or train someone to become better. Teach them what you know. When you impact other people’s lives for the better, your life becomes less about you and more about what you can give to others. This surprisingly makes you feel good and helps in the long run to change your attitude.
Grades
No one takes this into consideration, right? Yeah right!!! I’ve seen kids get offered in their junior year just to get the offer pulled right back because they have a terrible senior year. Not taking school work seriously can really damage your future in athletics and with scholarships.
Now, while you cannot change the past, you can do a few things to help the mistakes that were made in the past. You can go and take other classes online or over the summer to replace or average the lousy grade to a better one to help improve your GPA. There are always ways to help correct past mistakes but stay ahead of the curve and keep your A’s and B’s (mostly A’s) on point and get and keep the GPA as high as you can.
Your future will look very bright if you follow these three things and keep them in check in high school. This will help the future you crush the levels ahead of you!
Disclaimer: This blog post contains clickable links that that you can make purchases through. We may receive a commission on at no extra cost to you when you purchase, this allows us to continue to build our blog and bring new, fresh content to our readers.