OPINION: Student Athlete Time Management

By Jonas Wilkison

Being a student athlete means giving up most if not all of your time and attention to both your sport and your school work. This article will be a first hand account of how different student athletes manage their time both during school and after practice, as well as the weight of carrying all of their commitments.

For some students, it’s not about going crazy with AP tests, but just being able to enjoy the sports and school. For Eddie Ocampo, this is what he had to say: the way he would manage his time is that, for football, before practice, they always get some time for study hall.

This time is dedicated to homework or studying, and they often split into groups depending on what subject they are doing. For his other sport, wrestling, Eddie says they don’t have the privilege of extra time for study hall, so for Ocampo it’s straight home after practice and straight to work. Luckily though, this doesn’t hurt his sleep too much. He gets to bed around 11PM or 12PM, and then wakes up at around 7:30AM. He also notes that the work when he first started was hard to keep up with because of his lack of a routine. He also notes that the work when he first started was hard to keep up with because of his lack of a routine. Now, he is able to manage both the sport and the school work.

Another example of a student athlete is Valerie Robeson, who is a senior and has a very interesting story. Robeson is a part of the swim team and club swimming. For her classes, she is taking Advanced Placement Geometry, AP Pre Calc (for one semester only), AP Stats (also only for one semester),  AP Literature, AP Macro, and Chinese Honors. And as I found in our discussion, it’s not about how hard the classes are, but how much time they take. Most of her experience revolves around finding the right time to do the right class. She says that she finds some classes quite easy, but still take up a lot of her time. What she recommends is getting any type of planner to be able to write your classes down and the work from them, so you don’t forget about what test is when or when to do this or that homework.