By Julie McBride
Julie McBride is Director of Life Skills in the University of Missouri Athletic Department and a former gymnast for the Tigers. She can be reached at: mcbrideju@missouri.edu.
Athletic Management, 18.3, April/May 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1803/cheeringstops.htm
When University of Missouri student-athletes talk about their plans
after college, I like to bring up the story of a pretty good football
player who’s an alumnus. After college, he signed with the Cleveland
Browns. He did okay, earning a living and getting a taste of the big
time. Then he was cut. He signed with the then-St. Louis Cardinals,
played for one year, and was cut again.
While at Missouri, he
had thought only of football and left well short of a degree and
without any practical career experience. After the NFL, he was in and
out of jobs, which included the night shift at UPS and cleaning up at a
meatpacking plant. He worked as a hotel bellhop and realized that in
just six months he’d gone from being a guest to carrying other people’s
bags. It was honorable work, but not what he’d imagined. He was
directionless, broke, and despondent over the realization he’d wasted a
golden opportunity to prepare himself for the world after sports. I
know him well. He’s my husband.
Adrian McBride’s story is not
unusual. Within five years of their last game, more than three-quarters
of former NFL players are bankrupt, divorced, or both. And those are
only the ones who make the pros. As a college gymnast, I knew there was
no pro circuit in which to make a living, but that didn’t stop me from
putting all my energies into the sport I loved. I was as unprepared for
life in the real world as any NFL-dreaming running back.
That’s
why at Missouri, our life skills staff has begun placing a special
emphasis on helping student-athletes make the transition to their
post-competition lives. Through Life After Sports, the not-for-profit
organization Adrian and I founded, we help student-athletes with career
coaching, the psychological issues of post-sports transition, and job
placement.
We recognize the special circumstances in which
today’s NCAA Division I athletes live. Whereas many non-athlete
students can afford to change their minds—a frequently quoted statistic
says the average American undergraduate switches majors three times
before earning a bachelor’s degree—that’s not a luxury afforded
athletes. The NCAA’s academic progression requirements force them to
pick a major and stick with it.
In addition, an athlete’s full
schedule of classes, labs, study table, practice, film, and strength
and conditioning workouts leaves little extra time to gain meaningful
on-the-job experience. Even the classic summer internship is
unrealistic for many student-athletes, who have off-season workout
plans to follow and classes to take in order to keep up with
eligibility demands.
We believe we’ve developed a structure to
help student-athletes make the transition. Through close monitoring,
long-range planning, and classes in career skills, we help
student-athletes get ready for the truly big game: life after
sports.
PROMOTING PARTICIPATION
Although we can help a
last-semester senior and even an athlete who has left the university,
the ideal time to start preparing for the after-sports transition is
freshman year, when possibilities are endless. When we can, we
introduce ourselves and our activities to student-athletes during
recruiting visits. We also visit with each team in preseason practice
to give a three-minute snapshot of the workshops, mini-courses, and
one-on-one counseling we offer.
Participation in the Life After
Sports program is voluntary, so getting student-athletes to take part
is a major hurdle. The issues run the gamut. The dream of playing
professionally becomes an assumption among some athletes. More common
is the problem that to a 17- or 18-year-old freshman, four or five
years down the road might as well be a million years away. Most
student-athletes at this level were stars in their hometowns and high
schools, with someone always there to escort them to the next stage.
They don’t realize that no one is going to step in and help them beat
the system when their playing days end. We constantly drive home the
message that they will be responsible for their life after sports and
need to start preparing now.
We also stress that we don’t want
to crush anyone’s professional-sports dreams. Instead, we want the
transition to be a rewarding time of self-discovery and
opportunity—like college itself. Even if it’s viewed as a back-up for
when a pro career is over, a plan can help athletes relax, concentrate
on their sport, and perform better.
We enlist others to
reinforce this message. We keep coaches updated on our activities so
that they can promote our events and talk about career planning.
Coaches are generally amenable, we’ve found, and are happy to have
outside help in this regard. They also see this extra attention to
student-athletes’ lives as an added recruiting edge, even if only with
parents.
While getting coaches on board is key, we promote the
program to everyone in the athletic department. The more coaches,
administrators, athletic trainers, strength and conditioning staff
members, and academic coordinators who buy into the Life After Sports
program, the more the student-athletes will hear about it. We inform
the staff through one-on-one meetings, copies of e-mails sent to
student-athletes announcing workshops and other activities, and an
e-newsletter we’re developing with the help of student-athletes in
Missouri’s journalism school. Our goal is to ensure that
student-athletes will hear about planning their after-sports life from
all angles, not just from Adrian and me.
We correspond with
parents so that they’re kept informed and can add their own messages of
encouragement. As soon as Adrian meets with student-athletes, he sends
their parents a letter along with a Life After Sports brochure to let
them know who we are and why we are here. We try to keep parents
involved in what we are doing and enlist their help in reminding their
children to think seriously about career development.
It also
helps that our staff maintains a flexible schedule. Adrian, our
academic coordinators, and I meet student-athletes late in the evening
if necessary. And we provide different times for workshops through the
year so that if an athlete can’t make one in the fall, he or she can
attend in the spring.
Another key tool in getting athletes to
participate in our program is testimonials from former Mizzou athletes.
We maintain lists of former athletes in each sport, and with the help
of coaches, keep track of who might have a good story to share. Some of
the most effective talks are by recent alumni who played on teams with
current athletes. And they needn’t have sad stories of their own. Tales
of hard times offered by unprepared colleagues on a pro team seem to
get young athletes’ attention as well as first-person accounts. We also
seek out former student-athletes who’ve moved to fields current
athletes are interested in. Their visits both encourage students to
make plans and show how networking is done.
To schedule these
talks, we work with team coaches. Some like to conduct them at a weekly
meeting, some want them to happen at the end of a practice, and others
prefer a completely separate time outside of practice. It depends on
the coach as well as the former student-athletes’ availability.
Flexibility on our end is the key.
START FROSH
Once we’ve
gotten their attention, we try to meet each athlete one-on-one and
start creating a plan with concrete steps and milestones for each
academic year. Ideally, freshman year sets the stage for developing
good habits and starting a self-examination, while sophomore year is
when student-athletes learn what they do well and begin sampling
specific academic and career fields.
Some athletes know exactly
what they want to do after college, and our job is to help them find
ways to explore the field and gain some experience. Many, though, have
no idea what they want to do after sports, and our task is to help them
discover their interests and build trusting relationships so they feel
free to discuss their aspirations and fears. Sometimes, we also need to
broaden their horizons and expose them to what the university and the
world has to offer. The key is to plant the seed that they can—and need
to—start exploring right away. By starting with freshmen, we can get a
feel for what they want to do and get them involved in field interviews
and job shadowing opportunities so they are not clueless by their
senior year.
A useful tool to get started is one of the many
interest assessments on the market. We use the Discover computer-based
guidance system from ACT, the not-for-profit organization that
administers the college-entrance exam of the same name. Discover asks
students their likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, and guides
them through fields that might suit them. It outlines typical ways to
start a career path, which in college means particular academic majors
and work-experience options. The software stores a portfolio of this
information for each student, and academic advisers can log in to get
updates on each student-athlete’s progress.
For example, if a
student tells his academic coordinator he’s interested in teaching, but
the coordinator sees from the Discover portfolio that making a lot of
money is a high priority, too, he or she can ask whether teaching is
really the student’s dream. If someone wants to go into finance, is she
really a numbers person, or is it because that’s where her boyfriend is
headed?
Working with athletes in their freshman and sophomore
years allows us to help them pick majors. We remind them that some
majors require specific courses offered at times that conflict with
team schedules, and that entry into some fields is extremely difficult
without on-the-job experience that can be hard for student-athletes to
obtain. Sports journalism, for instance, may seem like a great fit for
many athletes, but landing a job takes published clips or broadcast
tapes, commodities hard for rigidly scheduled athletes to acquire. Our
job isn’t to direct athletes away from their academic interests, but to
make sure they make informed choices.
We also start early
helping them develop good habits in time management. Because our
student-athletes don’t have much free time to explore potential
careers, we teach them to make the most of what is available. For
example, the first few weeks after a sport season ends usually offer
time for student-athletes to do other things. Yes, take some time to
decompress, we tell them, but don’t let the downtime get out of
control. Fit in what you can, when you can.
THE JUNIOR JUMP
The focus becomes sharper in junior year, as student-athletes
attend career workshops, draft resumes, join student chapters of
professional associations, find experience-building opportunities, get
letters of recommendation, and practice interviewing. They also
continue to reassess their interests and abilities, and we try to be a
little more aggressive in getting them involved.
Once a year we
have a career fair geared specifically to student-athletes that takes
place late in the evening and is co-sponsored by the athletic
department and Life After Sports. This is in addition to career fairs
held by the university for the general student population, which are
helpful but often end at 5 p.m.—too early for student-athletes who have
afternoon practice.
We also help athletes find job-experience
opportunities and internships with companies that understand the
time-crunched needs of intercollegiate athletes and are willing to be
flexible. If an athlete can spare only a couple hours a day twice a
week, we find companies willing to accommodate that. For summer
internships, athletes may have to work early in the morning to
mid-afternoon, for example, or take off during the middle of the day.
We make contact with companies agreeable to such
accommodations.
This is where we have to go beyond traditional
placement. We’ve sometimes initiated contacts by looking at who’s
advertising in our sports arenas. These companies often like to help
the team and are willing to be flexible. Many have managers who are
ex-athletes, some of whom played here. We just need to be sure they
understand NCAA compliance rules and aren’t, for example, paying
athletes more than they’d pay others to do a certain job. These
contacts build useful experience that helps graduating student-athletes
find permanent positions.
The junior year is when we also start
explaining the psychological side of the sports-to-career switch. We
talk a lot about turning the student-athlete experience into a positive
for entering the career world. We remind them that most
student-athletes are highly coachable, and with that trait alone, they
can transfer the skills they have learned on their team to any
business. Succeeding at college-level athletics is proof they are
willing to arrive early, stay late, get involved in extra training, and
make sacrifices to learn a new trade, as they did with their sport.
They are disciplined, determined, focused, have had to overcome
obstacles and multi-task, and we emphasize that they can apply these
qualities to real life. If nothing else, this reminder can build
tremendous confidence at a time when it’s really needed.
SENIOR
SENSATION
In the senior year, it’s all about fine-tuning, preparing
the self-sales pitch, and targeting specific employers. Like many life
skills programs, we offer workshops on writing effective resumes and
practice job interviews. But we go further.
Many
student-athletes have not been exposed to the customs and unstated
expectations of the professional world that the rest of us take for
granted. So we bring in a faculty member from the university’s
hospitality-management program who has been trained at the Washington
School of Protocol. He provides a workshop on everything from how to
shake hands to when to rise from a table. We’ve also brought in leading
retailers for sessions on dressing professionally. We know this is
needed: Recently, a female student-athlete who was otherwise highly
prepared arrived for an interview dressed as if she were headed to a
night club. We can tell her to dress conservatively, but the message
has more impact coming from someone in the field.
Another
well-prepared student-athlete seemed poised to get an offer in a dream
job with a major company in Missouri. She’d done everything right, and
it looked to us as if she were a shoo-in. But the company ran a credit
check, and she didn’t get the job. Since then, we’ve had a
representative from a major Kansas City financial-planning company give
a talk on personal finance. In addition to savings and investing, he
covered basic financial issues such as establishing and maintaining
good credit, planning for buying a house, and even mundane matters like
avoiding unpaid parking tickets.
We also stress keeping an open,
exploration-oriented mind to student-athletes and encourage them to
think about what kind of career might fit them well. Recently, a female
soccer student-athlete came to us facing graduation with no useful job
experience and only a vague idea that she wanted to work in either
fashion or sports marketing.
We talked about her personality and
needs, including the geographic areas where she’d like to settle.
Seeing her outgoing, people-oriented personality, we suggested sales
and encouraged her to interview with an apparel company that has a
competitive, results-oriented atmosphere we felt could be a good match.
She aced the interview and was offered a position at a very strong
starting salary.
Once we’ve gotten a company on board, we ask
them to keep us informed of job openings to see if we have someone else
who’d be a good fit. At other times, we do the leg work to locate
companies that are hiring in a particular field. Once graduates are
placed with a company, we try to stay in touch and track their careers.
It’s all about staying connected.
We top off our program with a
senior transition workshop. Modeled after a session the Canadian
Olympic Committee offers its athletes at the end of an Olympic year,
it’s designed to deal with the emotional and practical challenges of
leaving competition. Peers, ex-athletes, and experts discuss topics
such as time management, developing outside interests, and nutrition.
We emphasize sharing and networking to help newly minted ex-athletes
know that they’re not in this alone. We have participants exchange
e-mail addresses, cell phone numbers, and permanent addresses.
This senior session is ideal for helping athletes confront the
intense emotions they’re experiencing. I believe that everyone
transitions differently, because we’re all individuals. Adrian and I
are great examples of that. We both struggled during this time of
transition. I never thought I would “go pro” and knew gymnastics was
coming to an end, yet it was still as difficult for me as it was for
Adrian, if not more so. My sport was very demanding of my time from a
very young age and I never developed any other hobbies or interests. So
when gymnastics ended, I was left looking for something to fill that
void of passion and interest.
Adrian had had time to play some
other sports and develop more interests. He, on the other hand, thought
he would play pro for many years. When that didn’t happen, he was left
dealing with perceived failure and all the issues tied to
that.
Along with explaining to our athletes that these emotions
are natural and common, we give them tips on how to handle this aspect
of the transition. We also offer a sympathetic ear if they need to talk
to someone. And if they need further professional assistance, we will
connect them with specialists, including psychologists or nutrition
counselors.
RECOGNIZE THE TRANSITION
Our goal in the Life
After Sports program is not to replace existing student-development
services, but to enhance them. Our dream is that someday every school
will have a head career coach, a transition coach, and a placement
coach. We hope to replicate our system, starting with other members of
the Big 12 Conference, and then elsewhere.
But some of our ideas
can already be reproduced in an existing life skills and
career-development program. The key is recognizing that the transition
from intercollegiate athletics is different from the nonathlete’s
transition and needs to start early.
My father-in-law was a
career military man, and Adrian has sometimes compared his dad’s
transition to civilian life to what a student-athlete goes through. In
both cases, a person leaves a way of life that operates under its own
rules, traditions, and expectations to be suddenly thrust into a new
world without the familiar supports and structure. The key for those of
us who care about these young people is to understand the tremendous
change they’re going through and to help them get ready. That’s how we
help student-athletes get a good start and eventually win at the game
known as life.