College athletes face tough decisions, identity shift after graduation
Hockey player Kendall Appelbaum is at a critical point in her career.
Sports have been her whole life, she confessed, since she was 3 years old. Appelbaum played lacrosse and ice hockey at SUNY Oswego. Now that she is graduating in May, she’s worried she won’t have the time to devote to hockey any more.
“It goes from so much to so little, so it’s hard,” Appelbaum said.
Appelbaum said that, while some of her senior teammates are trying out for professional hockey leagues, she has chosen not to pursue hockey professionally post-graduation.
“My dad wants me to, but I really don’t want to,” Appelbaum said. Hockey’s been literally my life since I was 3. It’s hard, when it ended I was bawling, it was so sad, but at the same time it’s kind of like, there’s more to life than hockey. But it’s always going to be part of my life.”
College athletes spend hours of their time devoted to practices, drills and games. Many of their friends and even housemates are their teammates. But inevitably, college athletics come to an end with the close of senior year. Athletes are faced with the choice of whether to continue their sport professionally or to enter a different field.
According to Al Jazeera, fewer than 2 percent of college athletes continue on to professional athletics.
According to the NCAA, athletes post-college must reorient themselves to life with less focus on sports. The transition includes figuring out healthy eating, stress management techniques and self-actualization in finding an identity outside of sports, Jenny Moshak wrote for the NCAA.
Some SUNY Oswego coaches disagree, arguing that athletics give students more of a leg up in the job market than students who do not play a sport in college.
Oswego men’s basketball coach Jason Leone, who has been a coach at Oswego for 18 years, said college athletics teach community within a team setting.
“It gives you another thing to have to balance in your life with other requirements,” Leone said. “When you have sports in addition to academics and responsibilities with your family, it’s just another way of having to manage your time and to excel in another area of life.”
Though the majority of basketball players he has coached get a regular job and may only play recreationally, Leone said even if a student never plays sports again after graduating, they have not wasted their time in college athletics.
“Employers really like to hire athletes because of their competitive spirit and their style of communicating,” Leone said. “There’s a certain innate ability that comes with being an athlete that is applicable to the work environment.”
Forbes suggests that athletes have a high level of drive, are skilled at achieving goals (not just scoring them), can quickly develop new skills and work well in teams, among other things. These traits are desirable to employees when they see an athletic team on a resume.
Many student athletes say they also feel being on a sports team has prepared them to have a career in another field. Being part of a sports team helped them academically, as well. Some studies even show that college athletes have higher GPAs than non-athletes.
Appelbaum said balancing academics with two sports in college made her a better student.
“I work well with others, it’s about adapting,” Appelbaum said. “It’s with other people and it’s also with yourself. I think it’s molded me to know when to do my work and know when I have things due. I never have a late assignment, I’m never late to practice. It correlates in a lot of ways that I think people don’t realize.”
Ice hockey goaltender Matthew Zawadzki said he does not feel ready to see his athletic days come to an end.
“I would like to keep playing hockey,” said Zawadzki, who started playing at age 6. “I’ve worked at it for a long part of my life now, so having the opportunity to keep playing would be ideal.”
Zawadzki said he got the opportunity to play hockey professionally this semester, but he wanted graduating to be a priority, so he turned down the opportunity.
“I’ll definitely miss it if I don’t play again,” Zawadzki said. “But I’m torn. I want it but I’m trying to be realistic too.”
Zawadzki said the hockey team has placed an emphasis on education, so he feels prepared to enter the workforce if he chooses to end his professional hockey career.
“We focus a lot more on the education because that’s a bigger part of our lives, so I think…a lot of us are moving on, a lot of us have plans,” Zawadzki said. “At the end of the day, we’re all students too. 99 percent of us are doing the same thing the day after graduation as everyone else is.”
Female athletes have a harder time continuing their athletic careers after college, according to SUNY Oswego women’s hockey coach Diane Dillon. Dillon has coached at Oswego since 2006 and was a coach at Cornell University before that.
“Really [female athletes] don’t have the pro options that the men have,” Dillon said. “Some players go on and try to do something like that if they’re not ready to hang up their skates, but most female athletes at the Division III level go on to whatever their career is going to be or to school. So really, we look at the college years as their pro, NHL time, if you want to call it that.”
The professional league in the United States has four teams, Dillon said, but these are mainly filled with Olympians in the off years, so it is rare for a hockey player from a Division III team like Oswego’s to make it to the team. While male hockey players have a variety of professional teams to choose from, most women’s leagues do not pay players.
More often, women have opportunities to coach at a collegiate level, club level or in youth sports. Dillon said female referees are in “hot demand.”
“The problem is, the money isn’t there,” Dillon said. “And you’re not in a position to support yourself and pay off your student loans and actually afford to live. Until that day comes, I don’t think that’s really a viable option for many.”
A rare exception, women’s hockey player Alexa Aramburu is currently in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League draft, but she won’t find out if she is drafted until August.
Since she has played hockey since age 4, Aramburu said it was too big a part of her identity to give up.
“I’ve always really wanted to continue playing or coaching after college,” Aramburu said. “I figured, why not play as long as I can?”
If she does get a spot on a team, Aramburu will not be paid, so she anticipates having to find a job in the city she is placed in. She feels the lack of support for female athletes is a disadvantage that can be frustrating.
“You can’t change people’s minds that easily, so it’s hard to fight for,” Aramburu said. “I think it’s a problem that a lot of people aren’t give the same financial support to females, especially if they’re doing better or the same as men’s teams.”
SUNY Oswego ice hockey player Erika Truschke said she will focus on recreational opportunities for athletics after college. Truschke graduates in May with a marketing degree and plans on having a career with a sports marketing firm or working for a sports team and will join men’s hockey leagues with her friends from home.
“I don’t see it as a negative that there are fewer opportunities for competitive athletics,” Truschke said. “There are many opportunities for continuing a hockey career after college…It is more of the fact if you want to pursue that path. There will always be hockey available, and after playing competitive hockey for the last 18 years of my life, it will be nice to just play for fun from now on.”
In basketball, men have a 19.1 percent chance of playing professionally after college, according to the NCAA. Women only have a 4.9 percent probability of going on professionally.
Some college athletes choose to continue their studies after getting their undergraduate degree. Mary Mazzella, the point guard on SUNY Oswego’s women’s basketball team, has been accepted to Ithaca College’s exercise and sports science program. Mazzella, a two-year captain of the team, said she decided that she can never let basketball go.
“I do want to stay connected to sports,” Mazzella said. “I’m currently considering coaching college basketball as a possible career. I will personally try and stay as active in sports as much as I can by playing every chance I get.”
Her fellow senior teammates do not plan to pursue athletics professionally after they graduate, Mazzella said. The most they hope to do is coach youth basketball or play recreationally.
“It makes me very sad that more than likely my competitive days of playing are over,” Mazzella said. “I will absolutely play in women’s leagues until I am physically unable to, but nothing will compare to the competition I have seen the past four years.”
Some students find it nearly impossible to give up their beloved sport. Appelbaum said she won’t be hanging up her skates forever and plans to play recreationally and to coach at the collegiate level in the future.
“You can’t just quit it,” Appelbaum said. “It’s not one of those things.”
