Day in the Life of a College Athlete: ever wonder what it’s like?

Photo by Austin Fuhr

It’s 5:00 a.m. 

You wake up to the beep...beep...beeping of your alarm interrupting your sleep. You turn off the wretched sound and rub your eyes for a few seconds. You think to yourself, “How wonderful it would be to pull those covers back over me and go back to sleep.”

Unfortunately, for most college athletes, we don’t have that option. 

After a couple minutes of trying to wake yourself up, you finally manage to get out of bed. Because you’re in a dorm, lacking a personal chef (a.k.a., your parents) to cook a meal for you, you grab a protein bar and a bottle of water. That’s all the breakfast you’re going to get. 

You get dressed and head out to start the day, trying to not wake up your roommate, who is still peacefully sleeping. After all, it is 5 o’clock in the morning.

You finally get to practice: time to play the sport you love. After an hour or so of working out, it’s time to hit the showers and go back to bed-- just kidding; so you can get ready for your busy day of classes. You have a morning class, then an afternoon class, followed by yet another practice. 

Your morning class ended at 11:50 a.m., and you only have 10 minutes to grab lunch because your next class starts at 12:00 p.m. After your afternoon class ends, it’s time for the second practice of the day. You head to the locker room to prepare yourself for another couple hours of hard work. 

When practice ends, it’s time for the second shower of the day. Hopefully you remembered to bring extra clothes, because if not, you have to walk to your dorm dripping in sweat. After your shower, it’s time for dinner. You can’t stop thinking about that caf food, and when you’re almost there, you suddenly remember: you have two papers due tomorrow. Better scarf down that food, get back to your room to start on those papers; that is, before you realize you have a reading assignment due first thing in the morning.  

You open your door to see your roommate playing video games. They offer you a controller, but you discipline yourself into declining; you need to finish your homework. You start to write your papers, but it’s hard to stay focused as your eyelids become heavy, growing more and more fatigued. 

A couple hours go by and you’ve just typed the last few words of your second paper: you’re done. Your roommate is still playing video games. Once they see you’re done, they put that second controller up for grabs again. As much as you would love to kick butt at NBA 2K20, you know it’s getting late and you need to get to sleep. You have practice in the morning so staying up past 10 o’clock is already pushing it. 

Your roommate stays awake to continue watching Netflix, they don’t have to be up until 11:00 p.m. You crawl under those warm covers, sore and tired. You do your nightly scroll on Instagram, text your parents and significant other goodnight and set your alarm for 5:00 a.m. to do it all over again. 

This is the life of a typical college athlete.