At a young age, children are taught to appreciate Division I teams. They may grow up watching Penn State football games and decide they want to play football in front of 50,000 people. These kids look up to Division I athletes because they play at the biggest and "best" schools. However, kids have no idea of the work and time involved in being a Division I athlete. Let me tell you about my almost Division I experience, and why I decided to end it.
I did competitive gymnastics for 14 years, dedicating my entire childhood to the sport. I do not regret all the time and effort I spent on the sport because it has definitely shaped me into the person I am today. I believe that sports help children grow into the people they want to be, as well as teaching children life lessons and work ethic. However, academics always came first in my household.
I used to dream of going to the Olympics. I dreamt that someday I would attend a Division I school where I would receive a full athletic scholarship. At a young age, I had the idea that I would not have to pay a penny to attend college. I had no idea what college even was when I was that young. I had no idea what it was going to be like. I just knew that the prize seemed to be a scholarship, and I wanted that.
I had started to doubt things and doubt the Division I lifestyle even though schools such as Penn State University, Ohio State University and Eastern Michigan University had recruited me for gymnastics. Sounds great, right? I would get to go to college for free, but that’s only the half of it. Little did I know that gymnastics would take up all of my time in college. To me, it didn't seem worth giving up four years of my life to do college gymnastics and throw my academics to the side. I wasn't planning on doing gymnastics after college. I wanted a great education so that I could get a job after college. I started to realize that I wanted to go to school without the stress of doing gymnastics all the time.
Another one of my deciding factors was my Penn State visit during my sophomore year of high school. When I met with the head coach of the women’s gymnastics team there, I was told that there were specific majors that worked best with the gymnastics practice schedule. He had said that everything was organized around practice times because gymnastics came first. After growing up being told that academics were my top priority, this idea made me contemplate whether or not this was what I really wanted.
Division I athletes are paid to do their sport. Even though it’s a "free" education, the education is not the focus. A positive aspect of Division III schools is that no one is limited to a certain major.
At the end of my junior year of high school, after months of deliberation I decided to quit gymnastics. I was going to practices on and off trying to see if I would miss it, but I did not miss it at all. I found another sport to do during my senior year of high school just to keep me busy and active. This sport was rowing. Originally, I decided to row just for fun and to stay in shape during the last year of high school.
I started researching colleges that were well known for my major. Meanwhile, I started to fall in love with the sport of rowing. I found Ithaca College and fell in love with everything it had to offer, with its superb athletics, an outstanding journalism program and hands-on extracurricular activities within the Park School of Communications.
I wanted a great education, but also realized that I loved being part of a sports team every day. Ithaca College, a Division III school, is able to give me both. Even though it is very rewarding to receive scholarships, you cannot receive athletic scholarships at Division III schools. I think that this motivates student-athletes to focus more on academics, rather than relying on sports to get them into college. You can play a sport if you want to, but your academics come before anything else. In order to stay on a sports team at Ithaca College, or any Division III school for that matter, you have to maintain solid grades.
As a Division III athlete at Ithaca College, I have a two-hour time period in which we can’t schedule classes. Our practices are in the late afternoons, so it is not much of an issue with class times. Our coaches will understand if we have to take a class that conflicts with practice times, and they will work around it if need be. They understand that academics come first.
Another problem with Division I schools is that they offer scholarships to athletes at a very young age. Some of my old teammates committed to universities at the beginning of their freshman year of high school. They have no idea what they want to do in the future, let alone in college. They should not be making rash decisions about where to go to college. College should not just be a decision that you make because a coach wants you. Athletes often choose schools because the coach recruits them. They may have no interest in the school, but decide to go because they are receiving scholarship money.
Most athletes only look at the positive aspects of Division I athletics, and they forget about the negative aspects. I looked past the negative aspects for so long and really thought that I would end up at a Division I school doing college gymnastics. I found that the benefits of going to a Division III school outweighed the ability to receive an athletic scholarship to a Division I school that could easily disappear if I'd gotten injured. Many people asked why I would not just take the full scholarship. Well, in my opinion, the education is worth it. I did not want a full scholarship if I was not even going to be able to choose my own major and get no use out of my education. My future wasn't going to be gymnastics. Most peoples’ futures don’t involve the sport that they play in college.
Division I athletics can be the right decision if you want your sport to be your life. Some of those Penn State football players will go to the NFL someday, and that is great. However, for me and for many of you, Division III athletics are the better way to go. When making the decision about what you want to do with your high school sport that you have dedicated your time and effort to, think about going Division III. They may not be looked at as highly, but they most certainly should be because the people that go there are true student-athletes. I could not be happier as a student-athlete at Ithaca College, a Division III school.
