My name is Hope Leinen and I am a senior defender on the women’s lacrosse team. I am a student-athlete, a title that has many responsibilities and things that come with it.
As someone who has gone through three years as a full-time student-athlete, I can confidently say that it is the most challenging and rewarding thing in my life. While I would love to say that it’s sunshine and daisies all the time, it would be a total lie. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love being a student-athlete, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way, but sometimes it feels like people expect you to be in a million places at a time.
The truth is, I have my life split into three different sections: school, lacrosse and social life. You may think that it’s easy to create a balance, but when you spend hours of your life practicing, more hours recovering and more hours doing film, you realize that you have to start picking and choosing what gets priority. I’m a senior and I still don’t have a balance. I’m an honors college student, a double major in Biomedical Sciences and English Language and Literature, tutor, columnist, working a job whenever I can and building a new program at GVSU. Is that way too much? Definitely, but I’m not going to change it.
You see, the balance never comes. You just learn to manage it. I constantly feel like there are never enough hours in the day, never enough hours to sleep and never enough hours to get everything done. Time legitimately feels like it is on hyperspeed and you’re in slow motion because guess what, life doesn’t stop and wait for you to get a grasp on things, it just keeps moving. Now, this is just all of the things outside of your actual sport itself.
Surprise! College is way different than high school. In high school, you were probably the best on the team. Now, you’re with 25 other people who were the best at their high school. While I would love to say that it’s a team sport and that I would be happy no matter if I played or not, it would be a big ol’ lie, and I would say the same thing if anyone else said that. As an athlete, it is ingrained in your mind to be the best and push yourself to the limits. Everyone wants to play. You wouldn’t be an athlete in college if you didn’t want to. The truth is, a lot of athletes place their worth on their performance in their sports. It’s hard not to. You become so focused on it that one day you wake up and realize you just really don’t know who you are without it. I used to feel like if I wasn’t doing well in lacrosse, then every other aspect of my life was also probably lacking as well.
Now, I realize that it has been a privilege to have had this experience and that I am so much more than my sport. It was not easy to get there. In fact, I think it took me all three years to actually get to that point. I have met some of my best friends on this team. I’m no longer a shy introvert like I was when I was a freshman. I’m able to hold conversations and be outgoing. This team has taught me skills that I will forever hold on to and memories that I will never forget. Lacrosse has shaped me into the person that I am today, and I am better for it. All of the hard days, and the days where it feels like there aren’t enough hours, hurt a little bit less because I am doing it with my chosen family.
If you were to ask me if being a student-athlete is hard, I would say absolutely. If you were to ask me if I would trade it for anything in the world, I would say never.
