Hannah Simon
Student Sports Media
You would think being a college student would already be stressful enough between long classes, a job and trying to maintain relationships with friends and family. Try including playing football on top of all that stress. Playing sports in college can be a lot more stressful than being an average student.
An average day for Nick Orr, a freshman tight end, 6 feet, 5 inches tall and weighing 300 pounds, from Blue Valley North High school in Overland Park, starts at 7 a.m. every day by getting up and eating breakfast. Then he heads to his back – to – back classes and is done by 10:55 a.m. Orr normally spends his limited half an hour of free time catching up on homework, napping or eating lunch. After that, from 1:30 – 2:45 p.m. the team spends their time in meetings talking about what they could improve in practices and games. Then there’s outside practice from 3 – 5 p.m. Free time is for dinner and studying from 5:30 – 7 p.m. Then, at 7p.m., meetings start again until 8 p.m. and then curfew at 11 p.m.
“I feel as if I do not have enough time to myself between practice and classes, but football must come first,” Orr said.
Practice times will change from time to time due to the weather or other teams using the film room. The players always must be ready to change their schedules at a second’s notice. As for another player, their schedule might look different, such as freshman James Morrow, a lineman for the special team, 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 300 pounds from Salina Central High School in Salina. Morrow starts his day by eating breakfast in the cafeteria every morning. After breakfast comes classes, then lunch, therapy, meetings or study halls, outside practice, dinner, and ending the night with a team meeting and a position meeting.
Many sports teams at Butler must represent themselves in a professional, respectable manner. If you are ever in the cafeteria during lunch or dinner, football players are one of the quiet sports teams in the room because if they are loud or disrespectful they will get in trouble with the coaches. Many things can get the players into trouble.
“We have to make sure our pants are not sagging, or our hoods are not on, because many things that might come off as an insult or disrespectful will get us in trouble,” Morrow said.
Players must also show up to classes on time, turn in homework and be an all-round good students. Curfew for football players is 11 p.m. every night, excluding Saturdays when they do not have a curfew. If a player is caught sneaking out of their room or having someone in their room past curfew, not only the player who broke the curfew rule will be punished, the team will too by doing board pushes down the field and also for skipping breakfast in the cafeteria as well.
“The hardest part of being a student athlete is definitely time management,” Morrow said.
For student athletes such as Orr and Morrow, the hardest part is finding the time to be a normal college student. They try to find the time to do homework, being around friends, having a normal sleep schedule and enjoy being in college.
“The stress of being a football player is insanely high, and there is not enough time in the day, between working out and trying to stay in shape, class and practice,” Orr said.
For the athletes, football is the most important thing in the world. There is no such thing as missing a class, practice or a meeting. By the end of the day their bodies are tired and worn out. They go home, do school work and go to bed looking forward to the next day of doing what they love: football.