Think you’ve got it bad as a student? Do you trouble waking up for an 8:30? Are you stressed out over research papers and midterms? Have you bee missing you parents? You might get some sympathy from the frat guy down the hall, but don’t expect any from AU athletes.
Most athletes would love to have just two early classes each week. They are forced to overload mornings with 8:30s and 9:55 classes to free up afternoons for practice. For AU athletes, 9 a.m. is sleeping in and snoozing till noon is unheard of.
The girls’ lacrosse team, for example, lifts three days a week at 6:30 a.m.
“We’re sore pretty much at all times,” said sophomore mid-fielder Bernadette Maher.
Depending on the sport, athletes might have to wake up as early as 5:15 a.m. to lift — about the same time some college kids roll back to campus after a night out.
A weekend tournament or away game could eat away crucial study time. For a Saturday game, teams leave campus on Friday night. Game day is booked with morning breakfast, a walk through on the field, team lunch and finally the game.
“Sometimes we don’t get home until two or three in the morning on Sundays,” men’s soccer striker Mike Marino said.
Robert Grell swims distance, freestyle and backstroke. But as a pre-med major, his grades are what he’s trying to keep afloat. One week this semester, Grell had four exams — Organic Chemistry, Cell Biology, Linear Algebra and Differential Equations — plus three lab reports, as well as practice.
“Most people study until 3 a.m. wake up at seven and study some more before the exam,” Grell said.
He studied until the little hours of the morning like most, but then he had to wake up at 6 a.m. for practice. He’s not sure how he did on the exams, but said he had better put in 100 percent at practice.
Despite that, however, he has historically earned a better GPA in season than out of season. Grell’s success in the classroom may be due to the athletic department’s policies that emphasize studies over athletics. First-semester freshmen must attend eight hours of study hall per week. If they hope to get exempt second semester, they must earn a 3.0 GPA or better. Athletes do get an academic leg up on others students with a special academic advisor for athletes and priority on class scheduling.
There are other advantages to playing college sports as well. Many athletes say sports eased the transition from high school to college. Fall sports teams arrive at AU two weeks before the regular freshman.
“When most kids were moving their stuff in Welcome Week, I was already settled,” said Marino.
Perhaps the biggest advantage for timid freshmen is that their teammates become an instant group of friends. Athletes commonly say sports teams are like their own fraternities.
“Coming into college I had 27 automatic friends,” lacrosse goalie Kaska Komosinki said. “Twenty-seven family members.”
On top of all this, many also get some kind of scholarship package. Most athletes are on some type of scholarship. Food is paid for on away games, as are tutors. To go along with all of this they also receive several freebees from the Athletic Department, in the form of sweat pants, sweatshirts and other items of clothing.
Sophomore Kevin Bunch played one season for the Club Basketball team, but still prizes his red basketball shorts.
“You can’t buy this [stuff] in stores,” said Bunch pointing to the blue and white AU logo.
However, sophomore forward on the men’s basketball team Riley Grafft said he gives away a lot of his apparel.
“You can only have so many AU T-shirts,” he said.
Taking into account all of the positives, as well as the negatives, many athletes said they wouldn’t trade this opportunity.
“Everyone has moments that make you say ‘I can’t do this,’” Grell said. “Then you take a step back and realize that you could never do this alone.”
Most athletes would agree that their experience is different than most college students, but they also say they still feel like a regular student.
“It would be fun to go out and experience the D.C. nightlife more often, especially when we watch other students going out on the weekends,” said freshman soccer player Erika Robbins. “We do have time off when we can go out and be responsible, but in season we are dedicated to our team and have fun together in other ways.”
It means trading bar crawls for bear crawls, hangovers for hang clean lifting sessions and six packs, for well, six packs.
You can reach this writer at sports@theeagleonline.com.
