Articles:

Transition from High School to College Athlete Not Always Easy

This is the time of year when many high school seniors are winding down their athletic career or anticipating the move onto collegiate competition. After having gone through the joys of a successful high school athletic experience with many high achieving moments, high scoring games, MVP play, and donning the pages of their local newspaper’s sports sections; the last thing on the students’ minds are to make themselves better at their sport. After all, throughout their entire athletic experiences, many of these athletes have been regarded as the best in their game and have often gotten there due to their God given talent and physical attributes.

Unfortunately, having been the big fish in the little pond doesn’t always set them up for success upon entering college sports. Many athletes move on to find themselves no longer the best in the game and no longer the player that everyone looks up to and admires. Rather than being the biggest, fastest and strongest player on the team, they find themselves at the bottom of the pecking order and have to begin working far harder than they ever had before. They can often struggle just to make the practice squad and are fortunate if they get to suit up for a game their freshman year.

Luckily, there is something these future collegiate athletes can do to help prepare them for the transition into collegiate competition. The first step in this transition process is to realize that there will be a great deal of other athletes at their school that are far better than them. Those collegiate athletes have had more experience in a supervised structured setting getting themselves stronger, faster, and more powerful in the weight room. Too often, the high school standout athlete thinks he has trained enough and that he knows how to improve his athletic performance through training. However, they experience a sharp contrast to that thought and come to the realization that their high school experience did not prepare them for this higher level of play. Too often in the high school setting, athletes are not exposed to a well educated and experienced strength coach. Therefore, the foundation for proper training and lifting technique was not taught. Instead these athletes spend their first year of college trying to catch up and learn how to train correctly, rather than spending that time making gains.

Having worked in the Division 1 setting, I have seen far too many athletes who thought they were great get to college and realize they should have done more. Having worked with a great deal of athletes preparing for college sports, I have also seen the other side of this story. Many of the athletes who have taken that extra step to learn how to perform Olympic lifts, sprint more mechanically efficient, train smarter rather than harder, improve their power output and strength, and complete a structured conditioning regime with a professional strength and conditioning coach; find themselves leaps and bounds ahead of the game. They often show up to school better than many of their upper class teammates.

If you are fortunate enough to be in the position to be preparing for college sports next fall, don’t take your past athletic success for granted, now is the time to improve your play, your athletic skills, and advance your position on the team.

Written by Kevin Ebel, February 2007
Published in the Stevens Point Journal, March 6, 2007

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