For young up-and-coming athletes, the competing demands on their time are hard to imagine.
Training can be full on – but so can school work. So imagine trying to juggle both. How do you strike the balance to ensure these young people can chase their dreams while also ensuring they have the backing of the best education possible?
“Those with an aptitude – and a passion – for sport must not be pigeonholed.”
Only a small percentage of those chasing a career as a professional athlete will make the elite. Even if they make the grade, one serious injury can end a career. That is why it is crucial that those with an aptitude – and a passion – for sport are not pigeonholed.
As I’ve said, the biggest problem for most up-and-coming athletes is the demand on their time. To be able to train properly, many need to be up and at it before school and again after lessons have finished. Added to that, they also need to fit homework in. For some athletes, for example mountain bikers, there is the added complication of the fact that they need to be out in the daylight hours for training – which is exactly when they should be in school.
And the older the person gets, the more the demand grows – exams come at the same time as many are needing to ramp up their training programmes to stay competitive.
“The biggest problem for most up-and-coming athletes is the demand on their time.”
So what’s the solution? The most important thing is support – support of parents and support of educators. For some, sport is still seen as a distraction from schoolwork and academia, when in fact the opposite is true. There is countless research out there that backs up the age-old belief of “health body, healthy mind”. Recent research from the World Health Organization, Europe found that increasing the amount of physical activity can have a positive impact not only on children’s health and well-being, but also on their performance in the classroom. So investment in sport is investment in a young person’s future.
One solution to the juggling act could be through online schooling. The reason I joined Minerva’s Virtual Academy (MVA) is because of the potential I saw in not just giving young athletes a proper education, but also educating them about the challenges and opportunities their sport presents.
“It’s important to help young people create a holistic identity.”
An online school like ours can develop flexible learning tailored for athletes through things like rewatchable live lessons and flexible timetables. At MVA we have a greater emphasis on self-study, so young people in sport can manage their day in a way that suits them best.
Another key part of providing the best for young athletes is developing how they see themselves. When you excel at sport, it is easy for you to be identified solely as an athlete, which can lead to anxiety and loneliness. It’s important to help young people avoid that and create a holistic identity for them. One way to approach this is to focus on what they value as people, and the values held by the pros they aspire to be like and how to replicate them.
Finally, having someone that young athletes can talk to about all aspects of their academic and sporting lives is vital. Myself and my fellow Elite Athlete Education Officer at MVA, Sol, both come from a professional sporting background, so we are able to share our experiences as well as talk to students about what they are going through.
For us, it’s not just about making sure they still get a top class academic education, it’s also educating them about the challenges and opportunities their sport presents.
“We talk quite openly about mental health challenges.”
We talk to them about how to enjoy the sport as it becomes more competitive, and how to manage the pressure and nerves. We also offer practical lessons on things like how to handle social media, and how to find sponsors.
We bring some of our own experience into it. We talk quite openly about mental health challenges, for example. We don’t want it to sound negative but we need to make sure our pupils have a degree of awareness. We talk about changing the mindset so feeling nervous becomes feeling excited, for exaple.
Ultimately, of course, there will always be some kind of compromise needed for young athletes to be able to balance school and sport – it is how that is approached by all parties that is the key to making it a success.