Advice I Wish Someone Had Shared With Me: How to make difficult decisions as a Student Athlete

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Advice I Wish Someone Had Shared With Me: How to make difficult decisions as a Student Athlete

Are you a student athlete who needs to make a difficult decision?

Or, are you a parent of a student athlete, and your son or daughter is facing a challenging situation in which they must make a choice?

Well, today I am going to share some advice I gave to a player I was once coaching when he needed to make a difficult decision.

And I hope this advice will be a guiding principle to:

Help Student Athletes When Making Tough Choices

This particular player approached me for some advice about what to do for college.

He was wondering what school he should go to and whether he should continue to play his sport or if it was time to hang up his shoes and end his competitive sporting career altogether.

This individual was either a two or three sport athlete and had a lot of potential.

He had some opportunities to play at some lower level schools or he could try out as a preferred walk on at a higher level school.

As I listened to his stories and all the factors and variables he was weighing to make his decision, I began to chime in with my experiences going through college as well as the experiences of other athletes I had coached who had gone through college.

Eventually, I could see him gaining clarity about the path forward he felt was best for him, but I could tell he was still hesitant about it.

Quite frankly, it was completely NORMAL for him to be hesitant in a situation like this because it was probably one of the biggest decisions of his life thus far:

• He was deciding which school to go to
• He was deciding what subjects he wanted to study
• He was deciding whether he wanted to continue playing his sport or if it was time to end his sporting career (an idea he had never conceived of before in his entire life)

Then, I felt something inside me call him to give him this advice:

“Whatever decision you make,

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT.

And you will learn and grow from it.

And it will refine you into the being you were born to be.”

And that is the same advice I would like to offer you today if you are making a difficult decision:

“Whatever decision you make,

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT.

And you will learn and grow from it.

And it will refine you into the being you were born to be.”

As student athletes, we face many difficult decisions.

In our sports:

• What team do we want to try out for?
• What position do we want to play?
• Is it time to end our sporting career?

In school:

• What school do we want to go to?
• What do we want to study?
• How can we integrate the material into our lives?

In life:

• What career path do we want to pursue?
• Where do we want to live?
• What impact do we want to have and what do we want to be remembered for in this lifetime?

Despite these inevitable difficult decisions that arise in this Game of Life,

The advice I encourage you today with is:

TO OWN YOUR DECISION!!!

Go all in on your decision without looking back … because:

“Whatever decision you make,

YOU WILL BE ABLE TO HANDLE IT.

And you will learn and grow from it.

And it will refine you into the being you were born to be.”

I wish you well on your journey of realizing you can handle any decision you make in life, and I look forward to seeing you next week.

Inspiring YOU every step of your way,

Kyle