How do student athletes achieve the balance between school and baseball? Nine helpful tips
1. Get organized and stay organized.
Use a big desk calendar for school and sports. Write down all due dates for schoolwork, projects, and papers. Write down all sports practices and games. Every week revisit your calendar and make corrections.
2. Manage your time.
With competing demands placed on your time, you must plan your known time schedule. Known times are school time, game and practice time, and travel time to and from school, as well as travel time to and from sports practices and events. By blocking this known time on your calendar, you can determine your actual homework time and study time.
3. Plan your week; don’t let your week plan you.
Look at your calendar and note when you have projects due, tests scheduled, and practices and games scheduled. Plan how you will study and when you will study.
4. Use your weekends wisely.
Use your weekend as preparation time for the week ahead. Start homework for the upcoming week. Read chapters and take notes ahead of time. Use this time to plan for and prepare for projects and papers that are due.
5. Use your travel time to and from school, practices, and games wisely.
Review notes, read chapters, study, or read books. Another tip - use audiobooks while traveling and read along.
6. Do not procrastinate.
Do assignments as soon as they are given, rather than waiting until the last minute. Assuredly, poor planning and waiting until the last minute will result in missed practices or missed games.
7. Do not get behind.
Whether this pertains to homework, schoolwork, grades, or sports practices, it is easier to stay ahead of schoolwork rather than to play catch up with grades, missed assignments, or missed sporting events.
8. Take advantage of study halls and free periods.
Do homework, ask for help, study, and get ahead of your work. At one school that my children attended, there was no requirement for children to do work in study hall. Children were permitted to relax, listen to music (with ear buds), and text, with no expectation that work would be done. Guess what the children did in study hall? They relaxed, listened to music, and texted. No schoolwork was done. While the students thought this was great, this is clearly not a good way to take advantage of the study halls and free periods that can greatly aid student athletes in balancing school work and sports activities.
9. Take advantage of school resources, such as tutors.
Many sports teams want their athletes to succeed in school and offer programs to help their athletes. If your school or community offers these opportunities, take them.
