Helping Your Athlete Balance Academics, Sports, and Social Life When On a Travel Team

Playing on a travel team for the first time is a major milestone in a soccer player’s journey. Not only will they be facing heavier competition than ever before, but they must also accept that their life will be very different from now on. They’ll have much less free time, which means it’s up to them to balance their rigorous training regimen with schoolwork and a social life.

This isn’t easy. As if competing at a high level and growing as a player wasn’t challenging enough, young athletes must additionally learn the art of time management. With the help of their parents, though, it is entirely feasible for a young athlete to prioritize their sport without letting their grades slip or losing touch with their friends.

Here's a few things you might want to tell your athlete to help them balance sports, academics, and a social life:

Academics and Sports are Intertwined

The key to managing sports and academics is understanding that both are directly intertwined. First, the obvious: in order to play college soccer, athletes have to meet their dream school’s academic requirements. If they don’t succeed in the classroom, they don’t succeed at soccer. Second: 1% improvement day-over-day equals 37x improvement year-over-year. This applies to academic and athletic learning.

This mentality allows athletes to realize that schoolwork is a vital element of their soccer journey, and should not be neglected. It’s somewhat similar to the relationship between exercise and nutrition. Yes, eating healthy is a completely different activity than physical exercise, but you need both to be in good shape.

Since academics and sports go hand-in-hand, it makes sense to set aside specific periods of the day or night for schoolwork, just like athletes have specific periods of the day or night for training. Athletes don’t just train whenever they want, or for however long they want, right? There’s specific periods of the day or night in which they’re focused exclusively on training, and the same concept should be applied for schoolwork. This way, the athlete can devote 100% of their attention on schoolwork, ensuring the work is done correctly.

Making the Most of Free Time

Contrary to popular belief, playing on a travel team doesn’t mean you have no free time. You do have free time, just less than you used to. For this reason, athletes should make the most of the free time they have, and the way to do that is planning ahead.

A big part of being a high-level athlete is knowing what’s important to you, and recreational activities are the same way. How does your athlete prefer to have fun? What kind of activities really help them relax? Is it watching movies with their friends? Playing video games?

Since your athlete can’t just do these things whenever they want anymore, recreational activities should be scheduled ahead of time. As soccer mentors, we frequently advise our athletes to think of relaxation, or “chilling out,” as another aspect of training. Every young athlete needs time to let loose like someone their age should. So, you might encourage your athlete to not think of their favorite activities as meaningless fun. Instead, they should think of these activities as mental medicine that helps their brain function correctly.

Helping Your Athlete Manage Priorities

We get it. Teenagers typically aren’t the best planners. They’re going to need help with time management, since this is a skill most people don’t have to master until adulthood, if ever.

Fortunately, this just happens to be one of our specialties at Beyond Goals Mentoring. We harness our own experience as professional soccer players to teach young athletes how to prioritize schoolwork, friendships, and mental health amid the demands of high-level competition. The sooner your athlete learns to plan ahead, the smoother the rest of their journey will be. After all, training is only going to get harder, and growing up comes with more responsibilities.

So, if your athlete is struggling to balance academics or their social life with sports, let’s set up a mentoring session today.