Student-athletes all have some level of investment in their particular sport. This investment can come in the form of effort, time, emotions, money, hopes, and dreams. Perhaps the most impactful investment that they make is the investment of their identity. This is the level in which one’s view of their self is defined as being an athlete in their sport. How one defines themselves and how others define them makes up their identity.
Athletes can face a crossroads when the thing that they were hanging onto, the athletic career, is gone. They can go from being celebrated to not even acknowledged after their eligibility has expired or their formal participation as player in college sports has ended. There can be a scramble to find their place in the world. A person’s athletic identity investment or how much they are “more than an athlete” depends on their individual valuation of the importance of being considered an athlete and how much of their identity is based on it. It varies from person to person. What is meaningful to one person may not have any meaning at all to another.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to accelerate an identity crisis in people depending on their level of athletic identity investment. All sports and sporting experiences were altered to some extent by the pandemic. Some seasons were cancelled altogether while others were delayed. They all had some level of restricted fan access to view the games. In several college sports, student-athletes were able to play their seasons without losing a year of eligibility as they normally would. This combined with the implementation of the recent one-time transfer waiver rule where student-athletes are allowed to transfer without sitting out a year, has created many more available student-athletes for the same number of scholarship spots.
The inevitable consequence of this will be many prospective student-athletes who would usually sign college scholarships not having the opportunity to and then either not playing at all or playing at other levels of college athletics that may not have been their initial desire. This could potentially be devastating to individuals who had an elevated level of their identity investment in being a college athlete.
Some key questions are how much of the value that they see in themselves is predicated on the approval or external valuation of them by coaches and recruiting services? Have they bought into the narrative that sports are their only vehicle of social mobility? How much of their identity and elevated status is attached to being an athlete?
This predicament presents both challenges and opportunities for the student-athletes themselves and the many others who help to groom them at various levels of their development. Many athletes go into an unspoken, undiagnosed, and untreated depression after they have seen something that they invested their life into disappoint them. At that point the game and those who were attached to the game can become resented and even hated. If there is not adequate mental and psychological preparation, then problems will occur that could have been avoided.
Too many young people are being lost to a broken spirit and a shattered identity after their playing careers are over. The identity crisis that can occur at the end of formal competitive athletics should be anticipated, planned for, and proactively acted on. Colleges and universities should not just discard individuals after their playing careers are over.
