Doing well in academics while playing competitive sports is a difficult balance for the student-athletes at Delta College.
One of the most difficult challenges is time management. Doing well in class can be hard in itself and adding practice and competitions can squeeze time.
Guadalupe Bravo knows this struggle well.
“Right now I’m kind of having trouble balancing school and track because it’s kind of hard taking up five classes with track,” said Bravo.
“I get home late, and then I take a shower, and then I try to study like around night. Sometimes I have to wake up early to catch the bus. And if I’m on the road or in the car, sometimes I study in the car.”
Bravo struggled with balancing her time studying for classes after getting home from practice.
“I have to get out of classes I can’t manage,” said Bravo.
Adjunct Professor Jessica Hudon is a former D1 athlete in college basketball and understands the time management difficulties and other problems that is inherent to being a student-athlete.
“It’s kind of a universal student-athlete struggle,” said English Professor Jessica Hudon.
She hosts workshops to bring students up to speed when transitioning from high school level to a collegiate level.
“The classes are harder,” said Hudon. “The time commitments that you need to have for each sport intensifies as you are in college as well. And that can be a challenge for a lot of student athletes.”
Hudon elaborated on challenges athletes face.
“It could be a lot of things. Because every student is different. It could be home problems, it could be maybe being more focused on their sport instead of their schooling. They’re here for the sport and they’re kind of putting school on the backburner not realizing that school is actually what is going to propel them forward — A lot of people don’t know how to effectively take notes or effectively read a textbook,” she said.
Delta student-athletes do have support and help from the faculty.
Amy Soud is a research specialist for athletics and tries to figure out what student-athletes need the most.
“We take a survey of the needs every semester so it does change” said Soud.
“A lot of it I know that we just need books, supplies — We also want to make sure they’re integrated with the regular student body. “…We have a lot of students that maybe tested lower in English and math. So they’ll take the introductory English/math classes.
“We have a reading writing lab on campus, we have math & science learning lab. They may not know about those labs or might not know the library exists, so just introducing them to those resources to helps them to integrate and branch out.” Said Hudson
Students that are directed towards these labs can fill in “zone hours.” Zone hours are time spent in The Zone lab which helps students academically. Students under a 3.0 grade-point average need three hours weekly to stay in sports.
Zone hours help student-athletes stay up to date. The zone lab is located in Budd 205 and the hours are 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.