Mountaineer Minutes

Making The Cut

By Brittany Moorehead

NSA Girl's hockey celebrates after winning the State tournament last season.

Student-athlete is becoming a more prevalent term in the American society. Society use to be concerned with only academics, then primarily academics with a little bit of athletics in spare time, and now academic and athletic importance is fairly even.

For me, academics and sports have always been really important but academics have always come first. Now that I’m approaching college, I believe that hockey and my academics are fairly equal in importance. I have good grades and want to maintain my GPA but if it comes down to getting a decent grade and having an amazing weekend at a hockey tournament or getting an amazing grade and having a decent weekend, I would choose having an amazing performance on the ice.

Being a post graduate at National Sports Academy may influence my opinion in this matter. I returned to NSA solely to create more opportunities for me athletically and to better prepare me for hockey in college. My decision to postpone college had nothing to do with my grades or SAT scores and this may be why I feel my hockey performance slightly outweighs my academic performance.

The rise in the importance of athletics is making for a more competitive sports world whether it be at the collegiate or professional level. Collegiate sports are tough to make it at the Division 3 level and even harder to make it at the Division 1 level. This competitiveness has to do with the tremendous increase in participation in sport. With this growing number, coaches have more choice when it comes to evaluating and choosing their players.

My sport of hockey is growing tremendously on the women’s side. This puts a huge amount of pressure on me when I’m playing in front of college scouts. There is no way of knowing what kind of player that a certain school is looking for, which is a little bit nerve racking for me. Every player has a certain contribution to bring to the team whether it be a goal scorer, a play maker, or simply a hard worker. I have no clue what kind of player these scouts are looking for so I just play my game and work hard.

Young kids use to play any sport they could and their parents would drive them from soccer practice to football practice or dance class. In today’s society, this still happens at a very young age but kids are beginning to choose one single sport to focus on. By focusing on one sport, athletes have a lot of time that they can devote to getting better at their sport. They don’t have to worry about being too tired to go to football practice or any other sport.  

If two student-athletes are even athletically, then the school will choose the athlete with the better grades. If two student-athletes are even academically then the one with more athletic skills will be chosen.

When it comes down to, “making the cut,” one must be prepared both academically and athletically. If a student-athlete falls short on either end of the stick, then that could possibly be their breaking point. This puts additional pressure on student-athletes today.