If the stress of balancing academics and high-level athletics wasn’t enough, Division I athletes must also factor travel commitments into their schedules.
Travel can exhaust athletes while pushing them behind in school, but it can also help bond a team together as a family, multiple Pepperdine athletes said.
“I always say traveling impacts our schedule very heavily,” said Ava Maly, sophomore sprinter on Pepperdine’s Track team. “It definitely takes a toll on being exhausted the rest of the day and it’s hard to be ready for classes and weights later in the day.”
These commitments cause athletes to sometimes miss many days of school, multiple Pepperdine athletes said. Travel can take away time for the athletes to study and do assignments. Travel schedules can also cause athletes to lose sleep, which can have a negative effect on academic and athletic performance, according to research published by the Journal of Biological Rhythms.
Travel Schedules
Athletes travel for a variety of reasons. Most commonly, they must travel for matches, tournaments and preseason trainings. This travel can cost athletes valuable time and information, sometimes removing them from traditional college experiences, Ashley Mowreader, former managing editor for the Graphic, wrote in an Oct. 2 Inside Higher Ed article.
“We travel all across the country to play in tournaments,” said Lauren Gomez, senior on the Women’s Golf team. “They’re not very often in Southern California. So we fly everywhere to go play.”
Typically, the teams will start traveling on the weekend but miss Monday through Wednesday of school for a tournament. This happens multiple times each semester.
When the Women’s Golf team travels to play, Gomez said they are gone for around five days. Joshua Koo, junior on the Men’s Golf team, said even when the team tries to schedule travel around school, they can still miss at least two days.
The times the team leaves for the airport varies — another thing athletes must factor into their schedules.
Gomez said sometimes the Women’s Golf team’s leaves at 2:30 a.m., and other times, at 10 a.m.
Another travel factor revolves around the type of flight the athletes get to take.
Some Pepperdine teams, such as the Women’s Golf team, have been lucky. Gomez said the team has benefited from donors who have allowed them to use their private jets instead of taking cheaper airlines.
Some sports, such as cross country and track, have not been as lucky. Maly said the team has had some tough flight times this season which required waking up extra early.
One of these times was for the first meet of the season when the Waves traveled to Idaho for the Lauren McCluskey Memorial Open. Maly said the team had to leave their hotel at 3:30 a.m. to catch two flights back to Malibu.
“There can be times when transportation and accommodation are chosen in terms of what’s easiest versus for the athletes,” said Jessica Stallworth, visiting instructor of sport administration. “There are definitely continued areas of opportunity where we, as a university, can better support our athletes.”
In other cases, some Pepperdine athletes must also travel to other facilities for practices.
Alumna Nate Lannen (’24), a former runner for Pepperdine’s Cross Country and Track teams, said the team practices at 6:30 a.m. every morning of the week, with the exception of 7 a.m. on the weekends, primarily off campus.
“We leave around 6 a.m. with like a 5:35 or 5:30 a.m. wakeup time,” Maly said. “We carpool because a lot of people don’t have cars on campus.”
No matter the transportation, traveling can negatively impact athletes in many ways.
In general, athletes are having to travel more and more, which can cause travel fatigue and jet lag. These effects can increase illness and injury risk in athletes, while also influencing performance, Janse van Rensburg wrote in a July 14, 2021 Sports Medicine article.
Balancing Academics and Travel
Pepperdine athletes can practice around 20 hours a week, which is equivalent to a part-time job, Stallworth said. They must also add in prioritizing their physical and academic performance every week while traveling.
“We travel a lot,” Koo said. “We miss a lot of school for travel.”
This packed schedule affects the time athletes need to study and make up their missing work. Koo said athletes try to make up their missing work on the road, but this can become extremely stressful and difficult during heavy testing seasons.
“Last semester, we had a really busy season, and we were gone for like four weeks in a row, and then had to come back and take finals,” Gomez said. “It was super difficult to stay up to date with our assignments and our exams, and then you’re coming back and making up stuff.”
Cole Rasic, a graduate student and outside hitter on the Men’s Volleyball team, has had a lot of time to figure out what works best for him as a traveling student-athlete.
“I like to look at it [the schedule] ahead of time and plan things out in the open with my professors about what I’m missing early on,” Rasic said.
While this may work with some professors, Maly said the grace professors have with their student-athletes differs with each class.
“Some professors work with you to make up that time and other professors don’t care as much,” Maly said. “They don’t really give you as much leeway and you’re kind of just on your own. So it’s definitely stressful.”
Unfortunately, even with communication from the athlete, some professors are not willing to work with the travel demands.
“I was in an accounting class for my first week, I sent her [the professor] my travel letter,” Koo said. “She was like, ‘You’re going to miss 10 of my classes? That’s not good.’ So she just told me to drop it.”
Lannen said, personally, he hates missing classes because he feels as though he must be present in class to absorb the information.
“I always feel like I’m still behind,” Lannen said. “You just can’t really make up six hours of sitting in class on your own.”
On average, Lannen said he takes 17 or 18 units a semester. Balancing this heavy workload with athletics forces him to make some sacrifices.
“Typically what I do is I choose like, two or three classes that are my A-game classes, like, I’m gonna get an A in those classes,” Lannen said. “It’s usually what I’m passionate about, and what I want to do. Then, you know, there are just two classes, where I’m like, ‘Eh, I’ll take a B.’ I feel like that helps me balance it a lot better.”
An Additional Stress
Travel is an added stressor in athletes’ lives. For track, the early wake ups, the lack of sleep and always being stressed contributes to pressures Maly said she feels within her sport.
“You’re always moving, always going,” Maly said.
Lannen said sleep is one of the bigger pressures he feels within his sport, especially because of how important it is with the intense training of runners. Traveling for practice and competitions can gravely affect the amount of sleep athletes get.
“With getting behind and going to bed on time, you know, it’s a fair bit of pressure,” Lannen said. “It’s one of the things that is not avoidable, so you have to learn how to cope.”
Gomez agreed with Maly and said traveling adds to the already-present pressures these Division I athletes have. These athletes are trying to balance everything while playing their best for the university.
“It’s just a lot of time away from school, and along with that comes the stress of just getting behind,” Gomez said. “I think just there is a lot of stress involved in trying to keep your grades up but also playing well and representing Pepperdine well on the golf course.”
For some athletes, it feels as though they can never fully catch up.
“Basically you’re always catching up, you’re not really on top of everything,” Koo said. “You’re kind of always behind a little bit.”
Benefits from Traveling
While many of the athletes talked about the negative side of traveling, they also all said it brings positive team connection and memories.
“It’s kind of a camaraderie type of thing,” Koo said. “We all woke up at six o’clock in the morning together, went on the little Sprinter van to LAX. It’s like vacation with your family, almost, but an every week kind of thing. So it definitely builds a bond with the team.”
Gomez shared this sentiment of bonding with her team. She said no matter how crazy the travel is, her team is doing it together and are there for one another.
“We all have each other, so that’s helpful,” Gomez said. “A lot of us have the same major and we have a lot of the same classes together. So when we are on the road, we can help each other do assignments together. It makes it not so difficult when we have each other. I think that’s helped a lot.”
Some athletes, such as Rasic, said traveling as a student-athlete has brought him some core memories during his time in college.
“A lot of fun happens on those road trips, like a lot of the team bonding and fun times,” Rasic said. “Even just team meals and the bus rides on all these away games and travel trips are where the memories are made.”
All of the athletes focused on the bonds travel gives them with their teammates, but Stallworth said she has seen bigger positive effects come out of these demanding schedules.
“Time management, prioritization and communication are three key, functional skills that every employer looks for in a potential and prospective employee,” Stallworth said. “I think those are really valuable and transferable skills that will help them [student-athletes] in the real world.”
Stallworth said if Pepperdine changes their ways of supporting athletes, the university can also benefit as a whole.
“I think if we can work on grace and having a better understanding, and ultimately being better advocates for them [student-athletes], while they’re students,” Stallworth said. “I think it’s going to strengthen the alumni connection that they have postgrad. When they do make it big, they feel that much more supported by us as a university.”
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