It’s safe to say that college athletics, in general, is a cut-throat business. People in high school don’t like to think of college sports as a business, but at the end of the day, it is. If you don’t perform or don’t have the right characteristics to fit into a program, you will get fired. It’s important to know what to do if this happens to you.
Unfortunately, it happens more and more every single year. College baseball teams are bringing in 45 and 50 guys for the fall season and make them compete for 35 spots. Being a freshman, you don’t know what to expect. In the first couple of weeks you think that your spot is set in stone and you don’t have a worry in the world; and a lot of the time they are. However, nothing is promised. If you do one thing off the field that the coaches don’t like or don’t have the attitude that the coaches are looking for to fit in with the makeup of the team and the team chemistry.
The most important thing for an athlete to do is to have a backup plan. For baseball, it could be having a place you know you can play at as a backup school. For me, if anything happened during my career that I didn’t make the team or was removed from the team, my backup plan was to go play division 3 ball at Roanoke College because I had a good relationship with the coach there and he recruited me out of high school. It’s equally important to have an idea of what you want to do if baseball doesn’t work out. If you have a career-ending injury however, it’s important to have a backup plan with all the extra time you are going to have. For me, it would’ve been getting a job at a golf course and play golf to keep my sanity.
It’s so important because mental health is the most important thing that anyone could have. Having a backup plan gives you a fall back so you don’t get dropped into the fire. I challenge you to find a backup plan for everything you do in life because those who are prepared, don’t panic.
How to be a Successful Collegiate Athlete 