Spartan Daily

Inside the life of a Spartan Athlete

Student athletes are bridled with dual responsibilities at SJSU.

They are responsible for their performance on a field, and in a classroom.

Despite the added stresses that this can bring, Travis Raciti, a sophomore child development major and defensive lineman on the SJSU football team, said he enjoys being in a position where he can play the sport he loves.

“It’s something where I can get most of my tension, or aggression, or just go have fun,” he said. “It’s something where I get to go get all my energy out, and just release it in a good way.”

Lauren Sanchez, a senior soccer player at SJSU, has played the beautiful game for 17 years.

She is a student athlete at SJSU, playing for SJSU with an athletic scholarship.

She usually spends her day at school, along with other classmates, many of whom work jobs, serve as teachers assistants, or learn at internships.

Sanchez and her team, however, do not head for a desk after classes. They eat, and brace themselves for an evening of weight lifting, conditioning and drills.

“It’s different every day Tuesday through Saturday,” she said. “Monday we have. Tuesday is our hard day because its mostly fitness day. Wednesday we have practice from 8 to 10 so its tough.

“We lift on Tuesdays and Wednesdays as well. Thursdays are usually easy depending on whether we have a game or not on Friday. Fridays are usually game days and Saturdays are usually recovery days.”

The lifestyle often proves demanding for student athletes across a wide spectrum of sports, but the demands offer vary, as exemplified in the forms of different athlete‘s needs for different diets.

Britney Helm, a sophomore softball player, said her dietary restrictions were not very strict, but her lifestyle as an athlete requires her to constantly be refueling her body.

This means that although she would prefer to always be eating healthy foods, it is not always the case.

Forest Hightower, a sophomore football player, said on his team, dietary restrictions varied according to position.

“Some need to eat more to gain weight and get bigger,” he said. “Some just have to stay quick so they can’t eat as much.”

Monique Coble, a member of the women’s basketball team, said the team did not restrict her diet, but that generally, she would eat light before a practice and indulge in carbohydrate heavy foods afterwards.
The main point that her staff always pressed upon her is that she should always be drinking water and remain hydrated, she said.

Having been involved in athletics her whole life, Coble switched sports several times before arriving at basketball.

Originally a gymnast for 9 years, she said she became quite proficient in gymnastics, until the point where she hit a ceiling.

“They said I couldn’t progress to the all-star team in gymnastics so I was kind of doing the same thing, the same routine everyday,” she said. “So I decided I was going to quit that.”

She then switched to swimming, where she encountered success but failed to find the same passionate drive to keep her interested in the sport.

“When I swam it was fun for me, but it just wasn’t the type of sport for me,” she said. “I didn’t like being synchronized.”

She said she started taking an interest in basketball at this time because her sisters played and she had been around it for awhile.

After beginning basketball, she said her height provided a natural advantage, and she quickly learned how play in the role of the low-post.

“It wasn’t until high school where I really started getting super focused with basketball,” she said.

Though she participated in volleyball and soccer, she became committed to basketball up until her career at SJSU.

“It’s pretty much the only sport I did spend the majority of my life playing.”

When asked if they played another sports, most athletes had a list of other sports that they would play with friends or had played in the past, but all made it clear that they had one area of expertise.

Tony Popovich, a freshman justice studies major and defensive lineman on the football team said being an athlete means that one cannot risk their health or injury in ‘stupid outside activities’ off the football field, providing an added layer of responsibility.

He said one the key skills being a student athlete teaches is learning how to detach oneself from emotions of frustration and exasperation.

“Not getting too tied up with having a bad day, having a bad week in school,“ he said. “Just trying to be able to let things go and fix it the next day.”

While members of different teams all have varying amounts of time off, Raciti, Popovich, Helm and Hightower all said they enjoyed watching movies in their leisure hours.

Raciti and Popovich also said they enjoyed spending time with their girlfriends and playing video games.

Coble said she spent most of her spare time resting her body or going through light training exercises.

Raciti said that there were three main things that one needed to succeed as a Spartan Athlete at SJSU.

The first step, he said, was to brace oneself mentally, largely through the process of setting goals.

“Mentally, you have to prepare for what you’re trying to accomplish, you have to think about it dream about,” he said. “Take a second, visualize what you want to do and how you are going to achieve that goal.”

The next step of preparation was preparing the body to endure a full season of punishment and exertion, specifically through injury resistance training.

Finally, athletes must prepare themselves emotionally, because in all competitive sports, things sometimes go well and sometimes go wrong.

Sanchez said although the life of a student athlete is often grueling and difficult, the experience is one she finds rewarding.

“Yes its tough being a student athlete,” she said. “But its worth it. I would totally rather be a student athlete than just a regular student.”

 Sidebar: Athletics rally school spirit