By the time I was in middle school, it was my dream to play college soccer.
But it’s a dream that many athletes share and far fewer achieve. With the odds of playing NCAA Division 1 soccer 48:1, making it on the Gopher Soccer team was undoubtedly a dream come true.
Entering college soccer in the Big Ten, I expected to be challenged physically and mentally, but I was not expecting to walk away with some of the biggest lessons of my life.
In ways I did not expect, playing college soccer prepared me for success in “the real world” and helped me cultivate some incredibly essential skills. I suspect college sports can do the same for others as well.
Whether or not you’re a current or former college athlete, these are some key qualities to embrace as a post-grad.
1. “Embrace the suck”
One major differentiator between high school and college sports is simply the grind. With 20+ games packed into about 3 months, the college soccer season is incredibly demanding, but it’s more than the games.
Every single thing about college sports is just harder. The fitness, the lifting, the classes, it’s all a huge step up and all at once. There’s no way around it; some parts of college soccer just sucked.
But that’s what I learned to love. My coach had an infamous saying, “embrace the suck.” What she meant is instead of trying to escape and rush past the hard parts, embrace them. Learn to love the burn, learn to run (no pun intended) toward the challenges. At the time, I wanted to roll my eyes with a “yeah, right,” but it’s something I’ve taken with me.
After college, life is hard. Certain aspects of your job and “adulting” will suck. Enjoy it. Appreciate it. Use the hard times as opportunities to grow and fall in love with being challenged. It will get you a lot further than complaining or avoiding something just because it’s difficult.
2. Compete
At every level of sports, competition is an important factor. It’s part of what makes them fun. Once you get to college sports, competition becomes THE primary factor. College coaches depend on winning to keep their jobs, meaning they play to win, not to make sure everyone has fun. As a player, you’re pitted in constant competition with your opponents, teammates, and yourself.
Competition for comparison has many drawbacks, but competing with yourself is invaluable. The players and teams that learn to compete against only themselves and their own standards see far better results on the pitch, and that’s the type of competition that propels you through life.
College soccer taught me the rawest, deepest sense of competition. I had to find ways to block out what others were doing and focus on just getting better and raising the bar for myself and my team. In doing that, I found personal and team success, and I grew in so many ways.
Outside of soccer, competing is critical. It’s what prevents complacency in a job. It’s what helps you to always continue growing and moving forward. Learning how to compete against where you’re now will drive you to where you want to go in any part of life.
3. Hard work is the minimum
How many times have you heard someone justify a result they want but didn’t get just because they worked so hard? “I should get an A on that project because I worked so hard on it and spent hours on it” or “I deserve a promotion for my hard work.”
Well, in college soccer, it was often “I deserve more playing time because I’m working so hard.” That was quickly nipped in the bud. At that level, working hard is the bare minimum. You aren’t special because you work hard; everyone works hard and expects their teammates to do the same.
In life, hard work should always be the minimum, and it doesn’t guarantee you anything. Working hard does not equate results. Once you understand and internalize that lesson, it’s a lot easier to let go of personal bias and figure out where you need to improve. Instead of focusing on how hard you work, consider HOW you work, and if you’re growing in the areas you need to. Instead of running to your boss to complain that you don’t get what you should for working hard, have a conversation about the areas you need to improve in and ask for help developing a plan to monitor progress.
4. Grit
Grit is something you must build, and in so many ways, I gained grit through college soccer. The physical aspect alone produced some grit. If you’ve ever spoken to a college athlete, you would have heard about the multiple workouts a day, grueling sprints, heavy lifting, and more.
Enduring that much physical demand while also taking a full college class load is very difficult.
There’s also a mental aspect of college sports that helps you build grit. You’re put in high-pressure situations, face injuries, and have many challenges you wouldn’t expect. The top athletes develop grit. They find a way to push through any and everything and come out better on the other side.
In life, there will be very VERY trying times no matter what you do. Grit is what gets you through. You have to endure and persevere, and since college, I’ve faced so many worse obstacles than I imagined. I am 100% certain the grit I built through college soccer helped me get through.
Instead of letting hard times fold you, find a way to face them, and power through.
5. Discipline over motivation
If being a successful student-athlete is about one thing, it’s discipline. The best student-athletes master discipline over motivation. Do they want to go to class every day and spend hours on projects and studying? No. Are they thrilled about every workout? Nope. But top student-athletes do all of it anyway because they have discipline.
Many people who struggle to work out every day or stay on track after college struggle with discipline. Even some former college athletes fail to remain disciplined once they don’t have the accountability of coaches and teammates. The key to being consistent is to be disciplined, and creating the right habits facilitates discipline.
Motivation is what you need to get started, that’s true, but discipline is what keeps you going. Here’s a little secret: you don’t need “to feel motivated” to work out, walk your dog, clean your house, or work; you need to be disciplined. Motivation is you WHY, but discipline has to be your HOW.
6. Collaboration
We all know that sports help us cultivate teamwork and cooperation. Once again, with the high stakes and grueling nature of college sports, collaboration is not always easy.
After my difficult freshman season of coming in off of the bench, I became a regular starter. Freshman year was more about my personal development and getting where I needed to be the contributor I was capable of for the team. By sophomore year, I started every game, playing nearly every minute, but I was not done. From that point on, all I heard from the coaches was about “leadership.” They pushed me to improve my leadership, direct teammates on the field, and help get the most out of those around me.
My problem was my level of competitiveness. I demanded perfection from myself and my teammates, but that doesn’t always get the best of people. One of the biggest challenges I had was communicating with my teammates in a way that would help the team and ultimately help us accomplish what we wanted. I had to make an extra effort to give compliments when they were earned, focus on my tone, and share directive feedback. Ultimately, I did my best to become a better leader because I wanted to win, and I realized that was part of what would get us there. I was only one player of our 11 on the field, but if I directed and communicated correctly with others, I could help prevent issues and help the entire team increase our performance.
Teamwork is about collaboration. It’s about combining our skills with others to work toward a common goal. There are many different facets of teamwork, and college sports brings out many of them. College sports expose your weaknesses as a teammate and show you the importance of communicating correctly and working together while still competing with each other. No matter what type of job you do, whether at home, in an office, or on a field, teamwork is critical.
College soccer was incredibly challenging and forced me to grow in many ways I didn’t expect, but it was one of the best eras of my life.
I lived my dream of being a collegiate athlete while also cultivating some of the most important life skills for “the real world.” Whether or not you played college sports, you can take these lessons with you in every stage of life.
Originally published in the Post Grad Survival Guide on Medium.com.