This past week was spring break!

For normal kids it means time off from school. Vacations to nice places. Partying and drinking having a great time with all your friends.

Then there’s the college athletes.

For us spring break is just another sacrifice that has to be made if your a spring sport that is.

This year my “spring break” included 3 different games and a couple tough practices. Didn’t help that we went 1-2 in those games but that’s besides the point.

Now I will give it to my coach that she tries to at lease get us to have a good time. As a team we went to her fathers restaurant in Brooklyn for a team dinner. We even got to play laser tag as a team. They were fun I was just exhausted.

But seeing snap chats of people on break and even having an entire open parking lot on campus makes you think about all the things I have given up as a student athlete.

Every season has to give up some type of break that normal students have.

For the fall athletes it’s the summer. When everyone is enjoying the hot summer weather your preparing yourself to say your goodbyes about 1 month before classes start. Preseason is waiting to destroy you.

Double sessions in the blistering humid heat. Sun scorching down giving you the tan that you’ve been waiting for all summer. Just not the tan lines you desired.

For the winter athletes it’s well the 2 month winter break. Fall and spring athletes are actually extremely sympathetic to them for this. When everyone is anticipating the end of the semester to go home and get a break from being away at school, winter athletes are still here.

They play all throughout the holiday season. Yeah they’re able to go home for a couple days at a time but who doesn’t want to be with their family and loved ones for the holiday season?

For the spring athletes it’s like I said before. Spring break. And if it comes down to it even ending the winter break early to come back for preseason practices.

These aren’t the only sacrifices made these are just the icing on the cake.

Athletes sacrifice their time, their money, their grades, their bodies even their mental health for their sports. It’s like having a full time job. You have practice, film, lifting, study hall hours, classes and homework. All while being sore and tired while people criticize your every move. Then fit in eating and sleeping my personal 2 favorite things to do.

Now athletes may whine about not being able to go away for breaks. May whine about staying on campus for practices during them. But when it comes down to it they’ve also never experienced them.

I guess it’s the fantasy of it and wanting what you can never have. Not ever experiencing something to know what it’s like.

Deep deep down inside of every college athlete is a student who wonders how their life would be different if they’d decided to not play in college.

For some it’s harder to picture than others.

All the sacrifices that you make for a sport to just vanish. And your just a normal student.

A student who gets to experience all breaks. A student who can relax some days and watch Netflix. A student who has time to do all their homework and strive while doing it. A student who can have a job to pay for things instead of constantly asking their parents for money. A student who can sit down to eat breakfast lunch AND dinner.

Just a normal student.

The dictionary defines an athlete as “a person trained or gifted in exercises or contests involving physical agility, stamina, or strength; a participant in a sport, exercise, or game requiring physical skill.”

But if you ask an athlete what defines them as an athlete, the sacrifices they make won’t be one of them and neither will their skills.