o l o g y Student athleticism requires a balance of studying and practicing that can be time consuming. value is good,” Hunter said. Crowd attendance and participation has a huge effect on any sports team’s morale, Hunter said. “When our games are poorly attended you can just see the energy level drop, and when our students come in large numbers or are very enthusiastic at an event you can just see the spirit and morale and effort increase,” he said. “Student spirit is very important to athletic success.” For Barden, attendance doesn’t have any negative effects on the team, only positive ones, she said. “If there is not anyone there, we are not concerned, because once you are on the field, you are in the game,” Barden said. “We’re going to play a game no matter what.” “We’re there to play, it’s what we do,” she said. To be a student athlete is to be a student first. Last fall, there were over 300 FLC athletes participating at the NCAA that managed a 2.99 GPA average, Hunter said. “That’s very difficult to do when you figure they have a nearly 40 hour a week job during the season,” he said. “They not only have a full class schedule but they have a full practice schedule and a full competition schedule.” Athletes often have to schedule their classes according to their sports schedule, Barden said. “It’s hard to take a lot of credits because we are missing a lot of class and leaving on weekends,” Barden said. Student athletes travel often, especially at FLC because of its isolated location, Barden said. “It seems like everyone is in Denver and we are just in this tiny mountain town,” Barden said. Many athletes study while they are traveling but for some it’s harder to concentrate in a van setting, she said. “You’re just with your friends all the time, because you’re on a team, everyone has homework, we are all on the same boat,”
Barden said. Demands of sports are more than they used to be and require time management and organizational skills from student athletes, said Mary Ann Erickson, professor of exercise science. “A lot of freshmen are not prepared for that,” she said. When freshman students begin their FLC career, the demands of the college, being organized, completing assignments, and being on their own, are all factors in success, she said. “But if you put sports on top of that, it can become overwhelming for some of those students,” Erickson said. The NCAA limits the number of hours per week teams can practice to about two to three hours a day, and this doesn’t include off-season training. “It’s very time consuming to be a student athlete, but we’re very proud that they perform at a high level athletically and an even higher level academically,” Hunter said. Within the moment of the game, different types of athletes approach their sport with different mind-sets, Erickson said. Much of the success depends on a student’s orientation. If a student is task-oriented, they will tend to look at a loss as something that can be improved upon, but if they are egooriented, they may look at a loss as a total failure, Erickson said. Competition is stressful and athletes learn how to attempt to facilitate that stress, Erickson said. “There are outside factors: parents, fans, coach’s stress,” Erickson said. “There is that kind of winning stress that’s out there, and we look at it as how to manage that.” Stress can be seen manifesting physically through symptoms such as sweaty palms, butterflies, loss of concentration and focus. There are techniques that can be used to help control that pressurized feeling, Erickson said. “That might be imagery, that might be through stopping, positive self-talk, or visualization,” Erickson said.
13