Last week, we discussed the shrinking upperclassmen presence in Big Green varsity sports and some of the common rationales for Big Green athletes to leave their teams prior to senior year. While student-athletes stop competing for a variety of reasons, life as a retired Division I athlete leaves individuals and their programs in an impressionable position.
Across campus, varsity sports teams are some of the most tight-knit groups you can find. For freshmen, teammates are the first people they meet when they arrive for preseason and continue to be the people that they spend the majority of their time with. The friendships that form off the court or field reinforce the strength of team in competition, and there isn't a single former varsity athlete we talked to who didn't praise the value of their playing experience at Dartmouth. No one that we interviewed has any regrets regarding their decision to start out their college experience as a varsity athlete, and this consensus reinforces the sad truth that the disconnect between coaches' expectations and life outside athletics at Dartmouth sometimes prove to be just too incompatible.
For most athletes, the upperclassmen on their sports teams play an integral role in defining their first term on campus and shaping the trajectory of their whole Dartmouth experience. The captains and other senior athletes on teams are tremendous resources for the underclassmen and it is a strange dynamic that in many sports this support base is dwindling and altering the atmosphere of a team.
One former Big Green athlete, who wished to remain anonymous to avoid offending former teammates, said the team now has "become so focused on [its sport] that it has lost a lot of balance. People who do other things on campus decided to stop, and the team lost its diversity of experiences."
Other athletes and former athletes agreed that playing varsity sports can consume a student's Dartmouth experience if he or she wants it to. No one, athlete or NARP, can deny that it is impossible to fully explore the diversity of opportunities that this campus offers, and a D-I sports commitment makes this even harder.
While many athletes drop their sports to pursue academic interests or other hobbies, a defining characteristic of a Big Green student-athlete is a commitment to athletics. This passion for competition and fitness lives in on former athletes, as most of the former varsity athletes reinforced the importance of staying active and continuing to get in a regular workout.
Some have joined teams of their former sport at the club level, while others have picked back up on sports they played less competitively in high school. A number remarked that they have continued to set and work towards goals, whether it is competing in long running races or setting personal lifting challenges.
Life is full of choices and college is a time in one's life when these begin to define one's future. Several years ago, the NCAA sponsored a series of commercials with the tagline, "There are over 380,000 student athletes, and most of us go pro in something other than sports." With the large majority of college athletes, especially those graduating from Ivy League schools, pursuing career paths outside of the professional leagues, college should be a time when playing sports can fit seamlessly into this life plan.
There will undoubtedly be members of our class whose best memories of Dartmouth are playing for a team, and even the former Big Green athletes we talked to reflect fondly on their experience as varsity athletes here, but the sad truth is that for a variety of reasons, underclassmen far outweigh the upperclassmen presence on many of the teams here.
