Life After Sports Summary

Kristina Navarro’s journal article, “An Examination of the Alignment of Student-Athlete’s Undergraduate Major Choices & Career Field Aspirations in Life After Sports” examines the unique situations collegiate student-athletes(SA) navigate while working toward a degree and planning for their future. Driven by the individuality emphasis of Mark Savickas’ career construction theory, a qualitative approach was employed to capture each SA participants’ stories and tales. Few research studies exist that focuses solely on the SA population and Navarro’s research was aimed at understanding the impact of life experiences on choosing a major and how the chosen major lines up with their career aspirations (Navarro, 2015). The 29 voluntary participants
Seperating the SAs from the general student population, allowed several impactful factors to come to light. When faced with choosing a major, eligibility and availability issues can force a SA to choose a major that allows them to keep their comittment to team obligations and meet requirements to maintain their eligibility within NCAA standards, rather than choose based on their perosnal interests and goals (Navarro). Navarro found SAs that had an identity independent of their sports role and those who utilized the college resources outside of the athletic department, had a better grasp on what they wanted and how they could achieve it. The results of this study accentuated the need for additional resources tailored for SAs that go beyond the athlete role and that place a priority of the student part of the student-athlete identity. This research project and process relied on each individual’s honesty and individual experience and because of those limitations, it does not have external validity. The findings were representative of the university where the athletes attended, but to apply findings on a larger scale, studies like these are the jumping off point to create such quantitative
Beyond the general population I am interested in working with, adolescents, I would like to specialize in sports counseling/psychology. The most significant finding from Navarro’s article revolved around selecting a major. The NCAA has certain rules for declaring majors and completing percentages of course work. Pressure from athletic advisors who are more concerned with eligibility than meaningful learnings and work, is not entirely something I faced in college, but I have several friends who could not choose the major of their choice because classes were only offered during practices or because travel would cause them to miss too many classes for a course. Where I would apply the findings from the research is adjusting working with revenue versus nonrevenue sports. The revenue sports are the sports that bring in money to the school and have possibilities of becoming professional with the opportunity to make millions of dollars. The goals of the revenue athletes are likely to be more focused on sports as a future, while the nonrevenue athlete does not have the same potential future earning in their sport and is looking for a career that still satisfies their athletic and competitive inclinations. It is important to me as a counselor to have this knowledge and tailor my work to suit their needs and realities. Student-athletes tend to have an identity