Tips for sports-loving seniors after graduation

In case the post-midnight gathering of rowdy seniors early Friday morning wasn’t reminder enough, Commencement is just around the corner. We seniors are packing up our dorms in just over a month and moving on to travel or graduate school or employment or perhaps even unemployment.

In any case, a major life change is in store, and just about all of us will face a huge shake-up to our daily routine: the times we eat, the hours we’re awake, the nature of our work. How will sports and fitness fit in among these significant life transitions?

Let’s assume one aspect of our sports lives has and will remain relatively static throughout the many phases of our existence: professional sports allegiances. I was a Cubs fan 10 years ago, I’m a Cubs fan now, and I’ll be a Cubs fan in 10 years.

But before we all get too depressed, let’s consider that pretty much everything else will change. I think my life has taken a fairly typical path for someone who likes sports and isn’t a bad athlete. Elementary school consisted of regional basketball competition and a local Little League championship. In middle school I started on my school’s basketball and baseball teams. Attending high school with 2,300 others meant running track and cross-country skiing on a golf course.

College has been an improvement. I have had a chance to play intramural floor hockey every Wednesday night for four years. It has been great fun to cheer on the Lions in Levien, in the University Gymnasium, and at Baker. Dodge Fitness Center has been available from 6 a.m. to midnight every weekday. Writing and editing for Spectator has provided a valuable and unique new perspective on sports competition. But next year, everything will change.

Next year, there won’t be any club sports. There won’t be any university football games or “free” gym membership. Playing sports and staying fit will require a fresh commitment in time and money. For those of us who are not in a university athletic program, it will also take willpower and dedication to keep sports a part of our post-college lives.

That’s why sports involvement cannot just be a hobby, or a phase, or a temporary solution. To sustain these life upheavals it must be a culture. It is important to ensure that sports or fitness routines can be maintained in an environment vastly different from the one we are so used to.

College is not necessarily the easiest place to develop such a culture. The academic calendar is chock-full of disruptive vacations: a day, a week, a month, even a whole summer. A semester abroad can certainly interfere. Even a class schedule that changes twice per year can get in the way—let’s face it, most of us don’t exactly follow a nine-to-five routine during our college years.
But powering through a major life transition is even harder. To all other seniors out there who have established some sort of sports routine over four years at college, I offer the following advice for the upcoming changes:

Pick your sports: Identify the sports activities you most enjoy or that make you feel best when you’re finished. Do you like playing softball in the summer? Pickup basketball at a gym? Does visiting a fitness center three times per week make you feel good the next morning?

Explore your options: Wherever you settle down next year, locate a gym. Search the Internet for some pickup leagues. While you’re at it, check out the pro sports situation in the area.

Make an investment: Putting money down isn’t easy for a recent grad, but it’s actually a pretty effective incentive to follow through on your plans. No one wants to sign a one-year membership contract at a gym and stop going after two months. At the very least, a monetary investment allows guilt to become a factor when you’re deciding whether or not to get up an hour earlier to work out in the morning.

Set a routine: Can’t emphasize this one enough. If you sign up for a fitness class Tuesdays at 8:00, make sure never to miss it. It’s a slippery slope: the more you skip, the easier skipping becomes. Develop a weekly schedule and try not to deviate from it.

Hopefully these steps will help us all make it through this transition. I imagine graduating will be significantly harder for many of Columbia’s student-athletes, whose diets and workout schedules are geared for NCAA competition and not postgraduate life.

For now, though, in these last few weeks, let’s go ahead and embrace what we still have. Cheer on the Lions. Go to Dodge. Run in Riverside. May 19 is awfully soon, but there’s still plenty of college left.

Jacob Levenfeld is a List College senior majoring in history and Talmud.
sports@columbiaspectator.com