Abigail Ramirez is a freshman journalism major at MU. She is an opinion columnist who writes political and social commentary for The Maneater.
School, practice, sleep. School, practice, sleep. This was the glorious, yet monotonous cycle for 10 of the 18 years of my life. While some people had family, friends, religion or school as the center of their lives, I had softball — the focal point my entire world revolved around.
Friends of mine would go out to the local coffee shops or malls after school, creating memories and enjoying each others’ company, while I put on my practice clothes and laced up my cleats for training. While some may think I was missing out on my adolescence, I did not feel like I was missing out on anything. Softball, my team — or extended family — and my coaches were my childhood.
After a difficult high school season filled with injuries and stress from school, I still could not get myself to quit.
“What would I do if I did not have practice? If I did not have tournaments? Nothing,” I thought.
However, after four rounds of physical therapy, signing up for three Advanced Placement classes and joining the school newspaper in preparation for college applications, I, for the first time in my life, decided to prioritize academics over sports. Unfortunately, I did not know what trouble laid ahead of me.
While rediscovery and relaxation is what all childhood athletes want when they quit, they all are blind to one fact: they do not know how to live a normal life.
Right after making the decision to quit, people often feel liberated, amazed that they finally put themselves before their team. This is the feeling former players speak of when they encourage others to quit their sports, and I am no exception. This euphoric experience is one of the main reasons I tell my friends that quitting softball was one of the best decisions of my life. However, it got worse before it got better.
“It becomes a part of you,” said Jenna Rains, MU freshman and former softball player. “It becomes your sport, your thing, and then you have to just let it go. It’s just sad and hard.”
Slowly, freedom fades, and confusion and uncertainty sets in. The questions that make players hesitant to quit — the what ifs and what nows — rack your brain and kickstart a long, difficult process of rediscovery.
Because sports took up every second of former athletes’ lives for years, suddenly quitting flips everything on its head. First, the question of how to exercise without everyday practices begins to set in. Many coaches do not cross-train their athletes, or in other words, teach them how to do any sort of exercise outside of their sport.
“How do you recreate that identity when it’s only you and you’re not a part of a team?” said Abigail Klapatauskas, MU freshman and former basketball player and cross country runner. How do you have that motivation and support? How do you surrender yourself to the inevitability that some days it’s okay to just allow yourself to not run or walk?”
While the decreased amount of training could have been predicted, the effects of those actions could not have been: a direct result of a lack of conversation around athletes’ experiences. Post-retirement, people’s bodies begin to change as they work out less. Whether they gain weight, lose weight or lose muscle, the body they once recognized begins to disappear. For many, especially myself, this was one of the hardest things to grapple with.
Even worse is the feeling of ostracization from your former life. No one warns athletes that their newfound freedom comes with having to completely abandon their former family, whether they want to or not. Because competitive sports are tunnel-visioned on winning, many coaches eliminate outside distractions and unfortunately, that includes former players. As the teams continue to practice together and old teammates form cliques (which, of course, excludes retirees), former athletes can begin to spiral into a deep abyss of loneliness.
“The other girls on the basketball team — I just could never maintain a really good relationship with them afterwards because I was almost always viewed as a failure, which is unfortunate,” Klapatauskus said. “It prevents girls from having the mindset to go out and try everything because there’s this expectation that you don’t get to try it; you have to maintain it for the next four years. And that’s not very sustainable.”
Between the change in your body and the feeling of abandonment, one question looms over your mind, a question no one could have prepared you for: Who am I if not an athlete?
For former childhood athletes, life outside of sports is not “normal life,” and the difficulty of rediscovering who you are after retirement is dramatically underestimated. It is not a stretch to say that you lose your entire identity and that being scared of starting a new life is not only challenging, but terrifying.
A great first step in the right direction would be forming clubs at universities dedicated to starting and continuing conversations about the difficulties of life after sports. While some former athletes may want to continue playing in intramural sports, others may not feel comfortable diving back into their athletic career so soon. This being said, a club that welcomes athletes from all different backgrounds and encourages dialogue regarding the difficulties of life post-athletic career may be beneficial for those who just want to talk about sports. Also, it would be a great way for people to make new friends at the start of the year.
What matters now is that we create an encouraging environment for retirees to feel comfortable opening up about their stories and the struggles they experience. No one is alone in this change; more people are going through the same change than we think. If we can create a community built on understanding and open conversations, the feeling of loneliness and confusion post-retirement may be slightly remedied.
Cardinals Care is an organization led by the St. Louis Cardinals that works to build baseball and softball parks in local, under-resourced communities in Missouri and Illinois. They also donate money to non-profit youth organizations and run a free baseball league for kids who may not have had an opportunity to play otherwise. https://www.mlb.com/cardinals/community/donate-to-cardinals-care
Edited by Sarah Rubinstein | srubinstein@themaneater.com