A Dancing Duke

A Dancing Duke

Allie Petzold

Edited by: Megan Gardner

USA today noted that college athletes are putting in the equivalent of full-time work weeks solely dedicated to their sport. Coming into college as a freshman can be stressful enough between adjusting to classes but freshman athletes similar to Taylor are taking on a “full-time job” as well. Have you ever thought about joining a sports team at the collegiate level? This video will illustrate the major time commitment involved with this choice as well as other tips and insights of information from a college athlete herself. This interview will address how much time dancers and college athletes in general give up for their sport.  A survey was taken from a pool of Division I and Division II athletes and they said, “they consider themselves more of athletes than students.” This demonstrates that the commitment Taylor talks about in the video is indeed true. I am hoping that students debating whether to partake in a collegiate sport will take into consideration the commitment they are about to take on. Hopefully, this will help them make the decision of whether or not they want to take their sport to a level past high school.  People should take the advice Taylor gives them in this video clip into consideration when deciding if they want to further their career in their particular sport. I talked to Taylor a freshman dancer here at JMU about how she adjusted to the time commitment a college sport entails and why she wanted to partake in her sport from the beginning.

 

Taylor in this segment explains why she chose to dance and the process she went through to get to where she is today. She also reiterates the time commitment that comes along with dancing. In her “on season” she talks about the daily commitment her and her teammates make. Taylor says that managing her time between school, social life and her sport can be hard. This segment ends with advice from Taylor to college athletes, where she tells them if they love the sport they are involved in to continue it and try their freshman year playing at the collegiate level to see if they like it. She loves the dance team despite the time commitment so she urges other incoming athletes to go for the challenge of a collegiate sport.

It is common knowledge that along with any collegiate sport comes benefits such as a physical and social benefit. In the following clip, Taylor describes how she enjoys the physical benefit of her sport. This is probably true for many other college athletes but Dr. Michael Gillespie, a Duke philosopher said one of the major benefits they get is the skill of time management. He says, “athletes learn time-management skills by necessity“.This helps them in everything they do in life whether it be school, their sport or later on in life used in their career.

In this section Taylor talks about her experience of being on the dance team. She says that although she did want to be in a sorority and apart of other things she loves being apart of the team. She describes the differences between dancing at a high school level and dancing at the collegiate level. This clip illuminates the team bonding and friendship aspect of being apart of a dance team in college. Being apart of something like the dance team gives you connections to all ages and types of girls. Being able to relate to other people you are close with that are going thru the exact same situation as you makes balancing your time and the pressure of being a student athlete easier.

 

Throughout these interviews, prospective college athletes will learn more about the time commitment that comes along with being apart of a team. I hope that current college students after watching this video respect all the time and commitment athletes put towards their individual sport. No matter their sport i am hoping that they will look at them and admire what they do for their sport. Taylor even hopes to further her dancing career to be a Rocket or Redskinettes dancer in her future.

 

Works Cited

“NCSA Athletic Recruiting Blog.” NCSA Athletic Recruiting Blog RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://www.ncsasports.org/blog/2012/03/07/new-research-shows-why-being-a-true-college-student-athlete-can-impact-the-next-40-years/>. 

“NCAA Survey Delves into Practice Time, Coaches’ Trust – USATODAY.com.”NCAA Survey Delves into Practice Time, Coaches’ Trust – USATODAY.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. <http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/2011-01-14-ncaa-survey_N.htm>.