University is one of the most impactful times for student athletes — the influences of coaching not only function as inspiration on the court, but continue in their daily lives as well. Since UW Warriors are in academic programs while participating in sports, they face the challenge of balancing training and competitions with studying and tests. So, how can a student athlete deal with these pressures? Is it possible to maintain a healthy balance between school and sports?
Jessica Roque, coach for the women’s basketball team at UW, has coached the sport for almost a decade now, and helped answer those questions. When asked how maintaining a balance between athletics and academics is critical to student success, she believes that “the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, so if we’re not excellent in the classroom, it’s hard to be excellent on the court and vice versa.”
Roque built a framework for learning based on a student’s academic interests and other interests outside the court. She relates classroom learning to necessary lessons on the court, improvising to build learning strategies for each student individually. This helps build a balance between school life and work life, which remains a difficult task for most U-level athletes.
Roque also described the strategy of co-creation, meaning the integration of the athlete’s role in their own development process. Through this strategy, teaching and feedback are made equal to self-driven learning, empowering students to be conductors and drivers of their own development. This learning is solidified with formal meetings for goal setting, organized three times a year formally, and many more times informally. Planned skill development training and physical practice are also organized once a week, with five days a week available, if athletes want to use their own time for skill sessions. Roque advises that increasing a student’s autonomy over their own development can function as a form of motivation.
UW Warriors also tend to have a level of intrinsic motivation due to their willingness to pursue their sport at the university level. Although most involved in the sport aren’t playing with the goal of making it a career, Roque notes the potential for more professional athletes in the future.
Coaching in sports proves itself to be necessary to enhance a student athlete’s development, as it teaches valuable insight that can be implemented on or off the court. As far as lessons that she hopes her athletes remember most from her coaching, Roque responded, “Whether it’s immediately when they graduate, or years down the line, I hope for them the resounding message is that they just learn how to be autonomous women and go for the things that they want in life.”
