Sassaman-Student Athlete Career Development

Student-Athlete Career Development: Initial Research and Personal Thoughts 

I’m thrilled to be in the student-athlete focused group for our projects.  As a former student athlete, I feel as though sports can have a huge impact on a person’s life and character, and therefore shape their career choices.  As article that our group found examines football players at a Division 1 university by using Savickas’ constructivist method.  I think Savickas’ method can be extremely effective, and I was eager to see how the researchers conducted the study and what results they found. 

                Researchers were interested to examine the graduate degree programs pursued by student athletes who exhausted their undergrad coursework but still has NCAA eligibility for their sports.  They were particularly interested in “revenue generating sports” since those athletes repeatedly have lower academic marks than non-revenue generating sport athletes and non-athletes.  Researchers interviews 14 football players who were on some type of scholarship and had used a red shirt year at some point.  Participants were interviewed by researchers regarding career ambitions general life themes, as researchers were using some elements of Savickas’ career construction interview.  Results showed that most participants were pursuing a master’s degree in line with their career goals, rather than just take additional undergrad courses.  The researchers emphasized that these results showed that career development is a lifelong process. 

                Honestly, I did not really like this article that much.  I thought it was pretty biased, it seemed the researchers were searching for exceptions.  Also, I didn’t think that it revealed that much about how someone could use this in the future to assist student athletes.  They did include a section of suggestions on how to assist student athletes at the collegiate level, but it wasn’t exactly specific or concrete.  Since even before beginning the school counseling program, I have been very weary of implementing ideas into schools with students, because of my experience in high school counseling offices.  I have seen the demands of counselors and students and I just don’t feel convinced that Savickas’ constructivist theory can be properly implemented with hundreds of students given the time demand.  I’m eager to use this project to figure out how to assist a large group of students at one time with their career development.  From here out, I will be narrowing my search with those criteria in mind: time constraints, and being able to apply to a wide audience of students.  I’m sure that there are methods that can be done that are effective in a short time frame, and I’m eager to find them for use in my future career as a school counselor. 

References

Haslerig, S. J., & Navarro, K. M. (2016). Aligning athletes’ career choices and graduate degree pathways: Implications for 21st-century career development professionals. Journal Of Career Development, 43(3), 211-226.