It happens every single semester: A week of lock-down studying and stress shapes your entire life.
Long hours in the library are a common aspect of student’s lives during finals week. Students’ plates are already full with the seemingly endless amount of schoolwork, but if you’re a student-athlete, you might be a little in over your head.
Balancing studying for school, team practice and preparation for a weekend series is nothing new to the players on the baseball team because they’ve been doing that all year up to this point. However, finals week demands extra attention.
“I hope there is some added focus on school and the fact that the semester is winding down,” said head coach Bill Kinneberg. “To some kids, these finals mean a whole lot. So I hope they’ve done a good job all the way up until now, and hopefully their finals are done soon so we can switch back.”
Kinneberg said he hopes his team’s schedule during finals week accommodates with baseball practice, but that can be difficult. After finding out when all the players are taking their final tests, the team tries to schedule practices around those times so the players aren’t overbooked.
“It’s always concerning,” Kinneberg said. ”But we’ve done it a long tim,e so hopefully we will be okay … We’re lucky that [Thursday] we’ll have everybody here. Friday we have a game, so we have no conflicts.”
The Utes are aware of the amount of work they’re going to have to put into the week, and junior pitcher Nolan Stouder said he has become acclimated to the stress that befalls the team at this point in the season.
“I’d say we’re just used to it,” Stouder said. “Our game plan is just to attack it like we have all year. Get our work done, get our studying done and then come out and play hard in the games.”
Stouder believes that if he and his teammates put all of their focus into one thing at a time, nothing can take them away from the work they are is trying to get done.
It comes with the territory of being a student-athlete, and that’s what they have learned to do: figure out how to balance the two worlds of school and athletics in order to succeed. While finals week can bring a number of challenges, things tend to even out throughout the week.
“During finals week, we don’t have classes to get to,” said junior Kody Davis said. “So practice gets bumped up earlier and then we have the rest of the day to worry about our studies or getting any final papers done or whatever it is.”
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