Navigating the Transition from High School to College Athletics

As a college volleyball coach, I've watched a lot of athletes make the jump from high school to college, and one of the biggest mistakes freshmen make is assuming college athletics is basically high school athletics with better players. It's not. The expectations change, the competition changes, your schedule changes, and the amount of personal responsibility you're carrying changes right along with it. You may have been one of the best players in your gym for years, but now you're walking into a gym full of athletes who were also one of the best players on their high school or club team.

That's where some freshmen get humbled pretty damn quickly.

First Corinthians 9:24 (ESV) says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.” Paul is using athletic competition as an illustration for the Christian life, so we shouldn't twist this verse into a promise about winning games, earning starting positions, or beating everybody around us. His point is about intentionality, discipline, and pursuing something that actually matters. A few verses later, Paul says that athletes exercise self control in all things, which makes the application to college athletes pretty hard to miss. If you're going to pursue something seriously, your habits have to match what you say you're pursuing.

That's one of the first lessons college athletics will teach you because talent alone isn't going to carry you nearly as far anymore. Everybody in that gym can play. Maybe not everybody is better than you, but the overall talent level is higher, and you're competing against athletes who are older, stronger, more experienced, and already understand what their coaches expect. You don't get to walk in and assume the role you had in high school automatically follows you through the door.

You're going to have to earn it.

And earning it takes discipline because college athletics gives you plenty of opportunities to screw around if that's what you choose to do. Nobody is following you around campus making sure you went to class, ate something besides garbage, got enough sleep, completed your lift, handled your treatment, studied for your exam, or stopped scrolling at 1:30 in the morning when you have weights at 6:00. You're going to have more independence, but independence without discipline can become a disaster pretty quickly.

Proverbs 25:28 (ESV) says, “A man without self control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” In the ancient world, a city without walls was exposed and vulnerable, and that's the picture Proverbs gives us of somebody who can't control themselves. You can be incredibly talented, but if you can't control your habits, emotions, choices, and impulses, you're leaving yourself exposed. Eventually something is going to get through.

Discipline in college athletics is bigger than following a workout plan or eating well. It's going to bed when everybody else wants to stay out. It's getting your schoolwork done before you're buried. It's showing up on time without somebody sending you three reminders. It's taking care of your body before something hurts. It's keeping your mouth shut when you're angry enough to say something stupid, and it's being able to hear coaching without turning every correction into a personal attack.

One comparison I wouldn't make is saying Moses disciplined himself in the wilderness for forty years so he could reach the Promised Land. That's not what the biblical account says. Israel's forty years in the wilderness were connected to the people's rebellion and unbelief, and Moses himself ultimately wasn't permitted to enter the Promised Land. There are plenty of strong biblical examples of discipline without forcing that story into something it wasn't meant to teach.

College athletics will absolutely require dedication too, but dedication is more than saying you love your sport. Everybody loves their sport when they're playing well, starting, traveling, winning, and getting attention. I want to know how dedicated you are when you're buried on the depth chart, your body hurts, you're homesick, practice sucked, your coach corrected you five times, and the person playing ahead of you just had the best match of their career.

That's when dedication gets real.

Hebrews 12:1 (ESV) tells believers to “run with endurance the race that is set before us,” but again, context matters. Hebrews isn't promising athletes that perseverance will eventually earn them playing time or championships. The writer is calling Christians to endure faithfully, and Hebrews 12:2 immediately points that endurance toward Jesus. The athletic imagery still gives athletes something powerful to understand because endurance means continuing when continuing gets hard, but Christian perseverance is ultimately about faithfulness to Christ rather than getting whatever outcome we wanted.

That's an important distinction because college sports won't always reward you immediately for doing everything right. You can work harder and still be the backup. You can improve and still not play. You can have a great week of practice and still watch somebody else start. If your dedication only survives when you're rewarded for it, that's not much of a commitment.

One of the biggest adjustments freshmen have to make is understanding that nobody owes you playing time because you work hard. Working hard is the entry fee at this level. Your coach doesn't have to play you because you stayed after practice, your teammates don't have to step aside because you were a star in high school, and your parents can't call the coach and fix every situation that makes you uncomfortable.

At some point, you've got to own your career.

That's where accountability becomes huge. Galatians 6:5 (ESV) says, “For each will have to bear his own load.” That verse doesn't mean Christians should never help each other because Galatians 6:2 literally tells believers to “Bear one another's burdens.” Paul is making room for both personal responsibility and community. We should help carry each other's burdens, but there are still responsibilities that belong to us, and we don't get to hand those off every time they're inconvenient.

That applies pretty directly to college athletes. Your coach can coach you, your professors can teach you, your athletic trainer can help treat you, your teammates can support you, and your parents can encourage you, but eventually you have to carry your own responsibilities. If you miss class, that's yours. If you're late, that's yours. If you don't understand something, ask. If you aren't playing, go have the conversation with your coach instead of sending your parents in to fight the battle for you. If you make a mistake, own it before you start explaining why somebody else caused it.

Accountability gets a whole lot easier when you stop treating every correction like an attack on your character.

Being told you need to improve doesn't mean your coach hates you. Getting benched doesn't mean you've been disrespected. Somebody else earning an opportunity doesn't mean you've been cheated. Sometimes you're just not ready yet. Sometimes somebody else is better right now. Sometimes your attitude isn't helping you. Sometimes you aren't working nearly as hard as you think you are, and sometimes the most important thing a coach can tell you is something you really don't want to hear.

College athletics also comes with stewardship because you're representing more than yourself. You're wearing the name of your school and your program, and your decisions affect people besides you. How you behave in class matters. How you treat professors, athletic trainers, officials, support staff, teammates, and coaches matters. What you put online matters. How you respond when you're angry matters. Being an athlete gives you opportunities and visibility, but it also comes with responsibility.

For Christian athletes, stewardship goes even deeper because your talent isn't something you created from nothing. You have abilities, opportunities, relationships, resources, and a platform that you've been entrusted with, and the question isn't just how much success you can squeeze out of them. The bigger question is what you're going to do with what you've been given and who you're becoming while you use it.

First Corinthians 16:13 (ESV) says, “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.” Paul isn't giving athletes a motivational speech here, and the verse isn't specifically about toughness in sports. He's closing the letter with a call for Christians to remain spiritually alert, stand firm in their faith, show courage, and be strong. That's actually a better challenge for freshmen than turning the verse into another sports slogan because college is going to test a whole lot more than your physical ability.

You're going to find out pretty quickly how disciplined you actually are when nobody is making your decisions for you. You're going to find out how dedicated you are when you're not getting what you want, and you're going to find out whether you understand accountability when the easiest thing in the world would be to blame your coach, your teammates, your professors, your schedule, or anybody else besides yourself.

So if you're walking into college athletics as a freshman, understand what you're walking into. You're not supposed to have everything figured out on day one, and you're going to make mistakes because every freshman does. What matters is whether you're willing to learn, take coaching, adjust, and grow instead of constantly defending yourself.

Don't walk onto campus expecting everybody to care what you did in high school. Respect what you accomplished, be proud of it, and then understand that you're starting a new chapter where you're going to have to prove yourself again. Be coachable enough to hear the truth, disciplined enough to change your habits, dedicated enough to keep working when you're not being rewarded, and accountable enough to own your decisions without constantly reaching for an excuse.

Most importantly, don't let college athletics become the thing that tells you who you are. Your starting position can change. Your role can change. You can get injured. You can have a terrible season. You can lose the sport sooner than you ever expected, and if your entire identity is built around being an athlete, every setback is going to feel like you're losing yourself.

Compete your butt off and chase excellence because there's nothing wrong with wanting to be great. But understand that college athletics isn't only going to expose how talented you are. It's going to expose your habits, your ego, your discipline, your attitude, your faith, and your ability to handle being uncomfortable without falling apart.

High school may have shown everybody how good you are.

College is going to find out who you are.