By Nicholas Bianco and Dylan Lux / Jambar Contributors
Youngstown State University student athletes are encouraged to keep their focus in the classroom, as well as their athletics — which doubles their responsibilities.
Academic coordinators are meant to help keep student athletes on track throughout their time in college.
Becca King, a senior athletic academic coordinator, said the athletics department switched their names from academic advisors to athletic coordinators to avoid confusion among students and faculty regarding advising.
“Typically what we do is serve as a support person for students to liaison between their actual academic advisor,” King said. “Then we follow [National Collegiate Athletic Association] guidelines, policies, rules and benchmarks while making sure they’re academically eligible to apply.”
King said student athletes meet with their academic advisors prior to meeting with academic coordinators to receive advising for their major.
“They meet with us and we arrange their schedule with practice, making sure they’re meeting eligibility benchmarks so that they’re able to apply,” King said. “There are a ton of [benchmarks], so that’s where we come in, to make sure both of those worlds collide for the student to be able to participate and be academically successful.”
One of the more challenging aspects for a student athlete is scheduling around practices, travel and games or meets.
Brian Welch, assistant athletic coordinator, said working around a student athlete’s schedule can prove difficult for coordinators.
“The demand for being a student athlete is tremendously hard and you’ve got to be very motivated and dedicated to it,” Welch said.
Taylor Blandine, a senior athletic academic coordinator, said the academic coordinators rely on the academic advisors since the coordinators specialize in a student athlete’s major.
“We mandate that our athletes have to see [advisors] first, just to make sure we’re not missing anything because we help advise for all majors, ” Blandine said. “We’re backup to double check that. Our athletes have two people double checking their graduation track to make sure that they’re staying on track to graduate.”
Student athlete Ainsley Hamsher said both the advisors and the athletes have to work with professors to keep everyone up-to-date.
“So, our advisor sends out an email of all the kids that are on the travel roster for the week, and then it is our responsibility to go up to the professor and make sure we’re not missing anything super important,” Hamsher said.
Welch explained the responsibilities students have when a game is scheduled during class time.
“The NCAA mandates that you can only miss class for competition,” Welch said. “[At the] beginning of the year, we send out travel letters through an automated system called Retain that we have. The professors of all the student athletes know what days that they’re missing.”
Blandine said the academic coordinators’ primary role is keeping eligibility for student athletes.
“Our main job is to make sure they’re meeting [standards] so they can be out on the field, court or track, competing,” Blandine said.
Hamsher said student athletes create their own preliminary schedule of classes and then get approval from their academic advisor.
“We take [our] schedule and go to our athletic advisor, and they tell us if it’ll fit in our practice schedule, and they’re in contact with our coaches,” Hamsher said.
As fall sports season gets into full swing, student athletes are reminded that “student” comes first.