THE CREATIVE ATHLETE

Issue 20--Why and When Should You Consider Changing Sports?

If you truly want to have a long-term career as an athlete, you must be willing to change direction at certain points in your competitive life if necessary. You may have to adjust your approach whenever you sense that opportunities are ending in one area but perhaps opening in another.

Here are some of the major turning points which may signal to you that it's time for a change:

1. You can no longer make the team.

You still have a lot to offer as an athlete, but you're unable to remain at the top competitive levels of your chosen sport. Examples:

• Mike Whitmarsh was a fifth-round draft pick of the NBA Portland Trail Blazers in 1984. He didn't make the cut and went to play basketball in Germany. Then in 1985, while he was back in the United States for the summer, he started playing volleyball. After three seasons playing basketball overseas, he joined the Minnesota Timberwolves, but was cut again. This time he switched to volleyball permanently and was named Rookie of the Year in 1990. He and his partner, Mike Dodd, went on to win a silver medal in two-man beach volleyball at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
  
  
• Jenny Keim, at age five, had begun a promising gymnastics career at Bela Karolyi's gym. But by nine she had a stress fracture in her back. She switched to diving and at 11 became the youngest diver to ever qualify for the U.S. Diving Indoor Championships. (1) By 1996, she had qualified for the Olympics in the 3-meter springboard event.

The diver who beat Keim at the U.S. Olympic trials, Melissa Moses, was another former gymnast who had spent ten years in the sport before injuries also forced her to switch to diving. Moses finished fourth in Atlanta and Keim, ninth.

• Juli Furtado was, at age 15, the youngest member of the 1982 U.S. Ski Team. But her knees gave out by the time she was 21. During her last year as a competitive skier she took up road cycling and won the national championships in 1989. The following year she took up mountain biking and won the 1990 cross-country world championships. She made history by winning 17 consecutive national and international races in 1993. In 1996 she was named to the U.S. Olympic team.

2. Your sport isn't lucrative enough.

You may be still doing well competitively, but you are not earning enough from your sport to continue along your current path.

This is what many world class long-distance runners have decided over the years. The focus used to be on setting world records. Runners would train for just a few major track meets a year. Frank Shorter (who won the Olympic marathon in 1972 and was the last American to do so), explains the psychology behind this: "You only have a certain number of performances in track and field, and you need to train and focus so you can be absolutely ready at key times." (2)

But today road races are where the money is and that's where the best runners go. It's a trade-off competitively. They run more races and, as a result, tend to run slower times. Examples:

• Runner Jon Sinclair has been road racing since 1978 and ranks first on Runner's World's Road Race Rankings all-time list (based on cumulative points picked up in major races over the course of a career). He said, "I could go to Europe and run on the track, but I'd get eaten alive. Here, I can race every weekend if I want to and make money. I enjoy racing, so that's what I do.

"In the past, the goal was to become a really good track runner because there was nothing else. Now that's changed, and road racing has become a legitimate end." (3)

In another interview he noted, "... in 1982, I began to make pretty good money and realized if I did things properly, I could make a living at this. To me, it was the ultimate sort of lifestyle. I was able to compete in road races all over the world and get paid to do it. I was living a dream that was unfolding and defining itself as it went along." (4)

• Todd Williams, who won the 10,000 meter race at the 1992 and the 1996 U.S. Olympic trials, has also said that road racing is appealing. "There's a lot of money to be had on the road. When you're out there pounding once every two weeks or once a month for that three, five or $10,000, your focus changes." (5)
  
  
• Another runner, Alisa Hill (an 800 and 1500 meter runner who has won gold medals in events at the 1986 NCAA championships, the 1991 Pan Am Games, and the 1995 Olympic Festival) agrees that in order to have a career as a runner, you look for the dollars. "It's a nasty way to have to do it, dollar by dollar, running for the money, but it keeps me in the sport. You can get idealistic and talk about the beauty of the sport, but you also have to be able to support yourself." (6)

3. You've accomplished everything there is to do in your sport.

You've run out of challenges; boredom has sent in.

If you were good in one sport, chances are you can be good in another, and possibly even more successful. It's probably been so long since you had a chance to throw yourself into something new that you may not even realize what you might be able to accomplish if you try. Example:

• Mike Barrowman set a world record and won a gold medal in the 200-meter breast stroke at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. He came home, earned his college degree, became an assistant swim team coach, and realized he still wanted to compete--but not in swimming. "I did what I wanted to do. To go back and do it again would be greedy. I was No. 1 in the world for five years. It would be anticlimactic to do more."

So he took up kayaking instead. He started training in February 1994 and by 1995 was ranked in the top 15 in the U.S. "I wanted to keep doing something where I would aspire to be the best." (7)

As your life changes, so can your sport.

 

 

1 USA Today, May 18, 1990.

2 Rocky Mountain News, May 19, 1991.

3 Rocky Mountain News, May 19, 1991.

4 Runner's World, September, 1993.

5 Rocky Mountain News, July 22, 1992.

6 Boulder Daily Camera, May 29, 1993.

7 Boulder Daily Camera, July 26, 1995.

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