I don’t really know how to preface this, but it is a subject that I feel pretty strongly about.  Maybe someone who is reading this is asking themselves, “Do I need to go to a fancy sports school or not enroll in university to excel in sports?”  Well, my answer is no. 

All through my life growing up, school and sports went hand in hand.  I participated in almost every school sport from volleyball to track and field.  These extracurriculars were what I lived for, but I never let my school work suffer.  My parents taught me that balance was the key to success in life.  I never felt it more than when I moved to Calgary to pursue elite sport and university.  When I got to Calgary I was consumed by speed skating.  I couldn’t believe the gains I was making by getting to train on the ice everyday unlike the 2 times per week that I was used to.  My focus was solely on skating and my university courses in Kinesiology were hurting.  I thought that I could do my last minute cramming and everything would be fine.  That was not the case.  I ended the year with new personal bests in skating and new personal worsts in school.  There was no balance. 

The next year things changed.  I figured out how to work the two worlds together and I rebounded in school to my regular marks and skating got even better.  There was a new balance to my life.  Sports in a confined world.  There are only so many people, only so many things to talk about and only training of the body.  School was another world where I could escape, meet new people and train my mind.  This is silly to say, but I enjoyed going somewhere where no one knew me and I could just sit in class and be alone. 

 I have taken university classes my entire skating career.  I took 3 classes a semester when I was on the Canada Cup circuit and 2-3 classes a semester when I was on the World Cup circuit.  It has helped to maintain a balance in my life.  The semesters where I took off from school because of busy travel schedules have always been my worst.  Skating became my sole focus.   This is sometimes a good thing, but from my experience, it put way more pressure on my doing well and magnified the things that went wrong.  Because of being in school I am not afraid of the end of my career in sports.  When I retire I will be an Olympian and have a bachelors degree.  I know that school is not for everyone, but don’t put it off if you don’t need to.  I just want everyone to know that it is possible to do both.  School and sports can go hand in hand at any level and in the case of having my training location on campus, there were no excuses.