The end of the road is approaching for most senior NCAA swimmers and divers. Your final season, your final conference meet, or even your final national championships. There are very few opportunities to swim professionally, so live it up and have a great rest-of-your-life… right?

Well the transition from college sports to the “real world” will be hard for this year’s graduating class, not only because of the state of the job market, but because of a crucial shift in personal identity. Graduation will not only signify the conclusion of a chapter in this class’ academic life, but possibly the culmination of their entire career as an athlete.

I’m writing this article to hopefully help student athletes who are facing the retirement of their athletic identity. Six months after my final college diving meet, I felt stuck, unmotivated, unsatisfied, and secluded. I sought counseling at the Student Health Services Center for possible depression, while at the same time I was reading through my sport psychology textbooks for answers.

I realized that I was in the middle of an identity shift, in the process of re-establishing who I was outside of sports. Looking back, I don’t think I was very well prepared to go through such a transition. I would have liked some more advanced warning of what to expect, and how to make the transition as smooth as possible. This guide will hopefully do just that, provide information about the upcoming transition as well as tips for adjusting as easily as possible.

I. Personal Description Activity

Activity: Describe yourself in a list of 25 things. You only have a few minutes so write the first things that come to mind.

**AFTER COMPLETION OF ACTIVITY**:
After you have completed the activity, look at the first 5 items. Although you were not instructed to list the items in order of importance, the items you listed first are most likely the ones that you consider the most important or descriptive—because they were easiest to come up with. Example: you probably won’t see “I like apples” in the #1 spot, but “I’m a swimmer” seems more important to list first.

II. What is Identity?

Identity is defined as “a multidimensional view of oneself that is both enduring and dynamic,” which means our identity is both stable and changing at the same time. How can this be? How we view ourselves is made up of a number of dimensions (like the things you listed in the activity), that have a fairly stable order of importance. However, the importance of each item can also be affected by other factors.

Stable and Changing: Think of your identity at practice, the most important dimension at that time is probably your role as an athlete. However, when you are taking an exam, your most important role is (or should be) your identity as a student. Both of these smaller parts make up how you view yourself as a whole—your identity.

III. Identity Narrowing

When one dimension of your identity takes priority over the others for a long period of time, it can become dominant or preferred. This can happen when the dominant dimension (athletic identity for example) takes control in other daily situations. Where you live, when you eat, when you sleep, who your friends are—pieces of who you are that become associated with athletics can make your athlete identity dominant.

Identity Narrowing can be a good thing because it helps strengthen the dominant identity which can lead to increased motivation and focus, a more appropriate schedule for daily activities, improved goal setting, and group cohesion on an athletic team.

On the other hand, think of investing in the dominant identity as “putting all your eggs in one basket.” Focusing on your identity as an athlete can help you during sports, but it may be athletes who identify strongly with the athlete role in particular who experience post-retirement identity difficulties.

IV. What are Post-Retirement Identity Difficulties?

Post-Retirement Identity Difficulties are problems that arise after a transition (in this case retirement from competitive athletics) because of the loss of a major portion of identity. This loss may be expressed as an emotional, cognitive, or behavioral change.

Pearson and Petitpas (1990) predicted that transitions would be more difficult for athletes who:
a.) exclusively based identity on athletics
b.) have a gap between level of aspiration and ability
c.) are inexperienced with transitions
d.) have limited ability to adapt due to emotional or behavioral deficits
e.) lack supportive relationships
f.) lack resources to cope with the transition

This means that athletes with an exclusively dominant athletic identity, who are inexperienced with making decisions during a transition, and lack support or resources either from friends or members of the athletic department, may show more signs of difficulty adapting to their transition out of athletics.

The transition is also more difficult for athletes forced to retire early, or when the decision is out of their control—such as when the athlete is cut from the team, injured, or is ineligible. These transitions are usually more abrupt and leave the athlete less time to progress through the stages of transition.

V. Stages of Transition

Every athlete goes through the retirement transition after the completion of their athletic career—it is a time marked by a significant decrease in the amount of time spent competing in a particular sport, a decrease in the level of competition, or a time when the athlete stops being an athlete all-together.

Hopson and Adams’s (1977) process model addresses emotional and self-esteem reactions that go along with the transition. Stages can be thought of as a downward spiral followed by an upward climb in self-esteem and emotional reactions.

Each stage is marked by an emotional task that must be completed before moving on to the next level.

Emotional Tasks (Hopson and Adams, 1977)

VI. Take-Away Message

The more you know about the retirement transition from competitive athletics, the more prepared you will be to face the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral challenges. Here are some additional tips for dealing with the transition:

Become a Life-Long Athlete – Just because you are no longer competing for your college team doesn’t mean you have to stop playing sports all together. Participating in a club or community sports program is a great way to stay healthy and to meet people with similar interests. Another obvious avenue would be to join Master’s Swimming.

>Know your Support Network – No one is planning on having a difficult transition, but just incase it’s tougher than you thought—know who you can go to for guidance: coaches, peers, counselors, academic coordinators, career development personnel.

Transferable Skills – Apply your competitive identity to other aspects of your life such as your career or job search. You’ve learned a lot more from playing sports than just the game itself.

Sorry for the length, but I figured it would be more effective to put all the information in one place. For more information, check out the journal articles that I cited throughout this post.

>>Related: You Don’t Need to Be Sick to Get Better
>>Related: Building Intrinsic Motivation in Athletes

Hopson, B., & Adams, J. (1977). Toward an understanding of transition: Defining some boundaries of transition. In J. Adams & B. Hopson (Eds.), Transition: Understanding and managing personal change (pp. 3-25). Montclair, NJ: Allenhald & Osmund.

Pearson, R., & Petitpas, A. (1990). Transition of athletes: Pitfalls and prevention. Journal of Counseling and Development, 69, 7-10.