Elite athletes at Boarding Schools

confusedaboutFA
Fri, 26 Mar 2021 17:17:13 +0000

To elaborate on what TonyGrace said, the “being on campus 11 hours a day” is very heavily dependent on how involved you are.

Firstly, when you’re out of season, there are “lifetime” options which let you do basic workouts for a very small time commitment, so that you can focus on your actual sport with the extra free time you get. Additionally, under COVID, they’ve introduced optional twice weekly practices for off-season sports (with the actual coaches and teammates).

Furthermore, many kids (mostly day students) participate in hockey, football, or lacrosse leagues throughout the year. I even know an international boarder who would go to outside fencing practices in the evenings three times a week, and take time off from classes to travel to other parts of the country for tournaments. To aid in this, the school provides sports exemptions for experienced athletes. Anyways, it’s certainly not impossible, but you’ll probably have to sacrifice something else in order to do an outside sport (for example, a lot of clubs have their meeting times in the 6-8pm timeslot).