When it all goes away, will you be prepared? It’s the question every high school student-athlete should consider.

Time doesn’t creep along one slow second at a time. It zooms by at supersonic speed.

Think about it. How long have you been playing your sport competitively? Five, six, maybe eight years? It has flown by unimaginably quickly, right? Looking forward, if you are a sophomore in high school and are lucky enough to go on and play college sports, you have about the same number of years in front of you to do most all the things competitively that you can ever hope to accomplish. And those years, too. will zip by before you know it.

So, when it all goes away, and it will, where will you be, not in athletics, but in life? What will you be left with to live the remainder of your life? In short, you will have the education you have earned. Sure, you will have the good times to remember and you may go on to play some sandlot sports or perhaps you will use your experience and passion for the sport to coach at some level. Even then, your entry into everyday society will ride on the back of the degrees you gather along the way — high school, college and post grad. Everything else, when you sit in front of a potential employer, will pale in comparison. It’s that education which will determine if you will get a shot at starring in your next life. Your athletic record will be good banter, but it will only be beneficial if you can back it up with a solid academic history.

Your class rank, GPA and standardized test scores coming out of high school will come back in those interviews where you will either be complimented for your dedication to academics or quizzed on why you didn’t do so well. The jobs you get will reflect the quality of your education, too. Being a star student will mean far more to an employer than how many points you scored, what your ERA was, how many championship teams you played on or if you set a school record. It’s what you do in the classroom today, tomorrow and the next day that will count ten years down the road. But, can you see that far ahead? Are you willing to reach that far in the distance and do today what is necessary to establish a rock solid foundation for you, your family, your children?

Keeping sports in perspective is arguably the most difficult thing athletes must face. It’s here one minute and gone the next. It is unavoidable. You can cling to the memories, but look around you at the adults who were high school and/or college athletes. Where are they? What is their station in life? Are they respected in their communities? Are they carrying on productive lives? Are they desperately clinging to the past to the point of being paralyzed by their former glory? Have they stopped contributing to society because they can’t burst through the veil of forgotten history? Are they stuck in a time warp of twenty or thirty years ago?

It’s worth close examination. If you are in close touch with reality you will realize that now is the time to start planning for your life after sports. Your future will be here in the blink of an eye.