I
was a varsity athlete and a sorority member at my last school, but it did not work so well for me. My NM semester everything was ducky because practices weren't mandatory for part of the semester, but my first active semester was the in-season semester, and it didn't work for a variety of reasons:
- Meets were Saturdays, sometimes Friday nights. I had to go to bed early Fri. night to get up at the buttcrack of dawn on Saturday, and wouldn't get back until Saturday night, which was trad. my boyfriend night. Sundays I would be tired and sleep late, then pretty much roll out of bed, shower, and go to meeting.
- I was taking 18 credits, including COBOL and Java.
- I had FIVE offices in Gamma Phi, and they weren't all easy (Scholarship, Standards Chair, Ass't Panhell) DO NOT EVER GIVE A NEW INITIATE THAT MANY OFFICES!
- I wasn't getting along with some of my teammates, and the fact that I was spending 20 hours a week with them when I could be studying or bonding with my sisters didn't help it.
- I had to miss practice the night before a big meet for Pref, which was my choice, but hurt my performance.
I definitely think that it can work, but not at my school, where athletics is so time-consuming (I realize it is everywhere else too)
AND the average chapter size hovers around 20. You just have too many responsibilities and begin to lose focus on academics, non-Greek friends, etc. My choice was to leave the team, I know other people have chosen to leave their GLO. I think the ideal situation for this would be a big school like Wisconsin, Nebraska, etc, where once you join your GLO does not have to be such a huge commitment and you do not NEED to hold offices to keep the chapter going.