Being a Division I Athlete in a Fraternity

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by Lafayette79

Unless you have prospects of a professional career as an athlete, you will leave this behind when you graduate, but your fraternity experience can last your whole lifetime.

When you are 40, how many of your team members do you think you will have in your cell phone list? I have ten of my brothers on mine.

The coaches choose the team, you didn't, but you can choose your brothers.

As a former Division I athlete who thrived, along with many other Division I athletes, in my University's Greek system, I find this to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read here on GC--and that's saying a lot.

[Fratlete]

Originally Posted by Munchkin03

As a former Division I athlete who thrived, along with many other Division I athletes, in my University's Greek system, I find this to be one of the stupidest things I've ever read here on GC--and that's saying a lot.

Would you care to go into some detail about being both an athlete and a fraternity member and any difficulties about overlapping commitments? Any opinion/experiences of an athlete-fraternity member would be a big help

[Munchkin03]

Originally Posted by Fratlete

Would you care to go into some detail about being both an athlete and a fraternity member and any difficulties about overlapping commitments? Any opinion/experiences of an athlete-fraternity member would be a big help

Well, I have a different situation--so I'm not sure how much my experience could help you. Although I was a D-I athlete, it was in a conference where there are no athletic scholarships--while people were recruited, they were ultimately there to be students. As a result, you could drop the team and not worry about having to leave school.

So, the campus culture was much more accepting of athletes having lives outside of the sport. There were fraternities known for being the "track," "wrestling," and "football" fraternities. The fraternity leaderships worked around the sports schedules. They tended to recruit from their sports. The sororities had a mix of women from different sports. I will admit, however, that some sports did not have any Greek representation, in part because of the close-knit nature of the sports (rowing comes to mind).

It really, really, really has more to do with your campus's culture than anyone's general experience. Good luck!

[BROcrastinator]

At my school, a decent amount of student athletes tend to rush either fraternities or sororities. In the majority of cases I have seen at my school, the student athlete eventually drops the sport after a year or so due to the heavy time commitments. A lot of these kids who drop the Varsity sport join the club team which requires less of a time commitment, still with the fun or playing. From my view, it looks like they enjoy Greek life in college more then a Varsity sport... but then again, I am not a Varsity college athlete and I'm sure it also depends from school to school.

It's all in your priorities though. You only have so much time on your hands, whether you choose to spend it playing a Varsity sport or holding some type of role in Greek life, it's up to you.