Senior Caleb Eldridge is back with another episode of the Fresno Christian EagleCast and continues to bring the community meaningful conversations with students and staff members in this recurring podcast series. In this episode, join us as we discuss the pressures of athletes with host Caleb Eldridge and senior guests Tycen Ramirez, Jordyn DeGroot, Sarah Guglielmana and Meghan Connolly.

Throughout the course of high school, students navigate grades, friendships and their future beyond high school. But among those things, some students train to pursue their future athletic careers through collegiate level sports.

Connolly is attending Fresno Pacific University, and her recruitment process in particular was a source of added stress, as she stated, “I spent two years constantly bugging coaches, and it was just not coming. I did not think I was going to play in college, honestly.”

High school athletes planning to play their sport in college have to go through a lengthy process in order to be recruited to colleges. It first begins when colleges send letters to athletes requesting an evaluation to see how well they would fit into the program. If the athlete fits the mold that the college desires, they extend scholarship offers to those athletes in order to get the athlete to their college. And if all goes to plan, that athlete signs with their college of choice and begins their collegiate athletic journey.

Guglielmana is playing both volleyball and track in college at Concordia University, so she had much to say on the balance of those two sports, “My coaches were telling me it’s just going to be hard to manage. You do not just take a break when your one sport is over. You are doing it the entire year.”

While DeGroot spent most of her high school years planning on playing indoor volleyball, she has more recently transitioned to beach volleyball. DeGroot is moving to Arkansas to play Division I beach volleyball at University of Central Arkansas.

Ramirez received offers in both football and volleyball, but ended up choosing to play football at University of Northern Colorado. He gave a piece of advice about navigating between those choices, “Just trying to figure out between football and volleyball in the fall, between football season and club volleyball season was stressful enough. I would say just take it slow and make decisions as they come.”

As the EagleCast podcast continues this year, we would like to know about more topics that interest you. Drop a suggestion for upcoming episodes in the comments below.

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