Student Athletes More Student than Athlete

Today’s junior college campuses are littered with misconceptions that student athletes are offered the easy pass through college due solely to the fact that they are athletes. The days of the fabled boneheaded steroid-enraged jock are over. Yuba College enforces strict regulations on its athletes to not only encourage participation in the academic world, but to excel in it as well. All student athletes attending Yuba and other junior colleges around California must be enrolled full time and maintain a minimum grade point average of 2.0 or higher or they can not participate in their respective sport. Out of the twelve units taken to reach the criteria of a full time student, nine of those units must be solid transferable classes that work toward obtaining a degree. In other words, student athletes are prevented from attending Yuba College for athletic purposes only and taking easy classes to achieve the GPA requirement. This rule continues into the second year of athletic participation. To play a second year of sports a student athlete must have received all 24 units from the previous semester, 18 of which must have been from solid transferable classes. Yuba College athletes have a full time job of not only making it to practice and games, but fitting all the homework and class time into their schedules. The athletes have quite a weight on their shoulders as their excellence in the classroom further supports their respective program. Yuba College puts forth a great effort to ensure the academic success of its athletes. Not being able to show that athletes are graduating loses money for the program. At a four-year university and other Junior Colleges, a support staff is hired to assist athletes with their homework and other projects. At Yuba College they are simply referred to as tutors. Unfortunately a full time staff of tutors is unavailable at Yuba College, but a part-time group is available to athletes and students alike. Regardless of the minimal support staff, Yuba College athletes prove to be the best students of them all. When compared to other full-time students, student athletes statistically have a higher average GPA in both the regular season and off-season. The average GPA of an athlete is 2.84 during the season and 2.95 during the off-season while the average GPA of a non-athlete full-time student is 2.78. Also, the average number of units attempted is greater with 15 for athletes and 13.7 for other full-time students. An argument is often made that athletes tend to get by easy because they take much more P.E. units than the average full-time student. In reality, the difference is not that great, with the average numbers of P.E. units per year standing at 3.5 for athletes and 2.4 for non-athletes. Despite all accusations of no real academic talent, Yuba College athletes are proving doubters wrong and transferring to four-year universities to further their education. 17 of the last 19 sophomores playing for the Yuba College basketball team have transferred to four-year universities on some type of scholarship. Because of the requirements to attend Yuba College, the grades a student receives in High School do not dramatically affect that student’s ability to play sports. Yuba tends to keep its players close to home by recruiting from local and contiguous districts. The only exception being football players, as California has more junior college football programs than the entire United States combined and all of California’s bordering states and Florida have discontinued all junior college football programs. Athletes have much to gain by coming to Yuba College but they also have a lot of work to put in to achieve their goals.