Does Sports and School Run Together A Needs Analysis of University Student-Athletes

Abstract

Student-Athletes are experiencing lots of challenges both in sports and education environments. Problems such as identity crisis, which is brought by the struggle to maintain two careers at the same time, force student-athletes to choose one career path or the other. Therefore, the purpose of the study was to reveal the problems and the difficulties experienced by student-athletes in university. A case study was selected as a research design in this study. A total of nine student-athletes (One Football, one Wrestling, two Basketball, four Volleyball, and one Marathon Athletes) was the participants of this study from Giresun University, Turkey. Focus group interviews and reflection notes were done for the data collection. Thematic Content Analysis was used for the data analysis. Three main topics emerged as school-sports club conflicts, stakeholders' expectations and financial anxiety of student-athletes. The absenteeism problem of the student-athletes was seen as the main problem and since the location of the club that students transferred may be changed every year, the students have difficulties to go to the university regularly. Student-athletes are granted permission to go to universities only in the exam weeks by the clubs. Providing technology-integrated instructional designs according to the needs of student-athletes while protecting the level and the quality of instruction and educational gains, with developing new education policies for absenteeism were recommended.