Hours after executing play calls under stadium floodlights, a student-athlete sits in the glow of a hotel room lamp, staring at their laptop screen, trying to beat the midnight portal deadline.
The high-voltage adrenaline of game day gives way to the stark quiet of a hotel room or the backseat of a charter bus at 11:30 p.m. Stacked gear bags crowd the floor, low-battery indicators pulse on glowing screens and spotty hotel Wi-Fi spins while the seconds tick away. During travel windows, athletes write essays and cram for exams to the low, rhythmic hum of an engine late into the night.
In this crunch is end-of-season exhaustion that collides with a predictable midterm crisis built into every university calendar. Across campuses, peak competition schedules collide with exam blocks.
This recurring bottleneck exposes a fundamental problem in the collegiate wellness space: while standard mental health advice encourages students to exercise away stress, that logic fails when the physical athletic workload itself is a source of the strain.
You can’t outrun the run
Student-athletes experience unique demands that can often lead to overload and compromised physical performance. When the age-old advice of “just go work out” fails to resolve this burnout, athletes must look elsewhere for help.
To counter that generic advice, Dinos academic coach Dina Taher counsels athletes to look completely outside sport and academics.
“Aside from school and your sport, what is one thing [a hobby or a task] that you find pure enjoyment in doing?” Taher asks. She advises students to schedule that time to intentionally recharge.
“Even if that activity is spending time on your phone, planning for it can reduce the guilt often associated with procrastination.” said Taher.
Fourth-year field hockey defender Molly Garnham looks to her sport as a way to stay grounded.
“It gives me a chance to go and have a brain break from studying,” she said.
Outside the pitch, she puts Taher’s advice into practice by stepping away to read a book.
Logistics of a road trip
A typical 72-hour varsity road trip during the height of midterm season is an exercise in endurance. Between transit, game review, practice and 60-plus minutes of high-stakes competition, the schedule leaves little breathing room.
Midterms turn from quiet classrooms into proctored hotel conference rooms set up between tournament games or become deferred to a later date.
“I know one of the girls on my team had to take an exam in the lobby of the airport this year, and our coach had to proctor it,” Garnham recalled.
In a recent research study that was published by Jessica Malcolm and Philip Sullivan in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living reveals that 95 per cent of Canadian student-athletes are enrolled in a full-time course load. More than 35 per cent also hold part-time jobs, averaging 12 hours per week alongside their training, games and travel. Coupled with daily lectures and lab requirements, Canadian varsity athletes face a rigorous schedule that leaves minimal buffer time for deep study or physical recovery.
Garnham’s days start at 7 a.m. and include lifting, team training, homework and lectures. Along with working as a teaching assistant for a risk management professor and has just started a promotional job with the Dinos.
“I just do whatever I can to fit it in and still earn some money, but also get to play too,” Garnham said.
Under this degree of compression, the basic biological recovery starts to become optional.
“If a student is in an academically heavy program, there are often days, especially during the competitive season, when they feel they must sacrifice sleep to avoid late submissions,” Taher said.
The mental toll and seeking support
Athletes balancing these loads are offered multiple support options, ranging from workshops and tutoring to one-on-one support with specialized academic coaches.
The demand for these services closely follows the rhythm of the athletic and academic calendars.
“Generally, emails and foot traffic [...] increase right after the reading breaks, which typically is during or right after the peak of midterm season,” Taher said.
Rather than viewing this pressure as a crisis, Taher describes it as a “recurring reality for student-athletes” in which supportive team environments often help players share practical coping strategies. Nevertheless, the toll of this continuous strain remains starkly reflected in mental health outcomes.
The research from Malcolm and Sullivan on Canadian postsecondary students highlighted that varsity athletes cultivate strong protective mental health assets — reporting higher levels of social support, resiliency and mental health resource literacy than their non-athlete peers.
At the same time, balancing dual academic and athletic identities carries severe psychological pressure. Research on Canadian campuses shows that 20 per cent of varsity student-athletes experience significant psychological distress, while a broader clinical screening done by researchers Janja Usenik and Eva Kranjec for the same journal indicates that 21.5 per cent experience moderate to severe anxiety and 22.8 per cent report moderate to severe depression.
“As a varsity athlete, you balance two demanding roles: full-time student and full-time athlete. This comes with a significant workload and many responsibilities.” Taher said. “However, you also have access to resources designed specifically for varsity athletes, as well as services available to all students.”
Internal conflicts
This ongoing pressure frequently triggers a clash between an athlete’s academic and athletic identities. When unexpected academic demands conflict with practice times or road trips, informal peer pressure and the subtle fear of losing their momentum push athletes to put their sport first.
That pressure doesn’t play out the same way on every team. For Garnham, the message from her coaching staff is the opposite.
“They know how important the student part is to all of us, and they recognize it is a lot of times student before athlete,” said Garnham.
That flexibility shows up in small ways. When there are morning meetings and classes, the team groups together and shows up to lifts earlier. A group of two or three teammates regularly meets for their strength session an hour before the rest of the team so they can make an 8 a.m. class.
While the Dinos coaching staff works to support their athletes with flexibility and empathy, individual coaches cannot change the broader system on their own.
Research by Malcolm and Sullivan further emphasizes that Canadian student-athletes face unique dual-role pressures. Unlike the American National Collegiate Athletic Association, Canadian athletic scholarships are tightly capped, forcing athletes to maintain high academic standing for eligibility while managing the physical demands of varsity sports and often a job to support themselves.
Under these severe time constraints, educational goals can easily shrink to simple survival, transforming academic passion into compliance.
Academic success is reduced to doing just enough to remain eligible — reinforcing the “a C gets a degree” culture and depriving student-athletes of the deeper academic engagement, research opportunities and career-building experiences they want to pursue.
The Academic All-Canadian award
To combat academic fatigue and recognize high achievers, U Sports presents the Academic All-Canadian award. To earn the status under national guidelines, student-athletes must maintain an academic average of 80 per cent or higher while competing on a varsity roster.
While more than 200 student-athletes at the University of Calgary achieved the honour last year, doing so requires rigorous balance in a system that forces a trade-off between top-tier academic marks and basic physical well-being.
“I always try to get my assignments in before I leave the house on a Friday to go travel [... ] so I don’t have to worry about the technical difficulties that usually do occur at the airport,” said Garnham, a two-time Academic All-Canadian. For her, success comes down to knowing when to push and when to step back.
Garnham’s personal spreadsheet acts as a bible for the academic term, tracking tests, assignments, projects, readings, due dates and target grades. As team co-captain, she now shares that blueprint with younger teammates trying to navigate the same crunch.
"I shared a blank one [database] with a lot of the girls on my team, so that they just have something to work off of and something to help keep them on track as well,” Garnham said.
For student-athletes in the crunch of midterms, managing the trade-off isn’t about perfection — it’s about deciding each day how much energy is left in the tank.
“Your 100 per cent could be 100 per cent one day, and it could be 50 per cent of that 100 per cent the next day," said Garnham. "So just giving all that you have every single day is all that we can all ask for. And knowing that the whole team is there to support you through all of it is kind of our motto."
