Overview:

  • More than half of Division I male athletes believe they will play professionally, despite the relative few professional spots available across major leagues.
  • Mental health professionals say athletes who tie their entire identity to sports face harder transitions when their playing careers end.
  • Michigan coaches and counselors are starting career and identity conversations earlier, encouraging athletes to develop interests and relationships outside their sport.

by Robert Thompson

Ava Wojciechowski has loved track and field since the age of 11. One intense teammate led to her giving up the sport, she says.

Rather than being devastated, Wojciechowski says she approached the end of her athletic career differently. 

“Probably since high school, I kind of had this idea of my career ends at college.”

A senior at Bowling Green State University, Wojciechowski, 21, says she understood early that the odds of competing professionally are slim. 

Not every athlete enters college expecting their athletic career to end with graduation.

Mismatch between dream, reality of professional leagues

More than 8 million students played high school sports during the 2024-2025 school year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

In 2024, about 4,600 male athletes were playing at the professional level across the NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, and MLS, according to Outsports.

Dwayne Thompson II, a former Division I player now playing arena football, continues to chase a professional career. Now 26, he has a wife and newborn daughter in his hometown of Detroit.

If he stopped the pursuit of pro sports, “it would be kind of a slap in the face to how far I came,” he says.

More than half of Division I male athletes believe they will become a professional athlete, according to a 2026 NCAA survey.

While Wojciechowski accepts that college likely marks the end of her competitive career, Thompson says he continues to aim for professional football because of the sacrifices, time, and identity he has invested in the game.

Many athletes fall into catastrophic thinking. That’s when athletes “constantly think about the worst outcomes,” and make a small problem feel like a massive disaster, says Doron Willis, associate director of student-athlete wellness at Michigan State University, and a former D1 football player at South Carolina and Bethune-Cookman universities. 

“If I don’t get playing time, or this amount of playing time for the next game, then I’m not valuable in any way, shape, form, or fashion,” Willis says, giving an example of catastrophic thinking.

Goals like playing time and playing professionally can become tied to athletes’ self-worth. Willis’ example illustrates how many athletes measure their value by athletic success, making any setback feel significant.

His explanation suggests how athletic identity and catastrophizing can become connected during an athlete’s transition away from sports.

Finding purpose off the field

While catastrophizing can make setbacks feel overwhelming, Willis says there’s another way athletes can better prepare for the end of their playing careers.

“Identify who you are outside of the game you play,” he says. Having interests and relationships outside athletics allows athletes to compete “freer” because their identity isn’t tied solely to performance, Willis says.

Developing an identity beyond sports can also make the transition out of athletics less overwhelming when an athlete’s career comes to an end, Willis adds.

Rachel Amity, associate athletic director for athletic counseling at Eastern Michigan University, agrees with that belief. To illustrate why building an identity outside of sports matters, she compares two hypothetical athletes: one whose life revolves entirely around their sport, and another who has relationships, hobbies, and interests outside of athletics.

Amity says the all-sports person “would have a harder time transitioning out of a sport than the person that had non-sport relationships, non-sport hobbies, and activities, because the person who was all sports — when the sport goes away, that feels like a loss of everything.”

Willis had that personal experience and says he struggled to rebuild his identity after playing football. Amity says she sees the same pattern in the athletes she works with.

To prevent this problem, both Willis and Amity say preparing for life after sports should begin long before an athlete’s final game.

Life after the game

For Prince AyoOla, a football coach at Madonna University in Livonia, preparing athletes for life after football starts before their final season.

As a former NAIA All-American at Concordia University, AyoOla says he understands how easy it is for athletes to let football consume their college experience. 

Looking back at his years as a student, he says he wasn’t there to “play school,” meaning he only focused on playing football. Participating in school was not on his list of priorities.

The experience shapes the way he coaches and recruits at Madonna University.

“As far as getting (athletes) to a career, I like to open up those conversations earlier now instead of later,” AyoOla says.

Rather than waiting until an athlete’s eligibility is nearly exhausted, AyoOla says he encourages players to see football as a pathway to opportunities beyond the game.

“You use football as a tool to get you through school, to get you that degree,” he says. Once athletes obtain a degree, he adds, they often realize they weren’t taking their degree as seriously as they were taking their sport. 

AyoOla says he also reminds players of the opportunities available after graduation.

“You can jump right out of college and jump right into the workforce and make good money and be able to support your family, have health benefits,” he says. “Those are the things that we’re not thinking about as athletes going into college.”

His approach extends beyond career planning. AyoOla intentionally builds relationships with his players outside of football, believing those conversations help prepare them for life beyond the sport, he says. 

That philosophy shapes the way AyoOla mentors his players. For him, “getting to know these guys off the field and seeing what they’re into” matters just as much as what happens between the lines.

BGSU’s Wojciechowski understood that lesson long before her final throw. She knew track would one day end, so she never allowed it to define her, she says. Not every athlete is able to do the same.

Every athlete eventually plays their final game. When the crowd disappears, the locker is cleaned out and the uniform is put away for the last time, what remains isn’t a championship, a statistic, or a roster spot.

It’s the person the sport leaves behind.

This piece is part of the Detroit Journalism Summer Camp, run by The Detroit Writing Room in partnership with Planet Detroit.

Robert Thompson is a rising junior at Walled Lake Western High School. He enjoys playing sports, sharpening his journalism skills, and helping others. He joined the journalism camp to become a better journalist and share untold stories that need to be heard.

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The Detroit Journalism Summer Camp is a two-week program run by the Detroit Writing Room, where Detroit high school students learn reporting, interviewing, and storytelling skills under the guidance of professional journalists.