What You Can’t Put on a Resume

My study this week was on social support in professional sports, and while some of these are a bit of a struggle to get through, this immediately made sense. The researchers looked at different professional athlete pathways, including basketball and athletes moving internationally, and found that having someone assigned to help you doesn’t mean you’re ever going to call them. The relationships athletes relied on came down to whether they trusted the person, believed they gave a shit and felt comfortable enough to be honest with them.

We say the biggest problem with supporting athletes is finding enough resources. We make a website, puts everybody in the right category and now apparently the athlete is supported…but reading the data, I don’t think it works that way…especially overseas.

When I was playing, there were plenty of times I technically had people around me, but didn’t necessarily mean I had somebody I was going to call when things went off the fucking rails. And overseas basketball has an incredible ability to get insane pretty quickly.

That’s why another study out of New Zealand also caught my attention. Researchers followed elite New Zealand athletes who had built careers or pursued education while they were still competing. That preparation helped them when they retired. They had somewhere to go professionally and they weren’t completely dependent on being an athlete for their identity. But when researchers asked what they missed most, they said it was the relationships within the team that they struggled to overcome. I completely understand.

You can prepare an athlete perfectly for employment and still completely underestimate what they are losing. For years, your friends are basically issued to you. You arrive at practice and there are fifteen people who understand why your body hurts, why the coach pissed you off, why you’re worried about your contract and why getting a day off feels like you won the freaking lottery. Overseas, those people become even more important because sometimes they are the only people within a thousand miles who understand what this life is.

Then basketball ends and everybody goes home. And that locker room disappears and is replaced with people who don't get you.

That’s my interpretation of this research, and I think it changes how we should think about athlete transition. We spend a lot of time trying to prepare athletes for what they are going to do next. We probably need to spend a hell of a lot more time thinking about who they are going to have next.

That is also why I want OverseasX to be more than a place where we dump resources and congratulate ourselves for having them. Yes, we have people here who can help with the real problems that come with this life and whatever comes after it. But the important part is that many of them have played overseas, worked in overseas sports or spent enough time around this world that you don’t have to give a twenty minute explanation before getting to the reason you reached out.

If something is going on, use them. Reach out. Ask the question you’ve been sitting on. If you don’t know who in the community can help, ask us and we’ll connect you. You do not need to wait until your career is over or until whatever you’re dealing with becomes a disaster.

Because maybe the resource isn’t the most important part.

Maybe it’s knowing there is a person on the other end who understands why you called.