The Huddle

I came across a study this week that got me thinking about a part of retirement from sports we don’t talk about enough.

The researchers followed former athletes who had done the prep work. They went back to school or built careers while they were still playing. They had lives outside the game. On paper they nailed the transition. The money was handled and the next step was figured out.

But there was still one thing they struggled to replace, and it was the people.

Think about how strange an athlete’s life really is. For most of your life your friends come with the job. You walk into the gym and they’re there. The locker room, the bus rides, the airports, the team meals, the practices. Overseas it gets even crazier, because sometimes those ten or twelve players are your whole world in a country where you don’t know anybody else.

And then one day it’s gone.

We spend so much time talking about what an athlete is going to DO next that we forget to talk about who they’re going to do life WITH next. You can get the job. You can have your money right. You can know exactly what you want to do next. And you can still miss walking into a locker room and being surrounded by people who understand you without you having to explain a damn thing.

That’s why mentorship and community after sports are part of the transition.

It’s making me look differently at what we’re building here. I don’t want OverseasX to only help somebody get a contract or figure out their next career. I want the athlete sitting alone in an apartment in Germany to have people. I want the player who just got released to have people. And I want the thirty-five-year-old who hasn’t played in five years and still misses the locker room to have people too.

Maybe one of the biggest things we can give athletes isn’t another resource. Maybe it’s somewhere they still belong.

So I’ll leave you with this. When basketball eventually takes away your locker room, who’s still in yours?

With OverseasX, you’ll never have to walk this journey alone.