Time Out

Whether you're sidelined by an injury or a too-tight schedule, you'll find that life on the bench requires some coping skills

By Dana Hudepohl

Maggie Knuth has a gymnastics leotard stashed in a dresser drawer, just in case. Even though the 18-year-old hasn't competed since her final high school meet, last May, she had been in training since the age of four -- and 14 years of your life is a lot to put behind you.

Catching a glimpse of that lone leotard fills her with a longing, making her wish she were still doing gymnastics. "Then I remind myself, I've got all these other things to do," says Knuth, a freshman at the University of Miami, which has no gymnastics team.

Going from player to former player can be difficult, whether you make the change or it's thrust upon you (even temporarily) by injury, pregnancy, work, school -- in short, life. Without a sport you may find yourself with hours of more free time, leaving you feeling restless and unproductive. "You're losing a part of your life -- it's almost like losing a loved one," says Steven Danish, director of the Life Skills Center at Virginia Commonwealth University. "A lot of how you identify yourself is wiped away."

After 15 years of swimming Laurie Gandrud confidently decided to stop in order to focus on premed in her senior year of college. Then she began struggling with mixed emotions. "I went through this dysphoria," says Gandrud, now 27 and completing her medical residency at Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford, in California. "It was like weaning myself off a drug."

Without teammates to race or meets to prepare for Gandrud felt unmotivated and sluggish. "One of the things athletes miss most is the workout, that feeling afterward of being relaxed but pumped at the same time," says Aynsley M. Smith, a sports-psychology counselor at the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine Center in Rochester, Minn. "Many notice changes in their bodies and begin struggling with eating and body-image issues for the first time in their lives." The best way to fight this, says Smith, is to stay active any way you can -- if you were a runner for years, there's no reason you can't bike, skate or swim now.

FAQ My best friend and I are going out for the same team. How can we make sure our friendship survives? This is a chance for your friendship to thrive, provided you have the right attitude. You and your pal can practice together -- support and push each other -- but when the big day approaches, focus on your game, not your relationship. You're both there to make the team and to make yourselves better. If the two of you make the team, you'll continue to compete with each other, for a position or a scholarship -- which can actually strengthen your friendship. Look at Mia Hamm and Kristine Lilly: They've been competing since their University of North Carolina days, and you won't find better friends or better examples of winners. If your friend makes the team and you don't, be her best fan. What are friends for? Our expert: Colleen Hacker, Ph.D., sports psychologist for the U.S. women's soccer team since 1995

Coping with an extended timeout should start long before you're ever sidelined. Simply put, you should have a life beyond sports. Ann Roche, 18, was the standout of her high school basketball team before she hurt her knee. Faced with at least six months of recovery from surgery, she was so devastated that she couldn't bear to watch friends play the game she loved. She knew she had to concentrate on other interests -- art, writing and her wide circle of friends -- and develop new talents, such as learning guitar. "Athletes are passionate," she says. "You have to refocus your passion, try to make something else your forte."

"The more confidence you have in yourself as a human being, not just an athlete, the better off you are," agrees Al Petitpas, director of the athletic-counseling graduate program in psychology at Springfield College in Springfield, Mass. In fact, research by one of his colleagues found that the more exclusive an athletic identity college athletes have, the more depressed they become when sidelined. That's why it's important to create a support network of at least 10 people outside of your sport, says Danish, to offer both caring support (someone you can vent to) and doing support (for instance, if you're benched by pregnancy, find a workout partner who's also pregnant).

Even if you haven't wrapped yourself up in your sport, expect to feel a loss when you stop playing, and give yourself time to grieve. Talk to others who've gone through what you have. Write in a journal. You can't deal with the practical separation until you deal with the emotional separation, Petitpas notes. "A lot of athletes feel nobody understands what they're going through, and they have a lot of sadness and anger tied up with that," he says. "They can't think about moving forward when they're still upset about something else."

5 Winning Strategies

Once you get past the Why can't I? stage of your timeout from playing sports, focus on the things that you can do, such as:

Let your athletic skills help you. Qualities that are vital in sports (like commitment, leadership, willingness to work hard and ability to rebound from defeat) help in other areas -- school, career, relationships. "Look at sport as a training ground that will give you skills you can use for the rest of your life," says Shane Murphy, a sports psychologist and author of The Cheers and the Tears (Jossey-Bass).

Set positive, realistic goals. If you don't have time for the swim team now, think of a way that you can fit it into your schedule next semester. Be sure your goals are within the realm of possibility.

Stay busy. It will be harder to find time to pout when you're channeling your energy into new passions, such as volunteering, working out or pursuing a hobby.

Build your own team. Talk to others who are in the same situation you are. Their support will not only bolster your determination but also help you see the positives of your "new" life. Also, make active partners of your support group; maybe you can't play soccer, but you can always work out together.

Be prepared for setbacks. Inoculate yourself against stress by visualizing the roadblocks you'll face and, more important, how you'll get past them.

Required Reading

By Liz O'Brien

Picture Perfect

If you want scores or stats, you turn to the sports pages. If you want a celebration of the beauty of sport, you turn to Glory (William Morrow & Co., $45) by photographer Richard Corman. From the sculpted power of Gail Devers's legs to the strength and quiet intensity of Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Picabo Street and Sheryl Swoopes, among others, the book is an unabashed appreciation of athletes and their passion for competition. "The glory of sport comes from dedication, determination, and desire," writes Joyner-Kersee, and these attributes shine through in the athletes' portraits. Glory also pays tribute to the great men of sports, including Michael Jordan, Lance Armstrong and, perhaps most movingly, "the Greatest" Muhammad Ali, as well as Special Olympians and "ordinary people," who, as this gallery proves, are anything but.

Armchair Adventures

You don't have to be a rock jock to thrill to the breathtaking treks recounted in 30 Years of Climbing Magazine (Primedia, $19). Grueling expeditions to Switzerland's Eiger, Alaska's Denali and, of course, Everest aren't just great life-and -death stories, they are great stories. While much is made of the love affair climbers have with danger, this collection says more about the life-affirming pull of rising high above the earth than it does about death wishes. As Alison Hargreaves, the British climber and mother of two who died after ascending K2 in 1995, said, "I'm not foolhardy. I've got a hell of a lot to live for."

Women, by the Book

Sure, you can pick up the International Encyclopedia of Women and Sports (Macmillan Library Reference USA, $325) and look up the year that Wilma Rudolph won three Olympic gold medals (1960), but don't stop there. These three volumes cover more than just the historical and cultural aspects of women's sports; they also examine such contemporary issues as eating disorders, gender equity and performance-enhancing drugs and drug testing. Athletes from tennis ace Billie Jean King to extreme windsurfer Angela Cochrane provide the trailblazer-to-Title IX baby perspective. (Note: If $325 is too steep for your own reading room, try urging your school or public library to add it to their stacks.)

 
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