Student-athletes and professor discuss how the University of Findlay handles scheduling conflicts
By Tori Tiell, tiellv@findlay.edu
With the fall semester well underway, 654 student-athletes at the University of Findlay are finding it a struggle balancing their academic and sport schedules. While some students are facing these struggles, the University tries to combat the issues and help students who need to change their schedules.
UF has many student-athletes that are majoring in health professions. Professor Steven Aranyosi has taught anatomy, physiology, and geology at Findlay for the last nine years.
“About 25 percent to one-third of my classes are student-athletes out of the 100 students,” Aranyosi said. “But the nice thing about our athletes is that they’re proactive about, ‘Hey, I’m going to miss out’ before Jim Givens (UF Athletic Director) sends out the email. They’re usually like, ‘Hey, what can I do?’ so that’s one thing. The other thing I like about our student-athletes is that, yes, there are conflicts, but they at least try to be proactive on it, which is very helpful.”
Every year athletes experience scheduling conflicts between their classes and sports schedules, which the athletes communicate with their professors.
Professors in the health professions department do a good job of trying to make accommodations for this. There will be conflicts and professors want to work with their students as best they can.
“The problem is then you have individuals that are scheduling; you have the honor students that schedule their classes first, then you start with the seniors and so on and so forth, with freshman being last. Sometimes the upperclassmen want to get the early lab in, and then suddenly, it’s like, okay, well, all these early labs are full. What do you do with these student-athletes that can’t take the lab during the restricted hours, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.? So, then we see that sometimes you must create a new lab or hopefully students switch,” Aranyosi added.
Freshman Student-athlete Olivia Schalk experiences scheduling conflicts between her 7 a.m. lifts on Tuesdays, 3-5 p.m. practices on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and several classes.
“I had a math class that butted up right against practice, and I just told my coach, ‘Hey, I have a class ending at 2:50. I’m going to be at practice late.’ That was fine, but I ended up dropping that class because I didn’t need it,” Schalk said. “My chemistry lab is really bad; my chemistry lab is from 7 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. on Tuesdays because they’re all during practice times or they’re all filled up—the early ones.”
According to Schalk, her coaches really understand that sometimes her schedule conflicts with practice times and lifts. Coaches want the athletes to communicate if they need to leave early, arrive late or need to schedule individual lifts on a different day or time due to classes.
Evan Kreais, a freshman track and field athlete, says he hasn’t experienced any scheduling problems; however, he knows a few students who cannot attend practices due to classes. He does have to use his time efficiently due to practices being an hour long twice a week, 3:30 p.m. one of the days and 6 a.m. on Fridays.