When Friedrich Schiller wrote his famous poem “Ode to Joy” in 1785, little did he know that some lowly Division-I Syracuse field hockey player would attempt to draw parallels between his celebration of brotherhood and her four years of being a student-athlete more than 200 years later.

But I’m that fool. At times I hate it, at times I love it and last Sunday afternoon, I just about died from the ecstasy of making it to the final four in my last year of eligibility.

Sure, we didn’t get much media coverage because no one really cares about field hockey when football finally wins. But for those with a smidgen of interest, the field hockey team is making its second appearance in the final four in program history. Lose and my life’s over, win and my life’s over — my student-athlete life, anyway. Here’s what being a student-athlete for four years feels like in 18th-century German ode style.

Schiller: To virtue’s steep hill / It leads the sufferer on.

Athlete Ode: Getting to the NCAA Tournament isn’t easy. In fact, if you’ve got a bad outlook, training like a dog might feel like a hellish mountain without a peak. Now that I’m about to fall off the side of a four-year-high Everest, all I want to do is go back to preseason base camp and start all over again.

Schiller: Whoever has had the great fortune / To be a friend’s friend.

Athlete Ode: There’s nobody in my life I have loved more, and at times liked less, than my teammates and coaches. And I don’t doubt the feeling is mutual. That’s why being on a sports team is special: A teammate is a friendship forged in steel.

Schiller: Run, brothers, run your race / Joyful, as a hero going to conquest.

Athlete Ode: According to NCAA rules, a team can train up to 20 hours a week. On my team we train long and run far, sometimes up to 6 kilometers on game day. What am I going to do with my life without being an athlete as a part time job? There’s an urban legend that four years of collegiate sport ages your body 10 years. Whether it’s true is irrelevant; all I know is that I now climb up stairs on all fours, and I like it that way.

Schiller: Cannibals drink gentleness / And despair drinks courage.

Athlete Ode: I can’t speak for cannibals, but I’ve never had a drop of alcohol during the school week. Ever. This might make me a loser in the eyes of the general population, but I couldn’t care less. I drink up the thrill of the fight and play on. How this strange behavior translates to non-athlete-real-people (NARP) life, I don’t want to know. But I guess I’ll find out next week.

Schiller: And whoever was never able to must creep / Tearfully away from this circle.

Athlete Ode: The student-athlete’s life has been a cry-fest. I cry when I get sent off, when I play like a legend — almost never — when a Connecticut player tools me, when I win and when I lose. But athlete tears are a privilege because, according to William Frey, a doctor at the Ramsey Medical Center in Minneapolis, emotional tears contain stress hormones, compared to reflex, or NARP, tears that are almost 100 percent water. So next time you see athletes crying, leave them alone. They’re on their way to being heros.

Schiller doesn’t say much about crossroads, but I know I’m at one. If you’re undergoing your own version of the athlete-NARP transition, be brave. Change is good.

Iona Holloway is a magazine journalism and psychology dual major. #thisis #LYGC. Email her ijhollow@syr.edu.

Published on November 14, 2012 at 1:41 am