{"id":1278,"date":"2025-02-21T15:27:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-21T21:27:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2025-02-21T15:29:56","modified_gmt":"2025-02-21T21:29:56","slug":"what-it-takes-to-be-a-successful-student-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/2025\/02\/21\/what-it-takes-to-be-a-successful-student-athlete\/","title":{"rendered":"What It Takes to Be a Successful Student-Athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Hannah Sheer<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Johnson County Community College recently held their annual Academic Success Night ceremony to celebrate the achievements of student athletes. The ceremony emphasized the impressive 3.43 cumulative GPA the athletes managed to hold in the fall semester.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is not an easy accomplishment, so how do these athletes manage to balance the workload of being a full-time student on top of performing well in athletics?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">KJCCC pitcher of the week for the Cavaliers softball team Brielle Dee, acknowledges that \u201cputting in the work for the classroom can be difficult, but having a space to focus on my work really helps.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dee also mentions that being pushed by her teammates and having efficient communication with her professors are large contributors to her success on and off the field.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cHaving spaces like the academic achievement center (AAC) to have alone time to lock in forces me to work harder and get assignments done on time,\u201d Dee added.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It truly does take an army, because not only do the players want to maintain good grades, but the coaches want that for them as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">JCCC Head Women\u2019s Basketball coach Ben Conrad explains that there are several resources around campus he uses to help his girls succeed. So, while his team is maintaining an undefeated record on the court, they are also maintaining good grades in the classroom as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Conrad shows he has his athletes\u2019 best interest at heart by having team rules about class attendance as well as meeting with players to discuss how they are doing in their classes, and offering resources to guide them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWe try to figure out who on our roster might need a little help and nudge them in the direction of those resources,\u201d Conrad explains.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">He also mentions that his goal is for his players to \u201cfinish the year strong and give the same kind of effort in the spring that they gave in the fall\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">These accomplishments do not go unnoticed by JCCC\u2019s athletic director Tony Tompkins.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201c[I\u2019m]proud to have our student-athletes represent JCCC both on campus and in the community,\u201d Tompkins says.\u00a0 \u201cOur student-athletes work extremely hard and put in a lot of extra time and energy to be successful.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tompkins also explains that there are many people who help behind the scenes that deserve recognition for the success of JCCC\u2019s athletic programs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI am also grateful for the JCCC coaching staff, support staff, counselors, administration, and faculty which have provided great direction, support, and a quality education for our student-athletes to achieve their goals in moving onto the next level,\u201d he mentions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ultimately, there are many contributors to the success of Johnson County Community College\u2019s athletic programs in and out of the classroom, but at the end of the day it all rides on the athlete. How they choose to use the resources they are given is on them, but the results of when they succeed will not go unnoticed.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201c[I\u2019m]proud to have our student-athletes represent JCCC both on campus and in the community. Our student-athletes work extremely hard and put in a lot of extra time and energy to be successful.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1000,"featured_media":1279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[90,89,91],"ppma_author":[124],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-academics","tag-jccc-athletics","tag-student-athlete"],"author_meta":{"display_name":"Messenger Staff","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/mhumph18\/"},"featured_img":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2025\/02\/books-and-sports-300x226.jpg","coauthors":[{"link":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/author\/mhumph18\/","display_name":"Messenger Staff"}],"tax_additional":{"categories":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/category\/sports\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Sports<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Sports<\/span>"]},"tags":{"linked":["<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/category\/sports\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Academics<\/a>","<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/category\/sports\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">JCCC Athletics<\/a>","<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/category\/sports\/\" class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Student-Athlete<\/a>"],"unlinked":["<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Academics<\/span>","<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">JCCC Athletics<\/span>","<span class=\"advgb-post-tax-term\">Student-Athlete<\/span>"]}},"comment_count":"0","relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 2 years ago","modified":"Updated 2 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on February 21, 2025","modified":"Updated on February 21, 2025"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on February 21, 2025 3:27 pm","modified":"Updated on February 21, 2025 3:29 pm"},"featured_img_caption":"","series_order":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"authors":[{"term_id":124,"user_id":1000,"is_guest":0,"slug":"mhumph18","display_name":"Messenger Staff","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/1d550cfefcbdb3d51b5ca80ce32ea21defada2724e3cd6d8373f27c880e25be9?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","first_name":"Messenger","last_name":"Staff","user_url":"","job_title":"","description":""}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/files\/2025\/02\/books-and-sports-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1000"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1283,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions\/1283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.jccc.edu\/messenger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}