The game-life balance: How student athletes manage sports, study and life

For many Syracuse University students, weekends at school mean parties, football games and time with friends. For student athletes like Junior rugby player Marissa Cogan, they mean time on the field and on the road through Upstate New York, practices and late nights catching up on homework. 

Cogan is a broadcast and digital journalism student in the Newhouse School and has been a member of Syracuse women’s rugby since she first came to the University her freshman year.  

For her, balancing rugby with a demanding major has been stressful at times, but she makes it work through a meticulous schedule and collaboration with her teammates, on and off the field.  

“Starting as early as freshman year, time management became a huge part of my life,” Cogan said. “Just making sure I was giving myself enough time to film, edit and do everything I needed to do for a Newhouse project.” 

Cogan said that the team practices five nights a week, for two hours each, along with usually having games on Saturdays. The team’s conference covers Upstate New York, so while the travel is manageable, weekends often mean away games.  

Along with being a full-time student and rugby player, Cogan is also a member of the University 100 and Newhouse’s ACC Network studio.  

Her calendar is color-coded and full of everything from classes, practices, campus tours and homework, all carefully planned, something she says, that she actually enjoys.  

“I have everything on one calendar, I don’t really have two separate calendars, one for school and one for rugby or everything else,” she said. “I have it all in one so I can plan ahead like ‘oh, I have this giant project due, and we have a game that weekend.’ Really making sure I can get stuff done.”  

Courtesy of Marissa Cogan

During a game, Cogan and her teammates tackle an opposing player during a play.

In addition to doing schoolwork and keeping up with her practice and game schedule, Cogan also works to make time for her friendships and social activities.  

While her schoolwork and practice schedules go in her calendar, Cogan says that making time for her social life also goes into the schedule.  

“If I’m hanging out with friends, it’ll be in my calendar,” she said.  

A lot of Cogan’s social life also fits in with her life as an athlete, as many of her teammates are also her close friends.  

“In the past, we’ve had a team house where a handful of girls are living together, and that house is also the hangout space for everyone,” she said. “They had an open policy where you could just show up and hang out in their living room if you wanted to.”  

One struggle Cogan said that she tends to face is when plans are made on the fly.  

“It’s really hard to find a time when we’re all available unless we happen to get out of practice early one night, or when we get back from a game, and we say, ‘well, we’re back and it’s early afternoon, so maybe tonight we want to do a movie night or something,’” she said. “Those kinds of things where it was my scheduled time to clean my kitchen or this was my time to get a specific assignment done, means that I have to kind of sacrifice one over the other.” 

Cogan said that within the team, a lot of the girls may schedule their time differently than she does because while they are all in rugby, they have different things going on outside of the team.  

“There are plenty of girls on the team who have different ways of balancing rugby with school, and have different personal lives and things going on,” Cogan said.

“I’ve always been drawn to being busy. I really enjoy having a packed schedule,” Cogan said. “I kind of prefer it that way because it means that I have a set time for everything and it holds me accountable to make sure I’m getting stuff done.”