From a field of more than 460,000 athletes participating at NCAA institutions, Lipscomb’s star softball pitcher Kelly Young was one of only 200 selected for the Career and Sports forum in Indianapolis, Indiana.
The forum’s mission is simple: to help athletes find a job. As Young is now a Lipscomb graduate with a historic softball career behind her, she must face the challenges of life after sports.
“Just to be one of the few people selected to represent Lipscomb is such an honor,” Young said. “It’s nice to know that I have made an impact on administrators and coaches and people that I really don’t work directly with every day. To be selected by the NCAA was a huge honor and an awesome opportunity that I never knew how much I could benefit from.”
The program springs from NCAA realization that once many college athletes are done with the sport they have played their entire lives, they will not know how to deal with no longer having that activity as integral to their lives. The purpose of the Career and Sports forum is to give athletes an opportunity to network and learn about themselves and how they can still give back to their sport even if their eligibility is up.
Each day consisted of several different panels, such as the overview of intercollegiate athletics, a graduate assistant panel and breakout sessions.
“There were athletes of all ages present,” Young said. “Each athlete there ranged from people who didn’t know what to do after college, or athletes that already had graduate assistant jobs set in place, but it was beneficial to both groups. There were multiple speakers each day from each division and corner of collegiate athletics.”
The NCAA provided the theme “The Time Is Now” for the weekend, seeking to share the message that every day is a job interview for athletes who want to further their career in collegiate athletics.
“It gave us a plan,” Young said, adding, “but we realized how to make plans and learn to understand that nine times out of 10 those plans might fail. But they kept pushing for us to strategize when things might go wrong and how our experience of adversity in sports can help us problem-solve.”
Se could not pinpoint one particular moment that most impacted her, but rather pointed out several.
“One of the biggest things I learned was to never close doors and to think that I’m never too good for any job opportunity I may get.”
Young added she definitely learned a lot about herself and that an emphasis was that the former athletes should just be themselves.
“They told me to be ‘you’ and to find my ‘why,’” Young said. “My dream is to be a physical therapist on a college campus, and it became more and more clear to me that my main goal is to have an impact on people.
“When people feel like they’re at their lowest, I can be there for them and spend time with them to understand that life still goes.
“I know this goes beyond the job title of a physical therapist, but I feel like this is such an overlooked aspect of how people can help others and see them succeed on the field or after.”
Young is completing her final internship before she prepares for physical therapy school this fall. She finished her 2015 season with over 200 strikeouts for the second straight year, going down as one of Lipscomb’s most prolific players.