Transcript: Prosperity beyond sport: empowering post-athletic career growth

Onya: Picture yourself in your early 30s. You’ve dedicated years of discipline to forge a career as a professional athlete. Now you’re faced with the daunting task of reassessing your entire professional trajectory. Do you possess the requisite resources, network and guidance to navigate such a transition seamlessly? Do you even know where to start? Now imagine yourself standing in the gym moments away from embarking on what could potentially be your last game.

Voice 1:As in every match I was giving my best to help the team. But in this game I could not help but think that this might be my last throw, my last opportunity. All my life was driven by conviction of succeeding as an athlete. My nutrition, the decision on prioritising training before studying the support and demand to improve from my parents, the discipline of sleeping on weekends instead of partying with friends. All these thoughts in my head while being terrified of listening the buzzer. Indicating the end of my last game as a professional athlete. And there it was. I could see journalists walking towards me, knowing that I won’t be able to dribble the question. I fear the most. What’s next for me? (sentence echoes)

Juan Manuel: Transitioning into a new career is a challenge that athletes worldwide face. Join our conversation with Xuecong and Aditi. Xuecong, a student from the Prosperity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship programme recently made a research project called ‘Investigating Indian Athletes Post Sport Career Transition and the Effect of Career Transition Assistant Programmes.’ Aditi is a former athlete who has developed several initiatives to support athletes in India, Aditi participated in Xuecong’s initiative.

Onya: Hi everyone. Welcome Xuecong and Aditi to the Life of PIE podcast. It’s great to have you. Thank you both for joining us.

Xuecong: Thank you, Onya.

Aditi: Thank you, Onya, looking forward to this.

Onya: Great. Can’t wait to dive into the conversation. Xuecong, my first question is, tell us what the topic is, because I know you did a really cool study on athletes and it’s based in India. So tell us a little bit about the topic and then Aditi can come in and tell us a little bit about her organisation, Simply Sports.

Xuecong: So my paper is called ‘Beyond the finish line. Investigating Indian athletes post career transition and the effect of career transition assistance programmes’. This is a collaboration project with Aditi’s organisation, Simply Sport Foundation.

Aditi: Thank you, Onya. Simply Sport is a grassroots sport organisation. Our mission is to empower athletes both in sport and life and that’s why this project was extremely important for us. A lot of times in sport, we tend to focus a lot on the medals, but we don’t focus as much on the system of what happens after that. And given the very unique circumstances of an athlete where you know you’re kind of done with your career in your 30’s or even maybe late 30’s today. But what do you do after that so? So that is something that we also wanted to work on and that’s where UCL and IGP came in and helped us.

Onya: That’s fantastic. And I think you’re absolutely right. This is actually touching on something that there not a lot of studies on. People don’t think a lot about what happens after an athlete retires and most of the time, as you said, you retire in your 30’s, you still have a long run where you still have a lot of time. And it’s interesting because even I haven’t thought about that myself, so I’m really, really looking forward to this conversation. Xuecong, maybe share with us, what are these challenges that the athletes face?

Xuecong: So here are some very interesting challenges we found. We analysed the responses of around 90 athletes and around 10 industry leaders and the first challenge we found is the balance of sports training and academia. According to our survey response, most athletes recognise the difficulty of balancing their sports career and academia but most of them choose to confront this challenge. A small amount of athletes say that they choose to prioritise only sports and dedicate all their time to build their sporting careers. This leads to low effort applied in their academia. So although this decision is understandable later on, it could impact their career transition journeys as it limits their opportunities to gain other skills and the academic qualifications. For example, they feel it’s quite difficult to balance. Both the sports and the academia. So this could lead to a disappointing performance in both areas and could significantly impact their mental and physical health. So this is the biggest challenge we found based on the data analysis.

Onya: Can I talk a little bit about that first one and also bring Aditi into the conversation? Because I know Aditi is a former athlete. I guess one question I had is, I wonder is it that the athletes are not considering post sports career, and therefore you might find that some athletes prioritise their sports training and regime because of course when they go to training, that’s probably the same time when their peers are in the university studying, which means there’s a trade off, they have to ask, am I going to go to the university today or am I going to go for my training, which could be up to 8 hours or more? And so they’re losing out on their education and the traditional educational system, which is that we’re all in class at a specific time. The lecturer, like myself, I’m standing right in front of you at a specific time. So if you’re not in the room, you’re missing out. Is it that then? They’re not in the beginning thinking about it and therefore, would this career transition assistance programme also include that awareness of education for new athletes. So I wonder if you could speak to that.

Aditi: Sure. So I think what tends to happen, especially in the Indian system is that we do not have a concept of a sports university or a sports school where your education is designed according to your sport and according to your schedules and your tournaments. We have a very few schools which are present in India, but again there are too few and also the cost for getting into schools like that is too high. So it is something that we still haven’t found an answer on in terms of how do we get to the numbers when it comes to sports schools and you know, sports universities. So when we start off as athletes and we have a certain benchmark as athletes and if you’re for example if I’m a district or a state champion, I am going to tell myself that I can be India’s number one right and when I’m confident about that, I might not focus as much on the studies part. For example, if I’m travelling to tournaments, I will not attend classes. That means I’m going to just go back home to get some notes from somebody, not really understand concepts and write exams the best way I can without being in. I’m OK with that at that point, because I think that there is glory on the other end in terms of getting those medals and all of that right. So when you’re achieving things on the sports front, you’re quite OK if things are not going so well at the study front. But then because sport is quite dynamic and it keeps changing, for example, what happens if an athlete is a state champion but goes through an injury? And it’s a serious one. She’s injured her knee or whatever. And then what? What happens?

How do you then think about should I prioritise sport? Should I prioritise studies? You’ve already made an investment in sport way too much, right? Xuecong can correct me if I’m wrong but I think in the research we did figure out that most of the athletes did say that they tried to balance study and sport because in India there’s no other way. I mean you have to find a way to balance sports because that’s the only way we know. I mean we do not have a system in place in which things are specific to the athletes and how they function. It’s the other way round. We have to function as the academic system functions in the country and say because that happens, there is no system in place to talk to us about the fact that sport has very small number of years with it. It comes with its own caveats.

You can be a champion today, you may not be a champion tomorrow. What about skilling yourself? Can you use the computer? Can you write an email? Can you look at your own finances? Can you have a conversation? Can you articulate things? Do you read so things that can prepare you to become a successful person? I mean, not even employable, but even just successful. That is something that we never are told because we are just told that you’re an athlete. So just focus on both but, but I think there has to be a system in place where we are educated about what’s coming up. We are made aware about what’s coming up and we start preparing for it at the right time before it’s too late.

Onya: Thank you for that. And I’m going to come back to Xuecong, you mentioned earlier on, when we had a chat, she talked about some of the athletes actually have degrees higher, higher degrees in engineering and computer science. And I’m curious to know how they managed their career while at the same time, how did they manage that balance? Because I imagine with engineering you probably have to be in a lab. You might have to do some work in person. What happens when that lab time clashes with a game? Perhaps even an international game where you have to travel. How were those athletes able to balance their careers?

Xuecong: So based on the data, there’s actually no very clear information about how they meant to do that, but some of them did mention that they attended online school. So I think this is one of the methods they make sure they could keep up with the teaching.

Onya: That’s really interesting because I think if not for COVID. that led to the proliferation of the use of Zoom and online and new models of learning. Xuecong mentioned to me that some universities now offer almost a bespoke programme for these athletes where they can access content online. So that’s a really interesting way of seeing the world of teaching. How universities are adapting to enable these athletes. I want to find out about the second question. So what should a good career transition assistance programme look like? How it works in other regions and locations? What did you find that the ideal should look like and what do we have in India?

Xuecong: So based on the analysis of the existing framework, the ideal career transition framework should include, but not limited to first, support for mental health and second, support for education and the lastly, support non-athletic careers. Regarding these three different elements, I looked into the case study of the international career assistance programmes. There’s quite a lot in Europe and of course countries like America. So regarding the mental health. There’s one programme, I think it’s a targeted at Irish athletes. It breaks the whole programme into three different stages, pre-retirement,

immediate retirement and post-retirement. Targeting at different stages provides very specific mental health support for those athletes. It’s very detailed and it’s very thoughtful and in the future Indian government or India career assistance programme could perhaps consider offering more specific and more targeted support for their own athletes. For the second element, support for education, there’s quite some research in Europe, focus on this area. For example, there are some universities that have relaxed their university entry requirement for some athletes. For example, if they attend some specific sports schools or they have earned some sort of qualification to make it easier for those athletes to attend school. At the same time, there are some other universities which offer mixed learning methods. For example, those athletes could choose to attend the school online so that they don’t miss out when they are in competition season or they have the training. And for the last element, support has been brought up by many scholars. After they retire, they want to jump onto another athletic career. For example, being a coach or open their own sport centre. Some of them want to be an entrepreneur. Some of them want to try something totally different from sports. Support for non-athletic careers gives those the option to explore different pathways. And also help them to gain industry experience, actually one university offered an internship to those student athletes so they could figure out the best way to help those athletes manage their study and also gain the industry experience at the same time. And that one has actually been very successful. They have done a survey at the end and it showed that around 90 percent of the participants feel like they are more clear about their future pathway after their athletic career, so these are the three main elements of the assistance programmes.

Onya: Thank you for that. I do have a follow up question and then I have a quite a specific question for Aditi. I’m wondering, short term, if it looks like the university plays a key role in the career development of the athletes in supporting them because you talked about mental health support. You talked about education, support for education, and you talked about support for non-sports careers. And you mentioned the university several times. I’m curious to know, perhaps Aditi might speak to this as well. What role does the government play in all of this?

Xuecong: I personally think this is a whole ecosystems issue. It cannot be solved just by a single university. Perhaps Aditi could give more insight into this point.

Aditi: So I think in terms of what the government is doing currently in India, we have certain amount of sports quotas in certain universities and especially colleges. You start high school or your junior college and even your masters degree. So there are some colleges which give quotas out for athletes who have played sport at a certain level. Or do they have medals at district to state levels? And that quota is around 5% of the admissions or you get some amount of relief in terms of you know getting into these universities. The second bit of this is also that you get some addition to your marks. So one of the things that government had also done for quite a few years is where they would give you additional 5% if you have played for the state or at the national level, which are added to your overall marks, which helps with athletes who are not maybe scoring so well and you know that 5% increase can help them pass through and get on to the next levels. So that is the second thing that is there.

And the third thing that also has been tried is to be able to give government jobs to athletes. But this is again to the cream of athlete, so at least we have maybe won medals at the international level or they have, you know done something at that elite level. Then there are some ways of getting into a job into a petroleum company or a bank or you know even government offices. So that is also a way of in which the government has tried to kind of put some onus into being an athlete in the country, but saying all of this, there are two issues which we see is one factor that all the quotas that they’ve released in terms of the colleges, most of the athletes are unaware that they exist. A lot of times, you know, the messaging doesn’t reach the grassroots athletes and especially the parents because it’s the parents are going to especially for the young athletes and the parents who take these. What has

though reached the grassroot, is the idea of having a government job and that also shows in Xuecong’s paper where you know most of the athletes say that they are playing or they’re looking for a government job at the end of their careers, because that’s what everybody is told, that if you’re a certain level of athlete, you’ll get a government job. So one is that issue, the second issue? That education and sport are different ministries in India and we still have to find a pathway in which they both come together and how they deliver programmes that are specific to athlete needs. So we have schools and colleges that are, of course, you know, run by the government, but we need more and more of schools and colleges that are run by the government specifically for the athletes, because the players that we have currently in the ecosystem are private players, so they also need to make their money and that means that only a certain number of athletes can, you know, avail the benefits of being in a sports school or in a sports university. But maybe at the mass level, if it has to be done at that level, it is important for us to join hands. Where maybe the sportsman, industry and education come together and come up with some programmes. The other thing that I truly believe is the role of the private players in terms of helping athletes become more employable, like when we are running, for example, programmes like folk science, we have support in terms of literature and psychology. All of that is extremely important for the athlete and high performer. But if you look at the holistic development of an athlete, maybe you know having them go through workshops on public, speaking on how to use your computer, financial literacy, leadership skills, soft skills, career, what are the careers in sport, what are the careers that they might have outside of sport, helping them understand that. Education is important so all of these things are something that should also be part of a player development route because that kind of gives them a holistic view that there is a world out there and because most of us live in bubbles. Giving them these interventions which are outside of sport and that can be taken up by even private players and they can deliver such programmes at mass levels as well, that might help as well. I think in the government, like, for example, the Sports Authority of India centres, we definitely know that most of these centres are hostels where athletes are residential. And there’s a lot of push for athletes to go to schools and to give them their training is also planned in a way in which they have morning sessions and evening sessions so that they have a time between to go to a school and come back. They also try to get some amount of extra tuitions for them. Maybe a tuition class that is going on in the in the Centre as well. So I’m very sure that the government is extremely concerned about this and I’m very sure that the government wants to find a way to solve this because more and more we are hearing them say that we need to support athletes in education. There’s no denial to that. But I think we have to find a way to build frameworks that can actually practically work for all of us that lead to the sports departments and even the education and how all of this can come together to solve the problem at the mass level. I don’t know if I’ve answered your question, but these are some of the things that we have these are some of the gaps that we have I think as of now.

Onya: Thank you. That’s really interesting. And I think Xuecong mentioned something that I believe is crucial, she said. The word ecosystem and you talked about the parents because the parents are involved. You’re an athlete, you are a former athlete yourself, so you can speak from experience. The parents are involved, the parents, probably when the athlete is even quite young, probably make a lot of the decisions. So if we think about it from a systems perspective now, you’re looking at all those that are involved, all of the stakeholders. And you’re looking at how they feed into this support programme as opposed to the university, just the university adopting, you know, providing online learning. That’s not enough. What can the private sector do? How can the parents be more informed about what’s available because you talked about a lack of awareness is a gap or information and symmetry where people don’t really know that these things are available. How can the parents be involved? How can you have an intermediary? Are there intermediary programmes that are designed not only by the Sports Ministry, but a programme that is designed by the Sports Ministry by the university, by the private sector, so you have different actors coming together and putting together a holistic programme for the athlete that addresses their mental health and Xuecong mentioned that some of the existing frameworks in other countries, such as in Europe. She talked about this pre- retired immediate-retire and the post-retirement. Just targeting these key stages to ensure that the mental health support is provided. I see the need for a systems approach as opposed to these isolated solutions that do really enhance the resilience or the mental resilience of these athletes. She also talked about something which I think short term you might maybe want to expand on a little, you mentioned when we had a conversation earlier, you talked about how these athletes might not even know how. They don’t know what careers they could go into or they don’t know how some of their skills can be used or applied in a new way. So I know they have discipline. You simply cannot be successful or be a high performing athlete without being disciplined too, they have several skills that could actually then be applied in other settings, but they don’t seem to know how. Is there any kind of guidance or sort of mentoring or coaching, not the coach as in the physical sport coach, some sort of coach in terms of career coach because within the university for example, we have a careers department and they provide support to all of our students. So is there such a thing that is tailored to the athletes. I don’t know if Xuecong, if you want to talk a little bit about this point that I raised where even the athletes themselves, some of them don’t know what they will do or who they are outside of being an athlete.

Xuecong: Yes, yeah, you are correct. So based on the data, there are many athletes, although they have the awareness that they cannot avoid their future career transition after their athletic career there say noticeable gap in their knowledge regarding the detail. Of the future career path available to them outside the sports or what skills it requires. So as I mentioned before, this gap is partially led by their over reliance on sports quota for securing their jobs. Which could lead to a risky situation where they find themselves underprepared for a career outside those directly linked to sports. Regarding the skills actually follow the support for non-athletic careers. For example, the one university offered on- campus internship. They also part of that is they provide mentor feedback. They have mentors for those student athletes. They help them to develop communication skills and part of it is to help them discover the skills that can be transferable into their next career. The non the post-sport career. So usually after analysing all those different case studies, ideal assistance programmes, they usually have those kind of like mentoring sessions to help those student access or general athletes to discover the skills that are marketable and that are transferable and also help them to enhance other skills that can be helpful. For example, adapt to a cooperative environment or other career options that are available to them. So yeah, this is the current situation or how those ideal assitance programmes target marketable skills, transferable skills.

Onya: Thank you for that. My next question then for Xuecong is what kind of career transition assistance programmes can be developed specifically for India? Because when we’re thinking about prosperity. Of course, this is the Institute for Global Prosperity. For thinking about prosperity, we know it’s place based. We know it’s contextual, and what prosperity looks like in one location is not the same as what it looks like in the other location. So just thinking about your study, what kind of transition assistance programmes would be developed or could be developed to help the athletes post sports career.

Xuecong: So for this research question, what kind of career assistance programme or intervention could be developed in India? Actually, all those existing case studies assistance programmes I mentioned in my study because previously we already finalised the challenges faced by India athletes. After I got the findings, I then looked into those international programmes. I only picked those that can be applied in the Indian cases because their athletes face similar challenges. For example, mental health. It occurs at different stages, so that’s why I picked the programme that designed for the Irish athletes because it breaks into different stage of athlete career. Pre-retirement, immediate retirement and post-retirement are similar for the on-campus internship because one struggle for the Indian athletes is they have to manage their sports and their learning and many of them. Choose to do both at the same time. They don’t want to give up one of them, so it increases the difficulty and that’s why I found that the on-campus internship. Is the most suitable in this scenario because with the organisation of the university with the university involved, it can be most suitable for the assets based on their schedule for their internship. Learning their training, it all be considered and it has been arranged properly for them, so it’s the easiest approach for those aspects to balance their learning, their support and also gain the industry experience. For this question, like all those international programme I mentioned are already suitable in the context of India because they are picked as their assets face similar challenges.

Onya: Thank you. Xuecong. Aditi, I wonder if you could speak to that question.

Aditi: So yeah, I mean in terms of what might work in India, one thing that we struggle with in any which way in any programmes that we do in India, is the diversity in terms of the culture, in terms of the socio-economic backgrounds, in terms of language, in terms of what is real. For one district may not be real for the other. What we have definitely realised is that it’s extremely difficult to have very copy/paste kind of model across India but saying that luckily I feel that the problem of career transition is not really as much of a thing where you may not be able to scale it in one certain kind because the problems remain the same that the athletes are kind of lost. And it doesn’t matter if they are in West Bengal or if they are in Bombay when an athlete is thinking about the post career.

They don’t know what’s coming up, they do not have people to talk to about it. So for example, when I quit sport I didn’t have any professionals helping me out in terms of what I needed to do next. I had to just figure my way out and yes, your parents are going to tell you what can be done. Your spouse is going to tell you what can be done. But then as an athlete we are so driven by our own passion that it’s extremely difficult to be told. What you need to do and then and sometimes use your passion, drives you to certain things. For example, my passion drove me to want to work at the grassroots support ecosystem in India and I want to work at that level and see what I can do. But when I thought about that, I realised I don’t have the skills or maybe the education to actually take that up. So my next step was then that education matters and I need to get my masters then that gave that turn to my life, did my masters and then came back to the country feeling more confident. But when I did that, it was very, very individualised. It was very true for my circumstance because I could afford an education and I could take a loan and do my masters or I had a family that had always valued education. Most of the athletes who come to sport in India are from rural India, where education is not something that is, taken very seriously. I mean they will of course go to schools and all of that happens. But for them, job is everything, right? So the push is towards that. So I feel that when it comes to the problem of career transition, I’m very, very optimist about finding a framework that might be able to find success if it’s done well, we’re very sure that with what we’re also trying to do with UCL as a follow up to this paper is where we’re working with the innovation lab where we’re trying to figure out a programme that might actually work based on the recommendations and the findings of the report. And we want to, and I think there will be failure maybe in the beginning. Imean when we pilot it and that’s fine because to solve something as big as this you will need to, you know run certain pilots and you know figure things out but I feel that Xuecong has pointed out things like, you know, mental health support, career guidance, career counselling, soft skills, transferable skills. Because I know today I’ve worked at the professional ecosystem for the last five years. I know how much being an athlete has contributed to me being a decent success. Because things like persistence, things like being OK with failure, things like not giving up things like being able to adapt to different circumstances actually are the foundation of being successful, right. And that is what sport gives you. It may not give you the skills of a computer, but it gives you the integrity and it gives confidence and it gives you. Skills which are just beyond a textbook and that’s what you build your skills on, and that is something that doesn’t come out in resumes as well. So how do you write a resume, for example, which brings out what you have learned through sport, that even if that is something that athletes can and they don’t value it so much, you know, if I value it today because I’ve given it five years, because when I started off when I was in the first year in a professional ecosystem, I actually didn’t have the confidence at that point to say that I am this level of athlete or I have won a Commonwealth medal and that’s why I’m going to be the best employee that you ever had. I did not have that confidence. I think there’s a lot of preparation that goes in in terms of having a reality check when you quit sport and start in a career. That culture and the paper talks about that, that a lot of times corporates have a problem with athletes because they’re so individualistic in nature so there are a lot of things here which are moving. But I’m very sure that with with a lot of deliberation and the research that we have done, we will be able to pilot something that might actually work.

Onya: That’s fantastic. Thank you so much. This was such a great conversation, looking at career transition assistance programmes for athletes, post their sports career. I see so much potential for that framework that you’re working on. And I think what’s also interesting is the point about the transferable skills so there’s also a need for support where short term work highlights, support for mental health, support for education in terms of balancing their education and support for their non- sports career. I think one area would be the support in these skills. You just said in the private sector, they’re frustrated. I would imagine that athletes are good team players. I would imagine that they’re proactive. They’re persistent, they’re resilient. So I imagine a lot of those skills can be transferred to the workplace. However, they do need that career support in terms of how to write a CV. What sort of skills? How do you frame your CV so that the employer can see clearly how you bring value to the organisation? So this was such a great conversation we could carry on talking about it till tomorrow, but we have to stop. I want to say thank you, Xuecong, for coming to have this conversation about your dissertation. Thank you both for coming along and having this conversation and hopefully we’ll get to see some of that work. So your pilots being applied and hopefully this conversation. Xuecong’s work will also feed into developing that pilot that you talked about. Thanks everyone for joining us on this season 2 episode of Life of Pie looking at post-sports careers and the support that’s provided for those athletes. Thank you and goodbye.
 

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