While most students find it difficult to balance the hardships of school and home life, behind the scenes, a sparse number of students find themselves always in a season for school sports. These students, often extremely involved in school beyond athletics, work tirelessly to represent their schools.

Three-sport-athletes, like Steven Zrimec ’25 who plays football, basketball and baseball, find it hard to balance school and sports, but often find that time management plays a fundamental role in their everyday lives.

“I’ve definitely learned time management from my parents,” Zrimec said. “They have been on me since freshman year to get good grades. Whatever the teacher puts out for the class that day, you have to jump on it right away.”

As a golf, hockey and soccer athlete, Tinley Gram ’27 finds that despite the potential of time management skills, in reality, maintaining these methods can be difficult.

“Sports have taught me a lot of discipline, but sometimes when I’m not at a practice, game or match, I struggle to keep those routines up,” Gram said. “It’s almost like I’m more of an athlete-student than a student-athlete and I find myself falling behind in classes.”

Gram said that though sometimes she can find herself slipping in class, there are a lot of benefits to being so involved in high school athletics.

History teacher and Baseball Coach Peter Loch was also an athlete in both high school and college and feels his time as an athlete taught him many skills he has carried into his adulthood. Nevertheless, he commends the students for all of their hard work and dedication year-around.

“The hard part [of being an athlete] is being able to give 100 percent of yourself whenever you’re at your sport,” Loch said. “As multiple sport athletes, it can be a lot more difficult because you’re always doing so many different things. Also here at South we stress being a great teammate and that takes everything you’ve got, doing that year-round is just difficult to do at times.”

When Zrimec finds himself overwhelmed trying to balance everything, he has a simple but effective solution to those difficult times.

“Those are the times where discipline takes over,” said Zrimec. “It’s definitely hard going to practice each day on top of homework and time with family, but you just have to attack what’s happening in the moment and take it step by step.”