My name is Justin Kong, currently a high school athlete (class of 2025) playing tennis and football at Loyola High School of Los Angeles.
Coming from a public elementary and middle school, I had very minimal school spirit. However, upon joining Loyola, I have come to love this community because of the diversity and brotherhood. Supporting my school at varsity games and the school spirit that everyone has makes Loyola truly different, which has motivated me to be as involved as I can whether sports, clubs or academia. Being so involved, however, has led to its own set of challenges in staying healthy and time management.
Playing football, I am on the smaller side in playing nose guard. I have to make up for my physical disadvantage by playing smarter - I have to be quicker so I don't get pushed back on the defensive line.
A regular day for me is waking up early for morning lifting, having classroom instruction, and going to football and tennis practice after school. Most days I would leave the house at 5 AM and will not be back until 9 PM. Add the commute time and the time I need to eat and sleep, it doesn’t leave me much time to do anything else.
Time is time, but then there is also stress. Studying and doing homework adds even more stress on top of my other commitments. The pressure of needing to maintain good grades and being good in sports is stressful to say the least. So I started wondering how others do it; people who are dealing or have dealt with all this pressure. I became curious about how they managed their time between school and their personal life.
I’m not the best athlete out there, nor am I the smartest kid at school. I’m definitely not the best at stress management nor am I the best at time management. Everyone has some sort of advice that they wish they knew sooner, and I hope this platform can be that bridge of advice to me and other student-athletes out there.
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