“I’m literally living in the body of a 25-year-old because of what I’ve done over the past four years.”

Burnout is popularly considered a mental affliction associated with one person working too hard for too long, but Student Body President Ella Lachance, Class of 2026, described the effect of juggling Varsity Flag Football, a top 10% class rank, Varsity Mock Trial, and about a dozen other commitments as a more physical toll than mental. “You don’t sleep. You don’t eat enough,” Lachance says. “Your nutrition as a human being… you’re not able to fuel your body properly. You’re not sleeping enough, you’re not drinking enough water, there’s just no time for simple things.”

Current Class of 2026 valedictorian John Corbett, who also plays Goalkeeper for Boys Soccer and Center for Boys Basketball, struggles particularly with the transition from Varsity sport to Varsity sport: “One sport will end, and the other will begin immediately without a break, and that can be very brutal.” Corbett concurs with Lachance’s assessment of how burnout affects student-athletes once it takes hold, emphasizing that “it wears out the body as well. You’re always tired, and your mind just doesn’t work as fast, which means you have to put more time into homework, which means you get less sleep, and that vicious cycle just continues throughout the entire season.”

Lillie Rice, Class of 2027, is a three-sport athlete with a top ten class rank who identified the practical implications of burnout as her main concern: “Staying up late [doing homework] and then going to practice the next day, and then having to do that constantly without a lot of break… I physically just [do] not have time besides late at night to do my homework, so my sleep [is] really minimal and then on top of training for multiple hours a week, playing multiple games a week, my physical health definitely [takes] a toll.” Rice, Corbett, and Lachance each independently labeled burnout a “vicious cycle” and told The Cougar Daily about how difficult that cycle is to escape. “It feels like you’re drowning in how much you have to do,” Rice says.

For elite student-athletes who must be nearly perfect in both academics and on the playing field, burnout is almost inevitable. Corbett advises student-athletes to prepare for burnout by maintaining their priorities and fostering relationships with their teachers. He says his success comes from maximizing the time he does have by “getting everything done on time, or early, if [I] have the time” as well as staving off the physical effects of burnout by “sleeping 8 hours a day for at least three or four days in a row,” taking frequent walks and, as the human body can’t do anything without water, constantly staying hydrated.

For Rice, burnout is “something I’m still figuring out,” but she does note that “if one assignment isn’t perfectly done or if I don’t have the most amazing practice of my life, it’s going to be okay. And it’s okay to give my brain and body a day to rest. It’s okay to have easier days, too, versus going all-out all the time.”