End of a Career

Below is an article I recently posted on www.wired4sport.com related to the end of one’s sport career. I hope some of these thoughts are helpful to those you serve in sport.

Through my 51 years of being a player, a coach, an official, a parent and now a sport chaplain / sport mentor, I have seen hundreds of careers start quickly, flourish powerfully, diminish painfully and end suddenly.


Millions of people watched Brett Favre’s career come to a tearful end yesterday on world-wide television. Imagine the fascination of people watching someone announce his retirement. Careers end with such finality, often with pain and even grief. Let’s think about why this is.


For us who are highly competitive and highly achieving, much of our identity winds up being found in the competition and those achievements. That’s not necessarily good for us. When we come to the end of our careers we have a terrible time figuring out who we are apart from those things which have characterized us for so long. Is there anything sadder than the washed up athlete who is still living in the glory of his sport career thirty years ago?


I recall a conversation with a college basketball player just a week after the close of her career. She said, “I woke up yesterday and wondered, ‘What do I do now? I don’t have to go to practice.’ I don’t know what to do with all this time.” Since fifth grade she had been a basketball player, but suddenly she was a former basketball player.


Here’s some advice from an old guy who has witnessed the close of hundreds of careers first-hand. Play every game of your whole career with the end in mind. Everyone’s career comes to an end at some point, whether due to injury, failure or simply the exhaustion of one’s eligibility. Understand who you are, in and out of the sport. Live your whole life with an understanding of who you were created to be and don’t let your sport career define all of who you are. Play your heart out and fully express your life in sport, while you have the opportunity.