FAYETTEVILLE -- Seeing the inside of a major college sports program cleared up a few things for Sarah Stokowski.
Student-athletes are isolated from the general student population. Universities spend vast resources to keep them eligible. But students participating in college sports have few rights, and demands on their time can keep them from opportunities available to other students.
Stokowski got her inside view as a graduate assistant at the University of Oklahoma, enrolling with the goal of someday becoming a college athletic director. She's now a researcher devoted to studying the life challenges faced by the men and women participating in college sports.
"Our athletes have so much power to do good. I think they should be empowered and not restrained," said Stokowski, an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, describing how athletes can help through community service and be leaders in raising awareness about social issues.
"There's so much good that can be done from sports," Stokowski said.
But it's a mistake to think of students participating in college sports as all alike, said Stokowski
"Comparing student athletes to other student athletes, I would argue is very difficult. How can you take the experience of a black football student athlete, and then compare that to a white gymnast?" said Stokowski, a researcher in the emerging field of athlete development, which she described as "essentially about developing the whole person."
Her research often zeros in on the needs of students from their perspective. As a doctoral student at the University of Tennessee, she wrote her dissertation on student athletes who have learning disabilities.
"They felt that they could learn, and they wanted to learn, but simply put, people didn't believe in them," Stokowski said.
More recent work includes research on perceptions that can make it difficult for black football players to seek mental-health services. She's also studied how the culture of college sports can be more welcoming for athletes who identify as in sexual minorities.
"What I have learned is, how can we work best within the system and speak up in ways that are really important to us to make a difference in the lives of student athletes," Stokowski said.
Not content with pursuing academic goals, Stokowski is described by others as driven to turn knowledge into practice.
"She is someone that works for the betterment of the athletes that she deals with and interacts with on her campus and across the country," said Amanda Paule-Koba, an associate professor of sport management at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
Paule-Koba and Stokowski this year started an academic publication, the Journal of Athlete Development and Experience, with the aim of publishing more research on issues that affect the well-being of college athletes.
In the field of athlete development, "we are more concerned with how they are developing as people and how collegiate sport is either helping or hindering that development," Paule-Koba said.
Stokowski also teaches a class at UA titled "Student-Athlete Development and Experience." The course tackles topics like the stereotyping of athletes, transitioning once a playing career ends, and mental health. This fall's course included a Skype talk from Alex Auerbach, director of clinical and sport psychology at the University of Arizona.
"One of the things that makes Sarah unique is a real passion for the integration of research and practice," Auerbach said.
Research done by Stokowski and others in the field of athlete development can help those within college sports take action to best help students, Auerbach said.
"It's like a compass for figuring out, 'Hey, here's where we all need to go,'" Auerbach said.
Stokowski, a faculty member since 2014 in the UA Department of Health, Human Performance and Recreation,
as a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma worked from 2009-10 as a graduate assistant in the university's athletic student life unit and helped with academic support for athletes.
"It's pretty shocking," Stokowski said, describing the sheer amount of resources devoted to "keep student-athletes eligible."
Her interests took a turn away from managing a college sports program -- at the University of Oklahoma, "you saw kids that couldn't read, you saw the enabling that was going on," she said -- but she kept her core belief that college athletics can be a force for good in the lives of students.
Stokowski's father, Jeff, played basketball at the University of Missouri, and playing and watching sports were a big part of her life growing up, she said.
She said her father was a first-generation college student who went on to become an engineer.
"College athletics promotes social mobility," Stokowski said.
In college, Stokowski was what athletes call a NARP, or "a non-athletic regular person," she said. Stokowski said collegiate athletes should be allowed the same opportunities as other students.
That's why she's a fan of the news in October that the NCAA is seeking to allow collegiate athletes to benefit from their names and likenesses. Details of how and when this change will take place remain unclear.
"There's a value to a scholarship, there's a value to a college education. But there's also this misconception that every athlete is on a full ride. That's not true. Only 6% of all student athletes receive a full athletic scholarship," Stokowski said.
The pending change, announced after the passage of name, image and likeness legislation in California, provides "a huge opportunity for student athletes, especially female student athletes, to really elevate their brands," Stokowski said.
While she speaks freely about the flaws in big-time college athletics, her experience tells her of the benefits of sports, she said.
At the University of Oklahoma, for example, one collegiate athlete started out reading only at a first- or second-grade level, but ended up reading at a college level and earning his degree, Stokowski said.
"Stories like that are really powerful," Stokowski said.
The system, however, doesn't always work to help collegiate athletes, she said, adding that there's research showing that they spend 42 hours each week on sports-related activities.
The push from the NCAA as it relates to eligibility means students are "kind of forced into majors that might not necessarily align with their career goals," Stokowski said. "They're not given opportunities for career exploration."
Stokowski said that before joining the UA faculty, she was a faculty member for a year at Eastern Illinois University.
The experience highlighted the funding disparities between schools in their ability to support college athletics, Stokowski said.
This makes a big difference when it comes to academic support services, Stokowski said, and means that it's often schools with less funding, including historically black colleges and universities or HBCUs, that find themselves in trouble with the NCAA because of poor marks in the NCAA measure known as the Academic Progress Rate.
"We see that actually it's the HBCUs and the schools that have really low resources that typically get punished by the NCAA. That's not right," Stokowski said.
Stokowski said it can be a fight for a researcher to get permission from colleges and universities to talk with their athletes. Schools can have a "fear of scandal," she said.
Colleagues of Stokowski praised her for building bridges to help grow the field of athlete development.
"She is someone, when you hear her talk about athletes and mental health and their experiences, you can't help but get excited and want to get on board," Paule-Koba said, crediting Stokowski's "endless energy" with helping build partnerships.
Stokowski said she's now working to get more funding from professional sports leagues to go toward research into athlete development.
"There's really no external funding that focuses on athletes and athlete development. So that's something that we're working to change, hopefully with these professional organizations," Stokowski said.
Auerbach, the University of Arizona sports psychologist, and Stokowski are co-editing an issue of an academic journal devoted to mental health and athletes.
Auerbach said Stokowski also helped out with a mental-health awareness social media campaign at the University of Arizona.
"She's never satisfied, in what I feel is a great way. She's constantly looking for innovative ways to deliver a message to students and to improve the system for student athletes," Auerbach said.
Stokowski said that while college athletics "has never been pure," there's no doubt that the research shows it benefits those participating.
Now, as changes loom for the landscape of college sports, such as the pending ability for athletes to profit from their brands, the work she and others in the field of athlete development -- after years of building trust and rapport -- is increasingly seen as having value, Stokowski said.
"I work with so many different athletic departments, and I can't thank them enough," Stokowski said.
Metro on 12/15/2019