There has never been another time like the Coronavirus Crisis in our recent history. The cancellations and postponements are new to everybody, even the adults and the professionals.
This brings with it a time that no other person who was at one point a high school athlete, has ever seen before. Careers have been cut short and playoff runs have been stopped dead in their tracks. Three week long spring breaks and potentially no more meets, matches, games, or possibly even school.
So what can a high school student athlete possibly do during this time? Please don’t waste this time! There are an incredible amount of opportunities for you to learn something, or grow in some way each and every day.
1) Get Quality Rest
When I say get quality rest, I do NOT mean be lazy and sleep all day, every day while school is out. Quality rest means that you are going to bed and waking up at reasonable times, and getting the amount of sleep that you need in between those times.
You won’t have any 6 AM workouts for a while, and you won’t be staying late at the school for a game that will make you stay up even later just to finish school work.
This means that you have a perfect opportunity to be in bed by 10 and asleep by 11, and wake up between 7-8:00. I would almost bet that if you are a high school athlete, on average you go to bed around midnight or 1 am, and wake up at 6 or 7 am. 5-6 hours is not enough sleep. Use these next few weeks to get a quality 7-8 hours a night.
2) Exercise Your Brain
Keep your mind sharp by continuing to challenge it over the course of your down time. Just like the muscles in your body, your mind needs to stay active and be put to work in order to get better.
There are a handful of ways to do this, but reading and writing are two of the best.
Pick some articles from the internet about a topic that interests you or that you know you want to learn more about. There won’t be very many sports on TV to watch either, so this will also work as a great way to pass time if you are bored.
Open up your backpack and go over some notes from your classes so that when you get back, you are ready to pick back up where the class left off.
3) Exercise Your Body
Now that we know how important it is to make sure our mind gets a good workout too, we can talk about getting our bodies a workout.
Your school weight room will most likely be closed, meaning you won’t have access to weights or other workout equipment. The good news is that there are plenty of ways to get exercise and stay active without a barbell and a squat rack.
Go outside and play some basketball, offer to walk dogs, go for jogs, or knock out some push ups and sit ups in the living room – your options are almost endless. If you are someone who says you want to play at the next level and be better than your peers, this is the time where you will actually become better (or worse) than your peers.
4) Good Hygiene
It might sound silly and I’ll admit, it kind of is that this even needs to be mentioned, but nothing bad has ever come from someone washing their hands or sanitizing a bit more often.
Whether you want to believe it or not, this virus is contagious and spreads quickly. It has been classified as a global pandemic and is impacting a lot of lives. It is important to protect yourself and your family during this time so please, stay clean.
5) ACT/SAT Prep
This ties in a little bit with #2, but it is more specific so I wanted to touch on it as well. If you are currently a 9th-11th grader, you will have chances in the future to take one or both of these standardized tests.
These two tests will have a large impact on your ability to get in to college and which ones you will or will not get accepted to. They are long, and they are difficult, so they require quite a bit of time and attention beforehand.
If you are out of school for another week or maybe even more, you really need to touch up on some standardized test prep at least for a couple of hours. It will all be worth it when you take it again next time and your score is a few points better, which essentially earns you money for college.
6) Talk to Coaches
Stay in touch with your high school coaches. Ask them what you can do to better yourself specifically for their team during this off period. It will be aching them while they aren’t able to be with you and be coaching you.
If you reach out to them and ask if there are any workouts or any drills you can be doing on your own, they will appreciate that and respect you more than you ever know. It will show them that it means something to you and that you are someone they can trust when times get tough.
Even if you are at home and no where near your coaches, there are still ways to hear from them and receive coaching.
7) Recruiting
If you are currently a Junior or maybe even a Sophomore, you might be starting to hear from some college coaches that are potentially interested in recruiting you or offering you a scholarship. Spring is a busy time for college coaches as that is when they are typically freed up to hit the road.
Due to current circumstances, I can almost guarantee that schools will keep coaches off of the road recruiting, meaning you might not get to see as many as you were hoping, or maybe none at all. This isn’t the end of the world.
Continue to use Twitter and other technology to contact college coaches and continue your recruiting. Ask for information on majors and campus life, get ahold of your GPA and test scores and be ready to communicate them as well.
8) Eat Right
More time on your hands, will mean that you have more time with your hands. Use them to cook some healthier meals at the house. If your parents have been to the grocery store and were able to get some food, give them a break and take over cooking.
It is a skill that will come in handy when you get to college and once you are done, so you might as well start learning. Cooking will also get you healthier and cleaner meals than eating out at a restaurant will.
Take control of your diet and give your body the fuel it needs. Pop tarts, pizza rolls, and sour gummy worms are not what you want to fuel your body with. If you expect it to do great things for you in sports, you need to treat it and fuel it right outside of sports.
The best way to handle things during the Coronavirus Crisis is quite simple – stay calm, use spare time wisely, and continue to improve yourself day by day. Find new things to learn and new stuff to do.
If you enjoyed this or took anything away from it I would really appreciate a share however you prefer. I made this free because I know a lot of people need to hear this stuff, so please get it to whoever you think may need it!
I want to show you the very real correlation between politics, business, and your ability to make money.
We all know about coronavirus. Donald Trump spoke for a couple of hours today in front of a team of doctors, businessmen, and other politicians about its implications and our strategy as a country. He invited multiple CEO’s and COO’s up to the mic to say a few words.
Executives from Target, CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, and a handful of others all shook the Trumps hand as they took the stage for a moment. All of these companies are agreeing to partner with the CDC and the Federal Government to expedite the coronavirus testing process.
The companies will be opening up their parking lots to be used as mobile drive through testing centers.
Everyone who spoke seemed delighted and happy to be working together, despite technically being competitors. Personally I think it is great that they are doing this and I think if it can really help speed up the testing process and provide a greater amount of tests for our population, we should do it.
However, I want to highlight one company that spoke today. LHC Group.
I didn’t quite catch what they do or who they are, but for some reason I was inclined to look up their stock value online.
I was amazed. As an investor, I was a little late.
via marketwatch.com
What this image is showing is the stock value for LHC Group throughout the course of the day. For whatever reason early on it was sliding, but can anyone guess what happened around 3:30 PM?
An executive from LHC Group was speaking at the Presidents podium. For 5 minutes at most, he was answering questions and giving statements thanking the United States Government for the opportunity to work together.
The image above is proof.
People will often make statements that politics don’t matter and that it is all just an act and another reality TV show. The image of LHC Group stock price is all you need to see to understand how real it is. That right there is an opportunity to make money! Just by paying attention.
If I bought LHC Group stock before the address started at $113, and watched it soar all the way up to $129, I would be an extremely happy man. Imagine being bought in with 100 shares. Your profits go through the roof.
I’m going to be very hesitant to give any definitive advice, because the market is so volatile right now and I’m not even doing much myself. So all I will advise you to do, is pay attention. Keep up. Watch the market and pay attention to the politicians and the corporations. It is a game you can play with your money that can pay off in huge ways.
As a young adult between the ages of 20-30, I really hope that you can take this advice to heart. I really believe that the times we are going through right now, in March 2020, that there will be some opportunities for our generation/age group to win coming up in the near future. Before we win though, we have to know how to win.
Covid-19 or whichever of its ten names you want to call it, is deeply impacting the likes of the world right now. The President of the United States sat down in front of the country last night to talk about it, banned all travel from Europe to the US, the NBA suspended the rest of its season, March Madness is about to be played with no fans in the arenas (tournaments will get cancelled all around in the next day or so).
It is safe to say that the impact of the Coronavirus is very real and starting to hit very hard.
Another area that’s being hit is the stock market. It continues to dip as investors begin to dump what they have and take the cash before prices fall too low.
Some semi good news can be understood using this analogy –
The stock market is like a dog on a leash, and the economy is like the person walking the dog. You’ll see the dog darting back and forth left to right, sniffing everything he can find, while the human is just walking at a controlled pace, in the same general direction, rarely deviating from the path.
Right now is no different than a moment that the dog takes off after a squirrel, and the person walking it has to just grab the leash and pull back in a little bit. The big picture – the human – is still under control. The economy is still under control. Cash is still here, jobs are still here, labor is still here.
But, while the dog is running wild in front of the person, there is money to be made or lost. You can place money in the stock market and hope that it increases in value. Find a company that you believe in, that you use, and that you think has a solid future ahead of them. (There are tons and tons of lists and ways to find the best stocks to buy at any given time. The Motley Fool is a great place, Yahoo! Finance another.)
fool.com
I am telling you this because in my opinion, we have around a year left of a somewhat crash. I think we will see a small correction after the election – no matter who wins – and then it will slowly dip back down after that. We have probably a year until the market hits the lowest point that it will hit, and at that time, people in our situation, need to be ready to buy.
You have a year to learn as much as you possibly can when it comes to finance, economics, and investing, because there will be a pot of gold opportunity waiting for us there when the market bottoms out.
But why is the market being so low a good thing?
I’m glad you asked. When the market is low, prices are low. We all love a good sale, right? New pair of shoes went from $129 to $89, you’re much more likely to buy them, and you know you are getting something for a great deal.
Stocks are no different! If you know that Company A is a great company and usually worth $40 or $50 a share, but right now is down in the $20’s, you need to see those stocks as if they are on sale.
If every other rational investor sees low priced stocks this way, what will end up happening?
They will all be buying these stocks that are on sale! If everybody is buying, that means the companies and the stocks will become more valuable.
You (and everyone else) bought in while the market was down, and purchased 100 shares at $20 a piece, now they are up to $40. You originally paid $2,000 for something that is worth $4,000. Now, you have the ability to sell those shares and cash out for the $2,000 profit or you can leave it invested or find other places to continue growing.
The options are endless, but they are options that need to be taken advantage of.
Too many people complain about how much they didn’t learn about finance and investing in high school, but don’t ever try to gain more knowledge on it. You have to find this stuff on your own and you have to make this stuff happen on your own. Your high school didn’t owe it to you to teach you this stuff, but I truly believe you owe it to yourself to teach yourself.
I definitely won’t claim to know everything, but I will always be doing my best to learn more. I just want to present the ideas to you and allow you to work on your own to learn more about whatever it is you want to learn about. It’s all out there, go find it and dive in.
Before you read this any further, I have excellent financial advice that you are going to want to hear. If you are under 30 years old, this is *specifically for you.
First things first – who am I and why do I think I have the merit to speak on this. I am a 25 year old HS Business Teacher with a Business and Personal Finance Certification, I am 4 classes away from an MBA, I minored in General Business, I own a company and have owned two others before this one.
To be quite honest with you, I don’t have a ton of cash to my name – if I did I would’ve spent it on a down payment for a rental home months ago. I have a baby girl on the way, and really only one thing has been on my mind lately.
How can I get her as much money as possible in the next 18 years?
Great question! I don’t know the answer to it.
I do know, however, how to find out ways to learn the answer.
Do. Your. Research.
Stop scrolling through IG for a minute and open up investopedia.com. Haven’t heard of it before? Here is your intro – click on the link.
Log out of Netflix and listen to Dave Ramsey instead.
I can’t sit here and tell you the best options to purchase or how to identify the best home deeds to purchase in rundown neighborhoods.
What I can tell you though, is that you need to start learning this stuff. You need to start taking your finances and your financial position seriously.
As I mentioned, this article is mostly for those around my age – under 30. Our generation needs to do a much better job of going out on our own and learning, doing, and winning. Take strides right now that move you closer to where you want to be, and further away from everybody else.
If you don’t keep up with the market and the national economy you really should, because there is money to be made out there and if you don’t take advantage, you will be extremely upset with yourself in 10-20 years.
Recently the market has taken a slight hit, and has dropped a little bit. When this happens investors get nervous and do one of two things – they sell everything they have to limit their losses, or they buy more to try and take advantage of the low prices.
When prices drop and everyone buys, what happens to the value of the company? It goes up, because more people bought in to it. Now where is the price? High again, right?
You can see this is how the natural flow of the market occurs. When something happens that scares everyone or excites everyone, things tend to overreact – for better, or worse. Prices can go up and everything can be extremely valuable, or prices can drop and the entire NYSE can seem like a dumpster fire from a distance.
The Dow Jones tracks 30 large American companies, and responds based off of their respective performances. In the last few weeks it has dropped, and continued to drop.
Courtesy of barrons.com/quote
Some of the words and the symbols might seem foreign to you, but it shouldn’t take to much financial literacy to see the decrease on the chart above. The image you see is the value of the Dow Jones year to date (1/1/2020-3/11/2020).
Courtesy of barrons.com/quote
This second image might look identical to you, but it isn’t. It is a completely different index called the S&P 500, which instead of compiling 30 companies like the Dow Jones, the S&P 500 compiles – you guessed it – 500 companies. What this creates is a small snippet of the bigger picture, which is the entire market and NYSE.
When these two indexes are falling, it is often implied that the market is falling as well. For people like you and I, this can be a phenomenal opportunity, here’s how:
Get your mind right, right now. Learn as much as you possibly can. I wouldn’t advise doing too much right now because the market may continue to slide due to COVID and Trump and Bernie and Russia and a million other things.. but my advise is learn.
Take a minute to read up on investopedia.com every once in a while. Download Robinhood and Acorns. Mess around a little bit and become familiar because as a young adult, this is the time when you will make the moves that will impact the rest of your life.
If I make the right investment right now, or if I put my money in the right place right now, I can have college paid for for all my children. If I play it right, I could buy a house that will provide me monthly income for the next 20 years.
So can you. None of this can be done without learning what to do first. Internalize as much as you can, and be ready to act soon.
Many people feel that the market is not done dropping, and for people like you and I, that is wonderful news.
Get out there and learn something, and let’s make some serious money.
I’ve written about this a few separate times before, but if you read my content somewhat regularly you’ll know that when something surfaces in my real life again I feel the need to reiterate it on my site.
You may remember that I mentioned at the beginning of this year my word to focus on for the next 365 days, or 301 days at this point, is build.
Today I took a step outside what has been my comfort zone and I attended a roundtable event to get some more information and insight on a subject I am highly interested in. It was at this event that I was smacked in the face yet again by the ability of what we say and think to become present in our real life..
On many occasions in 2020 I have sat down to journal and have mentioned how badly I would like to get paid to write content for other people or businesses. I make it a point to sit down and write out, and sometimes even say out loud, what it is that I want my future to look like.
When I sit down to do this the same things will usually come out. A happy marriage and a healthy family, a beautiful home, successful businesses, getting paid to write for others, an opportunity to build businesses, and a handful of other recurring visions.
I’m telling you this because today at the event I attended, I had a conversation with two other gentlemen who are both currently searching for somebody to write content for them.
Nothing has been agreed upon yet as we have hardly had any discussions about it other than a few minutes today – but the simple fact of this door presenting itself to me is the greatest part.
I don’t need handouts or guarantees. I don’t need other people doing things and setting stuff up for me.
All I need is a drive to move forward. My drive to move this very website forward and make it bigger and better is what brought me to the event I was at today. My drive is what showed me a door, or two, to an opportunity to be paid to write content for someone else.
When you consciously map out what you want to happen, it makes it all possible. Hardly anything great was achieved on accident…
I can assure you that almost all of the greatest companies and the greatest people on the planet set out to be great. They knew what they wanted to accomplish and they found a way to get it. Of course the plans will never work exactly as we lay them out, but even by only wanting something and imagining it, you can create it.
I’m not going to go in to it but please do not forget, speaking things in to existence still happens even if you are speaking negatively…
September 2019 I got the type of news that will literally change your life forever. The type of news that opens your eyes to things you never even knew existed. Those two little lines popped up and honestly I could not have been more excited.
The months between September and December were filled with guessing games and predictions from friends and family, but my Fiancee and I (my Fiancee) already knew what was in there. From day one she had felt like the pregnancy was draining her and ‘stealing her pretty.’
So, since she felt that growing a baby in her belly was making her less pretty – which I assure you is not the case – she had the feeling that it was a girl taking it all away from her so she can have some. It’s pretty funny logic to me honestly, but low and behold…
Of course each father is going to hope for a son, and usually for their first born to be a boy so there can be a protector for the siblings. I don’t disagree with this at all and deep down we both had a desire for our first baby to be a boy. Since she already felt like she knew what it was, we began playing a game with ourselves to try and trick our minds a bit.
If we hope and assume it is a boy, we might be a little upset if it is a girl, but elated if it is a boy.
If we hope and assume it is a girl, we would have already accepted the fact that it is one, but if it is a boy it would be a great surprise.
Well, as you have already learned, our guessing game was right. The words ‘It’s a baby girl’ slipped out of the Doctor’s mouth and pretty much all we had to say was ‘We knew it!’
Ever since I’ve found out my first born is going to be a girl I have began seeing things in a different light and from a different perspective. All of the current girl dad’s out there obviously know way more than I do at this stage, but I am certain that these new lights will continue to be shed with every day that I’m waiting, and then again every day after she gets here.
After having done some independent research, one message I have heard about raising young girls has been resounding. Most parents of little girls that I have talked to are simply amazed at how intelligent they are.
I’ve been told how much quicker they develop higher levels of social intelligence, the ability to express emotions, and the depth of the love that they can show.
Before I continue I want those that are already parents to hear something – I know that I know nothing about parenting. I know expectations can always be thrown out the window when it comes to what you think your children will end up being. I know there will always be wrenches thrown in the tires and bumps in the road. With that being said, here are some of my expectations for my daughter and when raising her.
Earlier I mentioned how most men and even women would probably prefer to have a male as their first born to act and serve as the protector of the younger siblings. Now that I have a daughter coming first, my expectations are a little bit different – but don’t get me wrong, she will still act as a protector of her younger siblings.
Before I spend to much energy thinking about and creating expectations for how she will treat her younger siblings, I should probably see what I expect of her when it is just me, her, and her beautiful mother.
I expect her to be soft and sweet, yet loud and messy. I expect her to make me cry when she laughs, and when she cries. I expect her to wear her mother and I out with middle of the night fits and the times we know she is hurting but can’t tell us where or what the problem is.
I expect a lot of things from myself as a father, and I expect a lot of things from my Fiancee as a mother. I expect that we continue to love each other and put our love and our relationship above all else. If the leaders of the pack are not in sync, legs can start to shake and walls can start to crumble incredibly fast.
I expect that we keep our heads down and our hearts open as God throws at us adversity and triumph with each waking day. I expect that we model a happy and healthy relationship and friendship at all times, especially in the tough ones.
I expect that our families and friends will love her as close as possible to as much as we will – because as much will surely be impossible.
As you may have noticed, I have a lot of expectations for this young lady and our family once she gets here. These are the things I know will happen as she gets older and grows bigger and smarter.
Of course, I have my other expectations for her but I know that those will all be reevaluated with each day I look in to her eyes. Every time I see her I will learn something new about her, myself, my Fiancee, and this world that we live in.
If you are a soon to be #GirlDad, already are a #GirlDad, or have a chance of some day becoming a #GirlDad, I hope this helped you find yourself a little bit. I hope this helped you realize what you should and shouldn’t expect from your daughter. Without even having a kid I know that what you expect and what actually ends up happening can be two separate ends of the spectrum.
I don’t expect her to perform in any particular way in any particular event or circumstance, all I expect is that she will teach me more than I could ever imagine to learn with each tiny inhale, and each tiny exhale. I don’t expect her to win an Olympic Gold Medal or a State Championship in Journalism.
I simply expect that I will provide her all of the tools she needs to become a strong, smart, and happy young woman. I expect her to be surrounded by love and hard work, safety and opportunity – that’s really it.
If you have any thoughts or comments please feel free to leave a comment below – and if you enjoyed the article I would really appreciate a share on your favorite social media platform.
Find me on Twitter @Coach_Windy – Instagram @skylerwindmiller.
