Should you take a gap year as a student-athlete? Consider injury recovery like an ACL tear, your academic standing and eligibility, and whether you can use the time to improve recruitment chances for Division I or Division III programs. The gap year only helps if it serves a clear purpose.
When it comes to taking a gap year, you have to consider the following points. Obviously a social piece of it, are you being recruited, and your grades. So typically speaking, if you take a gap year, it's because of an injury, maybe like an ACL. Maybe your grades aren't great and you wanna go do part-time school, or if you're gonna do full-time school, then that's not a gap year that can count against you, which we'll talk about in a minute. Or maybe you wanna be recruited, so therefore you're like, these schools, I started late, or maybe you wanna go to a top academic D1 school or top academic D3 school, and you're like, shoot, I didn't do this process kind of correctly the first round. I should take a gap year so that way I have a better chance of being recruited by these schools.
