The issue of time demands placed on student-athletes has been a primary discussion item recently for the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee. While others in the governance structure have focused primarily on reducing the playing and practice season as a way to address this issue, the Division I SAAC believes other matters such as student-athlete personal time and enforcement of the 20-hour rule need more attention.

No examination of the time-demands issue would be complete without first looking at a typical practice day:

6 or 7 a.m. -- Wake up to attend morning conditioning practice.

8 a.m. - noon -- Attend classes.

12:30-1:15 p.m. -- Participate in preventive rehabilitation.

1:30-4 p.m. -- Attend mandatory study hall.

4-8 p.m. -- Participate in practice (including warm-up, practice, cool down).

8-9 p.m. -- Participate in training room and/or weightlifting activities.

9:30-11:30 p.m. -- Study time.

11:30 p.m. -- Bed.

Without doubt, it's a rigorous schedule. Student-athletes are the first to admit that the time-demands issue is important -- and complex. However, we do not want time demands to be the reason behind shortening our playing seasons.

As student-athletes, we knew what we were getting ourselves into before we attended college. We knew the time demand's would be extreme, but that's not a reason to shorten the playing and practice season. We feel such a move would take away the whole essence of being an athlete. We live for competition, and reducing the playing season would be like taking our reward away.

Proponents of reducing the playing season say it is necessary to allow athletes more time to focus on academics and reduce the number of missed classes. However, studies have shown that golf student-athletes miss the most class time, yet they are among the highest in graduation rates. On the other hand, football student-athletes miss the least amount of class time and score poorly when it comes to graduation. We understand there are others factors that affect graduation rates; however, we believe that missing class time is not an issue in the time-demands discussion.

Others have advocated sport-specific legislation as a way to address the issue. Time demands are quite different in every sport and cannot be addressed under one umbrella. The Division I SAAC believes the current legislation is adequate.

Perhaps the part of the time-demands issue most people don't understand is student-athlete personal time. Most people do not realize the extra requirements placed upon student-athletes. Many schools have mandatory study halls, as well as required community service and "suggested" participation in fund-raisers. Hosting recruits is another significant drain on personal time.

It's a given that in order to be a student athlete, you're going to need to manage your time efficiently. As athletes, we do not have a problem doing the "extra" stuff; we just want the people who "assign" the fund-raisers, the recruit hosting and the community service to take into account the demands placed on our time and schedule accordingly. They need to realize that we have other responsibilities besides sport-specific training. We don't intend for this to be construed as complaining. We want to give back to our community and university in every way possible, but we just want others to acknowledge how much time we spend doing it.

We support continuing to permit student-athletes to have weekly limited contact with coaches and to engage in strength and conditioning programs outside of the playing season. We enjoy becoming better in our sports; however, we feel it is necessary to have continuous monitoring in order to protect our health and welfare.

Regarding the 20-hour rule, we feel the bylaw needs to be enforced more at the campus level. We don't have a problem with the 20 hours, but there seems to be an increasing trend of abuse of that total on many campuses.

The Division I SAAC believes some type of anonymous reporting of practice abuses, or perhaps a drop box, would be effective in this regard. We believe that efforts to better enforce the rule on individual campuses would be more effective than some type of corrective national legislation.

As student-athletes, we understand the strenuous demands placed upon us. We deal with them daily. However, we do not want our playing seasons shortened because of those demands. We simply advocate better enforcement of the current rules and greater consideration of our circumstances when commitments are made on our behalf.

Liz McCaslin and Kelly Sorensen, members of the Division I Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, are volleyball student-athletes at the University of Kentucky and Fairfield University, respectively.