Timothy Reeves
Timothy Reeves
Baton
As a designer and former student-athlete, I seek to enable others to surpass the boundaries of what they deem physically possible within their bodies. This project began as an exercise to uncover the barriers that limit an athlete’s commitment to and engagement with their sport. What I discovered is that no matter how talented and driven, every athlete, in whatever arena, will reach a point when they no longer want to compete. In the United States, this situation appears most clearly in college athletes following graduation, and the transition from athlete to working professional is especially difficult.
Collegiate student-athletes are subjected to a system intended to develop them both athletically and academically. However, the realities of time and performance expectations often means that sport is prioritized over class. The student’s identity becomes almost wholly associated with their athletic performance. Who they are in all other areas of their lives is practically nullified. The result: increased difficulty in transitioning to life after sports. Baton is designed to help collegiate student-athletes engage with and develop their identity beyond the narrow circle of their sport, and to alleviate the stress and anxieties associated with leaving their team.
Timothy Reeves
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These quotes from interviews with former college student-athletes illustrate the profound sense of loss and isolation after years of sacrifice to a sport, and feelings of worthlessness with that component of their life removed.
Identity foreclosure and role engulfment plague college student-athletes whose lives revolve around one thing: a sport that won’t last. As these factors cause student-athletes to neglect their relational and academic roles, it became clear my solution would need to reincorporate these.
After identifying college student-athletes’ need for tools addressing the transition to a life after sport, I sought to visualize the other parts of their identities so they could reengage with them. Within the form of a baton, I found I could contain registers to journal and reflect on these roles.
I conducted user-testing to validate this self-reflection identity exercise with current student-athletes. After just a week they reported that they found it helpful to reflect on these different areas of their lives and even became more conscious of themselves as friends to others.
