Project Overview
This capstone project was completed as part of my Master of Applied Professional Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. It is a comprehensive guidebook designed for student-athletes preparing to graduate and leave collegiate sport. The guidebook was developed in direct collaboration with UNC Athletics support staff — including strength and conditioning coaches, sports nutritionists, sports psychologists, and sports medicine staff — who contributed their top advice for each section.
The goal was simple but important: give student-athletes a practical, honest, and accessible resource to help lower post-graduation anxiety and make the transition out of sport less overwhelming. As a student-athlete myself, I knew firsthand how abrupt and disorienting this transition can be — and how few resources exist to support athletes through it.
Background & Context
The Problem This Solves
Collegiate athletes spend years operating inside a highly structured support system — with coaches, trainers, nutritionists, and sports psychologists readily available. The moment they graduate, that entire system disappears. Athletes are suddenly responsible for designing their own workouts, managing their own nutrition, finding their own therapist, and navigating health insurance for the first time — often all at once, while also starting a career or graduate program.
Core Challenge
The transition out of collegiate sport is one of the least-supported moments in a student-athlete's journey. This guidebook exists to change that by consolidating expert advice into one accessible resource athletes can actually use.
Who It's For
The guidebook is written directly to the departing student-athlete — someone who has spent years thinking of food as fuel, workouts as required, and support staff as always available. It meets them where they are and walks them through building those systems for themselves in the real world.
What's Inside the Guidebook
The guidebook is organized into five chapters, each developed with advice from the relevant UNC Athletics support staff:
Achieve Your Fitness Goals — UNC S&C Top Tips
Covers how to design a well-balanced training program without a coach. Includes guidance on training goals (endurance, hypertrophy, strength, power), how to use Rate of Perceived Exertion and Reps in Reserve to determine intensity, session scheduling based on how many days per week you want to train, and a 4-block training structure (warm-up, priority lift, focus block, and small muscle accessories). Also explores different types of workout programs and classes to consider — from private performance training to cardio-based programs.
Achieve Your Nutrition Goals — UNC Nutrition Top Tips
Reframes food for athletes who have only ever thought of it as fuel. Covers macronutrients (proteins, carbohydrates, and healthy fats), how to adjust meals based on activity level using the Athlete's Plate model, grocery shopping and cooking tips (walk the perimeter, canned vs. fresh vs. frozen, buy in bulk, batch cook), and example grocery lists. Emphasizes honoring hunger cues and finding balance — not restriction — in nutrition after sport.
Find Mental Health Support — UNC Sports Psychology Top Tips
Walks athletes through how to find a therapist post-graduation — including how to make a plan (whether currently in therapy or not), ways to find a provider (Psychology Today, university counseling referrals, EAP, insurance directories), financial considerations (sliding scales, in-network vs. out-of-network), and a full FAQ list of questions to ask during an initial consultation covering finances, approach, and personalized fit.
Navigate Medical Insurance — UNC Sports Medicine Advice
Demystifies health insurance for athletes leaving the coverage of their university athletic program. Covers key terms (premium, deductible, copayment, out-of-pocket maximum, in-network vs. out-of-network), categories of insurance (private vs. public, HMO vs. PPO), and a practical guide to which type of provider to see for different health needs — from a primary care physician to urgent care to an OB/GYN to the ER.
Post-Collegiate Resources to Use — UNC Support Staff's Advice
A curated list of organizations and programs specifically designed to support athletes in transition — including Athlete Moving On, NCAA After the Game, Support for Sport, Athlete 365, and Tackle What's Next. Includes direct website links for each resource.
Design & Development Process
Collaboration with UNC Support Staff
The most meaningful part of this project was the collaboration with UNC Athletics staff. Each chapter was shaped by conversations with the professionals who work directly with student-athletes every day — the strength and conditioning coaches who know what athletes struggle with when they lose access to a gym, the nutritionists who understand how post-sport body changes feel from the inside, and the sports psychologists who have watched athletes navigate the emotional side of this transition.
Design Approach
The guidebook was designed to feel approachable and easy to use — not clinical or overwhelming. Each section is visually structured with clear headers, practical tips, and direct language written to the athlete. The goal was a resource someone would actually pick up and read, not file away and forget.
Challenges
The biggest challenge was scope. The transition out of collegiate sport touches so many areas of life simultaneously that deciding what to include — and what to leave out — required constant judgment calls. I had to be selective enough that the guidebook remained focused and usable, while comprehensive enough that athletes wouldn't have to go looking elsewhere for the basics.
Outcomes & Deliverables
Deliverables
The primary deliverable is a complete, designed guidebook — "An Athlete's Guide to Life Post-College Career" — featuring UNC Support Staff's top advice across all five chapters. The guidebook is formatted as a downloadable PDF, designed to be both visually engaging and practically useful.
Impact
This guidebook was designed to be deployable — something UNC Athletics could realistically distribute to departing student-athletes. More broadly, it represents a model that any university athletics program could adapt for their own athletes. The need it addresses is universal: every student-athlete will eventually leave their sport, and very few have a resource like this waiting for them when they do.
Reflection & Learning
Skills Developed
This project strengthened my skills in project management, stakeholder collaboration, content design, and writing for a specific audience. It also gave me a much deeper appreciation for the expertise of the support staff that surrounds student-athletes — expertise that athletes often take for granted while they have access to it.
Key Learnings
- The transition out of collegiate sport is a significant life event that deserves real, structured support — not just a few informational emails.
- Writing directly to your audience — speaking to the athlete as a person, not a patient or a student — makes a resource dramatically more effective.
- Collaboration with subject matter experts produces a much stronger product than working alone. The sports staff contributions made each chapter genuinely credible.
- Design and content work together — a well-organized, visually clear resource is more likely to actually get used than a wall of text.
If I Could Do It Again
I would pilot the guidebook with a small group of graduating student-athletes and gather their feedback before finalizing it. Hearing directly from the people it's designed for would have been invaluable — both for improving the content and for validating whether the tone and format actually resonated.
Conclusion
This project is personal to me in a way few others have been. I have lived the transition it describes. I know what it feels like to lose the structure, the team, and the support system that collegiate sport provides — and I know how hard it is to rebuild those things on your own without a roadmap. This guidebook is the resource I wish I had. Building it, in collaboration with the people who gave me so much support during my time at UNC, was one of the most meaningful things I have done in my graduate career.