With a toss of a graduation cap and wave to the crowd, California State University, East Bay seniors will be saying goodbye to life as Pioneers during the graduation commencement on June 14, including student athletes who will be bidding farewell to the sport they have been competing in during their time at the university.

Student athletes will be moving on from strenuous workout environments that were a major part of their everyday lives. Four years of college athletics and nearly a decade of youth competition will be gone just like that. For some of these athletes, their sport is all they know.

Instead of playing with a team everyday for four years, athletes are suddenly on their own after graduation, lost without daily team training sessions. Some athletes lack self-motivation, something that becomes exposed after an athlete leaves their team. Others are just foreign to treadmills, ellipticals and Stairmasters, typical platforms of exercise for non-athletes.

Needless to say, student athlete’s lives will change drastically without their sport.

Former Pioneer athletes, however, overcame this major life transition with various workout regimens and healthy lifestyle choices that help ease the mental and physical transition for student athletes wondering where to go from here.

Bethany Hobbs-Helmus, a 2008 graduate who earned her bachelor’s degree in English, played three years for the women’s water polo team at CSUEB after playing her freshman year at Slippery Rock University. Hobbs-Helmus, now the Internal Operations Coordinator for the athletic department, was a fish out of water when her four years of eligibility were up.

“One interesting thing for me was learning how to be a land person,” Hobbs-Helmus said. “But once I started swimming again for recreation, I was never able to get in the pool and have fun – I always felt as though I had to be working out.”

Hobbs-Helmus would adjust to life without water polo, but it was life without her teammates that proved to be the biggest challenge.

“You don’t just have two or three people working out with you; you had 20 people working out with you,” Hobbs-Helmus said. “All of them are going through the same thing you are so they can relate with what you’re going through and we all had a common goal of what we wanted to get done. It was hard not having them there.”

Student Athlete Advisory Committee president and former Pioneer baseball captain, Johnny Volk had no regrets when it came to walking away from the game of baseball after four years, because of the dedication he put into pitching.

“I think giving it my all in college has helped my transition,” said Volk, who graduated in 2011. “I tried to play and train as if I didn’t leave anything in the tank so it’s helped me accept the fact that college ball is over.”

Frieda Li, a 2012 graduate in Business Administration, played her last season for the Pioneer women’s basketball team in the winter of 2012. Li earned a job with Spectra Laboratories in Milpitas right out of college, choosing to stay in the Bay Area instead of moving back to her hometown of Issaquah, Wssh. Li admits, however, that life after basketball was not easy.

“It was a major change for me,” Li said. “I remember my first last quarter after basketball season as a senior was boring. I felt like I had so much free time on my hands I had signed up for 3 activity classes to fill my time.”

Li, a four-year letterman with the team, was now done with every day basketball practices, two-hour sessions in the gym that would consume most of her afternoons.

“We would work on form shooting, sprints, footwork drills for speed, basketball fundamental, ball handling drills, shooting drills, free throws and a little distance running,” Li said. “Anything else that you can think of it was probably done.”

Since accepting the job with Spectra Laboratories, Li has little time to work out. In order to stay in shape and satisfy her competitive drive, Li decided to explore new forms of exercise in order to stay active.

“I usually just run 2.5 miles if I have time after work, do some stretches, push ups, and crunches in the morning, but those are more for the stability of my back,” Li said.