Networking as an Athlete, how important is it?

Athletes are often portrayed as extremely hard-working individuals who are willing to sacrifice things such as social events and entertainment to become a better player at their sport. Although this may have some truth, it is important that they build connections to grow through means such as sponsorships, marketing, branding, and training. The article this post is based on also focuses on athlete’s networking after their career, however this post will focus on networking as an athlete during one’s sport career.

We have looked at how strong ties often provide redundant information and how weak ties will often provide new and insightful information, now let us look at this from the perspective of an athlete. Imagine yourself as a rising athlete, you are creating a fair amount of buzz, but how can you improve with the resources you have. You get the opportunity to meet arguably the best athlete in your level of sport, you have the chance to create the ‘weak’ tie which will open you to new connections, and what sorts of new information can you gain?

From the graph above you can observe a simple version of the information that one interaction with the best player can give you. For example, imagine getting dietary information from the dietician who works with the best player, this can improve your diet which correlates to your fitness. An important part to notice is that to receive the new information from the best player’s network, the best player only has to give you the contact information. This is the beauty of networking, when you ask for help, people are more willing to redirect you to others who are more knowledgeable so that they do not provide false information or minimize the amount of work they have to do. So once you have the contact to someone in the best player’s network, and you’ve been referred to by the best player, you’re more likely to create a connection, this is similar to the Strong Triadic Closure Property in that if two nodes have a common neighbor, it is more likely that they will become neighbors, but it’s important to note that in real life it’s hard to treat connections are weak/strong as there’s multiple factors that go into the strength of a connection.

I found this article interesting because it took what we learned about the theory that you are more likely to find a job via an acquaintance as opposed to a friend, and applies it to the context of sports. It also brings perspective to the networking that athletes are required to perform in order to grow as a player, as opposed to the common notion that an athlete must be 100% committed to their training and make many sacrifices all with the hopes of becoming a better player at their respective sport.

Athlete Networking: Why hiding in the corner is not good for your life after sport