What happens to top athletes leaving their high-performance playing careers? Well, some of them become coaches and administrators of sports bodies and yet others may opt for a furthering their career in business through the MBA route.
However, many of them find the fees and other expenses for a full-time MBA program to be a daunting proposition. The Stephen J.R. Smith School of Business in Kingston, Ontario, in association with the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC), had started a scholarship program for such candidates in November 2016.
Under the eight-year agreement, an estimated 1,200 Olympic athletes in the COC’s Game Plan program that provides post-sports career assistance, will be able to pursue a variety of scholarship-supported business studies at Smith.
The fee for the full-time MBA program at Smith is at present $81,000 (Canadian Dollars) for domestic students and $91,000 (Canadian Dollars) for international students. All students are also required to pay Student Activity Fees of approximately $1500 (Canadian Dollars).
Gabriel Beauchesne-Sévigny, 32, a sprint canoeist, is one such candidate who was planning to get himself enrolled in the 1-year full-time MBA program in the Class of 2017 at Smith. When the scholarship announcement came, he found that he had only a few weeks to submit his application for the program starting in January.
His international awards included a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 2015 and top-five finishes at the Olympics (2008), Pan Ams (2011) and the canoe sprint world championship (2013 and 2014).
Beauchesne-Sévigny, who has an engineering undergraduate degree, managed to complete the admission process on time and also received a full scholarship. The COC-vetted athletes have to apply like any other student to a range of Smith postgraduate business degrees but are eligible for special financial support for their studies.
Under the eight-year agreement, an estimated 1,200 Olympic athletes in the COC’s Game Plan program (which provides post-sports career assistance) will be able to pursue a wide range of scholarship-supported business studies at Smith.
The fee for the full-time MBA program at Smith is at present $81,000 (Canadian Dollars) for domestic students and $91,000 (Canadian Dollars) for international students. All students are also required to pay Student Activity Fees of approximately $1500 (Canadian Dollars).
Elspeth Murray, Associate Dean of MBA and Masters programs, says Beauchesne-Sévigny is one of 25 athletes enrolled at Smith. She says athletes have many of the qualities that make for great leaders and managers.
As far as Beauchesne-Sévigny is concerned, he found interesting parallels between his life as an athlete and the school’s team-based teaching approach with multiple coaches who work with students alone or in groups. In both cases, he says, feedback, self-analysis and teamwork are keys to success.
Meanwhile, women’s hockey goalie Emerance Maschmeyer had signed up in September for an online scholarship-supported, six-course certificate in business. She has been a member of Canada’s silver medal world championship women’s hockey team for the past three years.
However, she lost her place in the team and shifted to Montreal to play for Les Canadiennes, a professional team in the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. Since she has been placed in the reserves list in the team for the February 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, she hopes the online program would provide her with enough flexibility to deal with business studies and sports career demands.
Meanwhile, Beauchesne-Sévigny says he in joining Johnson & Johnson in Markham, Ontario, as an assistant product manager. He draws similarities between sports and business as both require analysing data, assessing one’s own performance, making course corrections and working in teams to achieve larger goals.(Image Source:Google.com)