Junior and basketball player Tyler Seibring said he was humbled to hear his article, “Just for the Record: The Chronicles of a Mid-Major Basketball Player,” reached so many people in the Elon University community and landed on the desk of none other than President Leo Lambert.
Accumulating over 30 retweets and close to 100 likes on Twitter, the article gave readers the chance to briefly step into Seibring’s rather large shoes and learn more about his life as a semi-recognized athlete.
He said did not mean to persuade people to pay more attention to Elon athletics with his article but simply “to create something to document the intricacies of the life of a mid-major basketball player.”
Elon, Seibring said, is by no means a major basketball school.
“Everyone is a fan of Duke, Kansas and North Carolina,” Seibring said. “But most people don’t end up there – they end up in mid-major programs that are more fitting to what they are trying to accomplish at that time in their lives.”
But it no longer feels as though they’re a member of a Division-I team.Seibring said that other than some occasional stops for pictures, being a Division-I athlete has little effect on his life.
“I love it when mid-major programs are supported against high major programs,” Seibring said in his article. “I’m sick of feeling like we play a different sport.”
Seibring said one of the driving motivations to write the article was to show he is playing the same game as the top-tier teams who’s games are broadcast on ESPN.
“Everyone’s rooting for the underdog, but there are a lot of misunderstandings about the lives we’re living and how hard we are trying to compete,” Seibring said.
He said many people don’t realize how tough it is to play on the Division-I level, at any school — midsize college athletes are “working the same hours and under the same system.”
Seibring leads the men’s basketball team with 437 points. He ranks 14th overall in the CAA with 15.6 points per game, spending more time on the hardwood than any other Phoenix player.
He doesn’t let his responsibilities to his team detract from his academic duties.
As a student, Seibring is double-majoring in English and economics, and he was named the 2016-17 Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) Men’s Basketball Scholar-Athlete of the Year for his hard work.
“There are a lot of challenges for any student athlete, but it has helped craft skills and management techniques that will hopefully continue for the rest of our lives,” Seibring said.
Seibring said there is one important skill he has learned to master by being actively involved in both athletics and academics.
“Time management is probably the most important thing,” he said. “For a lot of people it is extremely tough, but eventually you have to figure it out.”
“I’m probably just another college kid with a blog,” Seibring said.
“If people decide it’s not worth their time and it’s just my parents reading it, I can live with an outlet for thinking. You don’t get to decide what something ends up being. You can only try to make something cool. So I’m just going to have some fun with it and start with the end.”
But the Elon community knows he is “more than just another college kid with a blog,” and his response has encouraged him.
Seibring said he hopes to not let Lambert down.