Predicting Student-Athletes Attributes Towards Academics and Sports Performance

University athletes contribute fame to the academe where they belong. Benford, (2007), Meyer, (2005) stated that there is a possibility of earning low grades when joining sports because academic grade are affected while they focused only in playing. This study focused on the discriminant analysis on the attributes affecting university athletes‘ academic performance and to determine predictive student-athletes‘ characteristics towards sports performance of ISU system, School Year 2017 – 2018.

There are 670 respondents who are the athletes of the whole University and majority come from ISU-Ilagan. Male dominated the population as stated by Geraghty (2015), because obviously, sports come from a manly course. Majority of the respondents‘ aged 20-21 years old and they do undergo practice thrice a week. Despite being an athlete, most of them have an average grade ranging from 1.51 to 2.00, meaning they balanced sports with their studies. Majority of the respondents played in team sports and they remain as athletes in the university for a year only. Ninety-four (94) are able to compete in National SCUAA and 16 in International SCUAA.

Performance of the respondents is controlled by their coach who is also the trainer. In terms of their consistency, they play collaboratively with each of the members of the team and they support and trust each other. Based from their responses, they are more confident of winning the game when they do play as team. This is closely related to the findings of Madrona et al. (2010) who found that games in physical education is the primary education develops special skills and very necessary. But when athletes think of the missed lessons and assessments given by their teachers their confidence level during the game is affected.

The athletes‘ overall attributes and their profile variables, have no significant relationship on college program, age group, and frequency of weekly practice. Weekly practice has a statistical significant contribution in predicting consistency and control attribute. College program or the course they are taking has a statistical significant contribution in predicting confidence attribute and overall attribute. Control attribute has a statistical significant relationship with both academic and sports performance and, all three athletes‘ attributes (control, consistency, and confidence attribute) have statistical significant contribution in predicting academic performance. Both control and consistency attributes have statistical significant contribution in predicting sports performance.

This study presents enhanced guidelines on the selections of athletes to the administration of the university so that more students shall involve themselves in sports to develop better physical and mental health, build confidence and develop higher to self-esteem, and lower chances of joining bad companies that lead them to undergo on vices.