Typically when student-athletes play multiple sports, it’s usually in different seasons. This isn’t the case for junior Kayode Olaoye, who is in two spring sports at once. He’s currently participating in track and golf, two sports with very different experience levels.

“I wanted to do the sports I liked but I also knew it would be a challenge,” Olaoye said, regarding the two sports. This is his 7th year in track and first year in golf, so having a workload like this is a “new experience” to him. Teammates in both track and golf recognize the struggles this brings, which can lead to missed practices or added fatigue. 

“With Kayode being a captain he’s usually the one leading the team during stretches and workouts,”junior track teammate Antoine Lewis said, “but we’ve learned to adapt and handle that better as a team when he’s not there.” 

The track team’s numbers have been down in general this year, so the team is used to overcoming this type of adversity. 

“The positives from this is that the team can focus on ourselves more individually to better ourselves for competitions,” Lewis said. 

While Kayode is used to track and missing time won’t affect him as much there, the same can’t be said for golf, which he’s completely new to. 

“I chose sports I believed I would enjoy, and golf has been something I enjoy,” said Olaoye. Freshman teammate Kyle Cipowski said there has been tons of improvement from everyone during the season, which is mostly new players. While Cipowski does recognize that it is detrimental to Kayode’s own game for him to be in two sports, he admits “it hasn’t affected the team too much in a bad way because he’s still had improvement this whole season.” 

Even though there were plenty of reasons to not want to take on a challenge like this, Kayode accepts it with open arms. 

“It’s very difficult to balance sports, school, and other extracurriculars; but I like to challenge myself to do multiple tasks and be great in them all. Each sport is surrounded by different people who have different mindsets, overall I enjoy being with different teams and playing in different environments where I can experience more,.” he said. 

When his current sports are done, Kayode won’t be finished, with his 10th year of soccer coming right around the corner.