The roar of the crowd fades, the arena lights dim, and the stands empty—but for former athletes, the lessons learned on the field, court, or track continue long after the final whistle. The grit, discipline, and teamwork that defined their athletic journeys do not disappear at the end of their college careers. Many former athletes have found that the skills they developed over the years in practices and competitions have been invaluable in helping them thrive under the rigorous demands of a Baylor Law School education.
Maya Rigley, a 6Q from Plano, Texas, found that playing rugby at the University of Texas at Austin taught Rigley more than just physical toughness; it taught her the importance of adaptability. “One of the most helpful things that I learned is to collaborate with people who have very strong and different opinions,” she said, “while I may not use that in law school every day, just because it’s not as collaborative of an environment as being on a field with a bunch of teammates, I think will be helpful in the future as I’m in an attorney.”
Rigley notes the parallels between sports and law school, claiming that competition can be healthy. “The competition aspect is similar in that while you play sports, you’re learning to prepare…to compete and exhibit everything you’ve learned in practices…and law school is similar because you’re gearing up for exams,” Rigley said.
At Baylor Law School, Rigley aligns with her alma mater’s philosophy. “UT’s main philosophy is ‘What starts here changes the world.’ It aligns with Baylor’s service-oriented mindset; one person can make an impact if they do their best. It points to how having a sense of self-efficacy is almost like a fulfilling prophecy. If you think you can make a difference, you can,” she expressed.
Cagan Baldree, a former fullback for A&M Football, grew up in Carthage, Texas, in a family of athletes. He reflected on his experience, saying, “The thing I miss most about playing football…especially at the collegiate level and a really competitive conference, is doing it every day. I don’t miss the games as much [as knowing when] I woke up that day, I had things to get done towards that end goal.”
The traditions at A&M resonated deeply with Baldree, and he found similar ideas at Baylor Law School. “One of the reasons I was interested in coming here is because of the history of the law and the common law tradition in the West,” he said.
Baldree encourages student-athletes considering law school to “enjoy the season now to the fullest because it is unlike any other season. It’s not something we ever replicate anywhere else,” he reflected.
Now more involved in his children’s athletic careers than his own, Baldree reflects on how the resilience and time management skills he developed playing football continue to impact his life. “I very strongly believe that the student-athlete environment with competitiveness, having to balance more than one thing at a time, and long hours and dedication to a mission goal…train[s] [you to be] easily adaptable to the law school environment.”
For Emma Vickers, a Kansas City 1L and a former sprinter at the University of Missouri, life after sports has channeled the energy and discipline she developed in athletics into her post-collegiate journey. “The best thing that athletics taught me is about suffering, that if you can withstand discomfort, you [understand] that there are benefits on the other side,” she expressed. “And it also taught me how to be bad at stuff. I was a sprinter, so there are technical skills. You’re not just born knowing how to do them, so you must be bad at it for a while and then practice until you get better. That’s been the best thing in law school. I’ve learned that as long as I keep struggling with it and keep working, I’ll get better.”
Vickers highlights the influence of Mizzou’s Student-Athlete Advisory Committee in shaping her interest in law. “[The advisory committee’s support] is kind of what the legal system can do in an idealistic sense…it can provide resolutions for people when they have disputes,” she noted, “being on a team, you score points as a team. I’ve always liked the team aspect of sports, which I also like in law school.
When asked if he still sees himself as an athlete, Jaxson Mahlstadt, a first-year law student from Indianola, Iowa, responds with conviction, “Yes. I can’t shake it. It’s hard to stop thinking like that.”
After spending 12 years in the water, including five at Truman State University, Mahlstadt’s athletic background continues influencing his life. He attributes the intense, solitary nature of swimming to preparing him for the challenges of law school. “Swimming is a sport [that] is a close analogy to law school. I feel like there is no transition at all,” he said. “You’re swimming by yourself for hours in practice and studying by yourself for hours here. But in both, you’re contributing to the team the whole time, and here I’m collaborating all the time and building a group of people doing the same thing.”
Justin Garber, a 5Q hailing from Ellicott City, Maryland, began his journey in baseball at age two, dedicating himself to the sport through his college years at Christopher Newport University. His experiences as a clinical research coordinator at Johns Hopkins and his role in assisting his father in coaching high school baseball reflect his commitment to excellence, leading him to pursue a new path at Baylor Law School.
Although athletics has played a significant role in his life, he does not connect his athletic journey to his legal career. “[Baseball] is sort of how my perspective of the world and how I interact with it has developed, and I use that side of things more for law school than anything,” Garber said.
Competition is second nature to a former athlete like Garber, and Baylor Law School has kept this competitive spark alive. “I would certainly say that there’s an aspect of inter-interpersonal competition, simply because of its nature, because…class rank and your grades and everything are relative to your classmates,” he explained. “At Baylor, what I found was it was much more in line with my experience playing college baseball…at the end of the day…you come together…we have this common purpose where ultimately we’re trying to go out into the world, or we’re trying to go out into our season, and compete together.”
To Garber, there is no harm in friendly competition: “One thing about baseball that I think is unique compared to other sports is…everyone has to do their job to succeed and win… So I think law school is similar as well, at least for our class, where there’s competition amongst each other. Still, we also realize that by pushing each other to do better, we ultimately grow as lawyers, future lawyers ourselves,” he said.
Baseball has instilled more than a love for competition within Garber; it has helped him develop lifelong habits and perspectives that influence him daily, specifically how he views failure. “Baseball is truly a game of failure. If you look at all your position players in the Hall of Fame, they have batting averages in the three hundreds. They failed more times than they succeeded at the plate, and then they’re considered the best that ever played the game,” he explained. “If you start to recognize that failure is part of the process, and it’s actually a gift—you analyze your performance and grow as a person and attorney,” he said.
Ultimately, Garber aspires to be remembered as an athlete and a man of God. “I’m doing all this for the glory of God,” he said, “I want to be the best attorney. I want to be all those things, but…at the end of my days, if my eulogy says I was a Godly man, everything else doesn’t matter quite as much.”
While their jerseys may have been retired, their cleats and uniforms now serve as nothing more than cherished memorabilia; the valuable lessons learned during their athletic careers continue to shape who they are. Each athlete carries their experiences on their law school journey, serving as a source of inspiration for others through their perseverance, teamwork, and adaptability. “My whole identity was wrapped up in excelling or being an athlete in one particular identity,” Vickers reflects, “Now I think I’m a little bit more dimensional, but more intersectional, and I think that’s better.”
“You place a lot of importance on winning and success, but at the end of the day, my identity, I hope, is not simply that I was an athlete,” Garber said. “In law school, this is important too…it’s part of the process to become a lawyer… so try not to stress too much about it, and to take things as they come. In baseball, [if] you go up and strike out their first at-bat… [you can] either let that ruin the rest of your game… [or] you [can] learn from it, and then you go back out the next step, and you do something different, you try to do better, and have you have so many opportunities to continue to improve. The same is true in law school.”
The lessons learned on and off the field will stay with our former student-athletes and guide them as they tackle the challenges of the legal field. Baylor Law School is proud to be a part of their journey and will cheer them on as they forge new paths, regardless of which “field” they choose to pursue next.
Original source can be found here.