April 14, 2026
Balancing school and soccer comes down to three things: knowing where your time actually goes, doing schoolwork in the gaps instead of saving it all for late at night, and protecting sleep like it’s part of training. I’m not going to pretend I’ve got it perfectly figured out. But September always brings the same question from parents — how does he fit it all in? — so here’s the honest version.
I’m Olly. I’m 15, I play for the Charleston Soccer Club, I volunteer with the Charleston Battery, and I coach younger players around Mount Pleasant. School just started back. Here’s my actual week.
Monday to Friday: School during the day. Club training two evenings, usually 6 to 7:30. On training days I’m not home until close to 8:30 once you factor in the drive.
Weekday afternoons without training: This is when I coach sessions, and it’s also when I get most of my homework done. More on that below, because it’s the part that took me longest to work out.
Saturday: Game day, usually. Sometimes coaching in the morning if the game’s later.
Sunday: Battery volunteering when there’s a home fixture, plus whatever schoolwork I’ve been avoiding. I try to keep at least half a day genuinely free.
Written out like that it looks like a lot. In practice most of it is fine — the pinch points are Tuesday and Thursday nights, and the Sunday evening realisation that something’s due.
For about a year I did homework the way most people do. Get home, eat, sit down at 9pm, work until late, sleep badly, feel terrible at school, repeat.
What actually fixed it was boring: doing schoolwork in the small gaps instead of saving it for one big block.
Three or four twenty-minute gaps a day is over an hour of work that used to happen at 10pm. That hour back is the whole difference.
This is the one I’d tell every young player, and the one I got wrong for the longest.
If you’re tired, you train badly, you play badly, and you learn badly. Everything gets worse at once. There’s no version of being a serious athlete on six hours of sleep, and the “grind” content that says otherwise is nonsense.
What helped me:
That last one felt wrong for ages. It isn’t. A tired week costs more than one average assignment.
Every Sunday evening I write down what’s due that week and when I’m going to do it. That’s it — no app, no system, just a list.
It takes about ten minutes and it removes the thing that used to wreck my week: discovering on Wednesday night that something big is due Thursday, on a training day.
If it’s a heavy soccer week, I know by Sunday and I front-load the schoolwork. If there’s a big assessment, I’ll tell my coach I might need to miss a session. Coaches are far more understanding when you tell them on Monday than when you don’t show up on Thursday.
Being honest, because I don’t want this to read like everything fits neatly.
I miss things. Some hangouts, some events, a lot of casual free time on weekends. Some weeks I don’t get to see friends outside of school much at all.
I’ve made peace with that because I genuinely want both of these things. But it’s a real trade, and I think young players should know that up front rather than being told it’s all achievable if you just organise well enough. Some of it just costs something.
What I don’t give up: sleep, and time with family. Everything else is negotiable.
The players I coach are mostly 8 to 12, and their version of this is simpler but the same shape.
If you’re fitting extra training around a full school week, the practical thing is finding slots that don’t fight with everything else — that’s exactly why after-school and weekend sessions tend to work best for the families I train.
The reason I keep the schedule is that both parts feed each other. Training gives me something that isn’t school. Coaching younger players has taught me more about the game than any session I’ve done as a player — you don’t really understand a skill until you have to explain it to an eight-year-old.
And the Battery volunteering is the part I’d protect hardest. Being around professionals changes how you think about your own preparation, in a way you can’t get from watching games on a screen.
Busy isn’t the same as stressed, as long as the things filling the week are things you chose. That’s the distinction I’d want a young player to understand.
Use small gaps in the day for schoolwork rather than saving it all for the evening, plan the week on a Sunday so nothing ambushes you, and protect sleep as seriously as you protect training. Most of the problem is scheduling, not workload.
For most players aged 8 to 14, two or three team sessions plus a game is plenty, with maybe one extra individual session. Beyond that, the risk of burnout and overuse injury starts outweighing the development gain.
Look at when the homework is happening before cutting soccer. In most cases the problem is that everything gets pushed to late evening, not that there are too many sessions. Restructuring the week usually fixes it without losing anything.
Yes. A few weeks off at the end of a season, and at least one properly free day most weeks. Players who never stop are the ones who burn out at fifteen — and that’s the age most kids quit the sport entirely.
Early and directly. Tell them at the start of the week if an assessment means you’ll miss a session. Coaches respect players who communicate; they lose patience with players who just don’t turn up.
Only if it replaces something rather than stacking on top. One focused hour a week is manageable for most players. If the week is already full, the honest answer is to fix the schedule first.
Nobody balances this perfectly, and the players who look like they do are usually just better at planning than they are at anything else. Ten minutes on a Sunday, work in the gaps, sleep properly. That’s most of it.
If you’re trying to fit extra training around a full school week, get in touch and we’ll find a slot that works rather than one that adds pressure.
About Olly: Oliver “Olly” Sovenyhazy is a 15-year-old soccer player with the Charleston Soccer Club and a volunteer with the professional Charleston Battery. Through Olly on the Ball he coaches private, semi-private and small-group sessions for young players across Mount Pleasant and the Charleston area — building confidence through reps, and skills that hold up in real games.
