Key Points

Student-athletes can take on internships and travel like other students, but training for their sport never stops.

• College athletes balance summer training with new experiences, including internships, professional development, and travel—like WCWS star Teagan Kavan.
• Some players and teams, like UConn women’s basketball, stay on campus for intense summer sessions, allowing coaches to evaluate players and build chemistry with newcomers early in the off-season.
• Athletes training away from campus follow structured plans to stay in shape.

For a college student, the summer brings a real change of pace. Some score an elite internship, others decide to backpack through Europe, or for their 11th summer at a sleepaway camp. Summer is seen as a time to reset, learn, and gear up for the next school year. It is a change in pace from a semester’s worth of classes and extracurriculars.

College athletes also experience this change of pace; however, for most athletes, while the make-up of their day-to-day lives looks different over the summer, the level of intensity remains. Like their less-athletic counterparts, they are open to pursuing internships, professional development opportunities, and summer adventures. But the need to train never goes away.

So, what do college athletes do over the summer, and how do they manage to stay on top of it all?

Get an internship

For some college athletes, the summer presents a great opportunity to do something different from studying and playing, working. Tons of student athletes have joined their peers this summer, working as fellows or interns and pursuing their interests outside of sports.

Teagan Kavan, the Most Outstanding Player of the Women’s College World Series (WCWS), is one of those student-athletes. After helping secure a national championship for her Texas Longhorns, she drove 13 hours from Texas to Iowa to begin a summer internship at Flynn Wright, an advertising agency.

“I would probably still be in Austin if I didn’t have to come back for my internship,” Kavan told the Des Moines Register.

In addition to her internship, Kavan attended the Opendorse NIL Marketing Forum.

Another opportunity for an internship is with the NCAA itself. The NCAA hosts a post-graduate internship cohort every year for graduates who are interested in pursuing sports management and administration. The 2025 cohort has not been announced yet, but 2024’s cohort included 26 former student-athletes out of 34 total program members. The program focuses on providing opportunities for ethnic minorities and women, in addition to former student-athletes.

Train with your team

While some teams and programs are comfortable letting their players leave campus over the summer to pursue their interests, other programs prefer to keep the team together. One team that has stuck together for a month-long summer session is the UConn Huskies, the winners of the 2025 NCAA March Madness tournament.

And things have gotten off to a fantastically fun start in Storrs. Per Connecticut Insider, the Huskies’ summer season is “highly competitive already,” with a full roster playing that includes the team’s new transfers and incoming freshmen.

Per CT Insider, head coach Geno Auriemma has been most impressed with returning star players Azzi Fudd and Sarah Strong. He said that Fudd, in particular, has reached a new level this summer. “I've never seen Azzi this aggressive,” Auriemma said to CT Insider.. “I think what happened in the Final Four, I think may have changed her.”

Train separately

But the summer intensive isn’t for everyone. For athletes like Kavan and countless others who traveled far from their campuses this summer, they have the added responsibility of finding time to do their summer packets.

Some college athletes who spend the summers away from their teams find other college athletes who need to train, and they team up together. Others choose to pursue their own workout plans or find creative ways to follow the plans designed by their coaches and trainers. Nesfield Performance, a coaching consulting firm, provides a guide for student athletes who train on their own in the summer to follow. Per the guide, the most important things for student athletes to do over the summer are: follow a consistent schedule, choose a good workout environment, consider playing a different sport, and, above all, rest.

As of publication, there are 55 more days until college soccer begins, and 63 days until volleyball. No time to waste when it comes to remaining in top shape!