What Happened After the Draft and the Athletes Nobody Talks About
Written by Arj Perera, High-Performance Coach
Arj Perera is a staunch advocate for the progression of women's sport, having spent over 15 years as a high-performance coach in basketball and volleyball at the elite levels. He is the founder of Human Mechanics Australia and The Brown Bear Coaches, providing high-performance coaching for elite and developing female athletes.
Everyone talks about the moment. The call. The selection. The photo on Instagram with the jersey and the big smile and all the comments saying congratulations. That moment is real, and it deserves to be celebrated. But there is a conversation that happens after that moment, sometimes weeks later, sometimes months later, that almost nobody prepares athletes for.
It usually starts quietly. A new city. A new team. A roster full of people who do not know your name yet. Suddenly, the athlete who was the most prepared person in the room back home is sitting in a change room wondering where they fit. That is the part nobody talks about. The loneliness that comes after.
The athlete's gap between prepared and ready
Most athletes who reach draft level, earn selection for a national team, or land a college scholarship overseas have spent years preparing physically. They have done the work. The strength, the conditioning, the skill sessions, the film study. They are ready for the game. What they are often not ready for is everything around the game.
I have sat with athletes who were moving interstate, moving overseas, or stepping into new programs, and the conversations were not about training loads or testing numbers. They were about the gap between what they had imagined and what they were actually feeling. Away from their people for the first time. Away from the people who knew them before the jersey, before the selection, before any of it.
Yes, there are phone calls. There are video calls. Those things matter. But there is a stark difference between a Zoom call and sitting next to someone who actually cares about you. The nervous system knows the difference. The body knows the difference. Young athletes, especially those making big moves for the first time, feel that difference in ways they often cannot quite name.
The comparison trap
There is an old saying that comparison is the thief of joy. It has never been more true than it is right now, and it has never been harder to avoid.
Young athletes today have constant access to a feed full of people telling them how they should look, how they should train, and what they should be doing to get ahead. Much of it is noise. Skewed perspectives manufactured for clicks, built on nothing more than someone’s desire to grow a following. But when you are nineteen years old, and you are in a new country, and you are not sure where you stand in the pecking order, that noise gets loud.
The more we can steer young athletes away from that and toward real mentors, people who genuinely care about their development and their well-being, not their own engagement metrics, the better. A real mentor in your corner changes everything. An algorithm does not care if you make the roster.
What actually helps
I had a young athlete recently who got selected for an Australian team. Talented. Coachable. A genuine leader. But he was worried. Worried about not knowing anyone on the squad. Worried about game time, fitting in, and whether the coaches would even notice him. Despite everything he had done to earn that spot, he was nervous in a way the training program could not fix.
What I told him was pretty simple. Focus on what you can control. Train the way you have always trained. Ask the coaching staff good questions. Ask for feedback and actually act on it. Know the plays. Execute. Most importantly, do not forget to play your own game.
Because here is the thing. His talent got him selected. Not someone else’s talent. His. The worst thing he could have done in that environment was walk in trying to be a version of himself he thought they wanted to see, instead of just being the athlete who earned the call-up in the first place.
He came back feeling like a million bucks. He played well, got good game time, made connections with players he had never shared a court with before, and left a strong impression on the coaching staff. But none of that happened because he tried to become someone new. It happened because he leaned into who he already was.
The work ethic is the icebreaker
One thing I have noticed consistently with athletes who transition well is that their work ethic travels with them. It is portable in a way that reputation and relationships are not.
In a new environment, nobody knows your story yet. They do not know how hard you have worked, who coached you, or what you have been through. But they can see how you show up. They can see whether you are the first one in and the last one out. They can see whether you are paying attention in film sessions and executing what the staff asked of you at training. That is how new teammates get to know you as an athlete before they get to know you as a person. Usually, once that happens, the rest follows.
Friendships in new environments almost always start in the gym, on the track, or in the change room after a hard session. The work is the icebreaker. Use it.
A word for the parents
If your child has just been selected, drafted, offered a scholarship, or picked for a national team, here is what I want you to tell them.
Their hard work got them here. The same hard work keeps them here. More work, done consistently and intelligently, is what moves them forward from here.
That means keeping the work ethic that built them. The camaraderie. The accountability. The commitment to training, strength and conditioning, nutrition, sleep, being a good teammate, asking good questions, and being coachable.
It also means giving them permission to feel whatever they are feeling in those first weeks. The nerves are normal. The loneliness is normal. It does not mean they made the wrong decision or that they do not belong. It means they are human, and they are doing something genuinely hard. That is worth acknowledging.
Support is still there. It just looks different for a while. The athlete who can hold onto that, who can stay grounded in who they are and keep doing the work while they build new roots, is the athlete who does not just make it. That is the one who thrives.
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Read more from Arj Perera
Arj Perera, High-Performance Coach
Empowering our female youth athletes to focus on their physical development and build strong, athletic, and resilient bodies has been Arj’s primary focus over the last 15 years. With conference and national championships under his belt, he brings this knowledge and expertise to our most important athletes outside of the national and professional circuits: our youth.
