Day in the Life: Jake Gollon

Seeking a Master’s Degree in Educational Leadership, preparing for practice and having a social life keeps Jake Gollon’s agenda quite full. Gollon is one of the most successful and recognized members of the men’s basketball team.
The Mercer men’s basketball team keeps making progress and was checked in at No. 19 on the last College.Insider.com Mid-Major poll. It is the 4th straight week the team has been included in the outlet’s Top 25 rankings.
The Bears beat Furman University 73-46 this past Sunday evening at Hawkins Arena. Gollon contributed by adding 11 points to the win.
Gollon usually wakes up at 7:30 in the morning. He prepares breakfast with some eggs and spinach, toast and a banana.
After breakfast, he usually goes to individual workouts or works on some homework for his evening class. As a graduate student, Gollon has class three nights a week for five hours. He is the only one in the team doing graduate school right now so he generally tries to get all of his work done during the morning.
Being in the basketball team involves a lot of traveling and therefore he usually not only has to do homework early but also has some extra assignments to make up for missing classes. “It really keeps me busy,” Gollon said.
After Gollon is done with his work for the evening he generally has lunch at the cafeteria. After that he usually has a couple of hours free and tries to hang out with his roommates at the Garden Apartments while watching episodes of “The Office.”
During the day the team regularly has different workouts that he must go to: individuals, conditioning and weights, and team practice. Gollon said most days he goes to the training room and works hard to prepare for practice.
A day before a game, the team spends a couple of hours watching videos of the team they are playing against. Afterwards they like to have team dinners the night before a game. They usually make some spaghetti in their room or go to Wild Wings and eat as a team.
Gollon’s practice schedule is mostly the same during the year. “Basketball kind of takes away a little bit of your social life,” he said.
Gollon works hard and puts a lot of time into his sport, team and studies. He does not have much time to go out during the weekends but whenever the team has a couple days off “We might mingle in the social scene,” Gollon said.
Also on his free time, Jake Gollon tries to hang out with some of his non-athlete friends. However, because of his busy schedule he usually ends up hanging out with his teammates.
Gollon has high expectations for this season and looks forward to keep winning games the rest of the year.