Approximately 1% of college athletes are successfully recruited to a professional league, while the average professional career only lasts about three years. As a result, approximately 99% of all collegiate athletes will face the loss of their athletic identity once they graduate from college. As the change in higher education increasingly becomes a focal point for our country, sports psychologists have begun to focus their attention on athletes. and their quest for exceptional athletic performance in elite sports and the extent to which this quest affects personal development. According to Lavallée (2005), previous research has found that collegiate athletes are more likely to have lower levels of professional maturity and delayed career development than their non-athletic counterparts. Additionally, researchers also found that college athletes were less able to develop more mature career and educational plans than other students. Therefore, this suggests that the education offered to collegiate athletes to develop their professional knowledge is lacking or incomplete; indicating that future research should focus more on the personal development of athletes. In a study by Beamon (2012), the phenomenon of sporting identity and identity foreclosure following retirement from sport was examined. Sport identity can be defined as a social role or professional self-image integrating the social, behavioral, cognitive, and affective obligations associated with sport identification. Due to the entertaining nature of our culture, elite athletes are socially reinforced for their physical abilities and success. Unfortunately, because of this, the majority of athletes conceptualize their identity and “personal stressors” when competing. According to Nicholls and Polman (2007), the ability to cope with stress plays an important role in an athlete's performance during and outside of competition. Consistent with this research, the concept of self-efficacy was found to impact how an individual evaluates a situation and the corresponding way in which he or she copes with it. Self-efficacy can be defined as an individual's beliefs about their ability to achieve a certain outcome, which are then expressed in their opinions about their ability to perform a specific behavior or task. Since stress is a constant and defining variable in sport and in life outside of sport, it is crucial that athletes develop ways to manage stress successfully and implement these methods effectively in order to avoid negative effects. in competition and in life (Nicholls, Polman, Levy). , & Borkoles, 2010).