Editor’s note: This is the last of a three-part series detailing the struggles female student-athletes face as they journey through four years of college athletics toward the end of their playing careers.

Megan Ronhovde, the basketball player. Alyssa Ransom, the softball player. Janet Anson, the gymnast. For some 20 years, these women have identified themselves by the sport in which they excelled. What happens to that identity when, after four years of college, they are no longer a basketball player, softball player or gymnast? Who do they become?

Just thinking about life after college without their sport is a nerve-racking thought.

“I think that’s the scary part. I don’t know how it is going to feel to be completely done,” said senior ISU softball player Alyssa Ransom. “I know how I felt my last high school game. I mean, it was horrible, it felt like I had my heart ripped out, but there was that inspiration of coming to Iowa State. I don’t know if it is going to hit me like right after I am done or if it’s going to take a month or like a week, but I am sure it is going to feel awful.”

For athletes, as they reach the inevitable point where their sports career comes to a close, it is understandably a scary time because everything they have known also comes to an abrupt end.

“Essentially they’ve been in it since they were 3 years old. When someone says, ‘Who are you?’ they say, ‘I’m a gymnast,'” said ISU gymnastics coach Jay Ronayne. “Now, at 23, they are going to graduate from college, and when somebody says, ‘Who are you?’ they won’t have the answer.”

Without having the identity of an athlete, former players enter a state of limbo, Ronayne said. In a sense, they must come to terms with the fact they are no longer an athlete, and instead, search for a new identity.

The transition, however, can be difficult. There are no more games, no more practices, no more schedules – there is no more structure. It is at this point that the structured life that athletics at Iowa State provided shows its true worth.

“I think that with the schedule that you have as athletes, you get used to being so busy and having such a structured schedule,” said former ISU women’s basketball player Megan Ronhovde. “I don’t think that it’s something that can really leave you completely. You get that regiment drilled into your head so much over the course of the four years that you are here; it’s almost like a routine for you.”

In a way, athletics helps to make the transition to the next level of life an easier one by showing the athletes what they are good at. What most athletes are good at is competing.

“Yeah I’m a great softball player, but I’m also a great competitor and that’s why I’m successful,” said ISU softball coach Stacy Gemeinhardt-Cesler. “It just takes a process of thinking; the things that made me that player which I defined myself as are the same things that are going to make me successful someplace else.”

Most of the female athletes that graduate from Iowa State go on to find successful careers because they were properly prepared for life after college. Regardless of how well they made that transition from “limbo,” the fact remains: They can no longer compete in the sport they love.

“When I coach, it is almost as good as playing, but there is no replacing pitching,” said Ransom, who spends her free time providing pitching lessons. “There is nothing like going one-on-one with a batter. That I am definitely going to miss, and there is no way to replace that.”

What the players miss most of all, however, is the unique experience of being on a team.

“I think people miss the locker room, the bus trips, and the time with their teammates more than anything,” said ISU women’s basketball coach Bill Fennelly. “You will never get that again.”

Because the athletes will never get the competition or the close relationships with their teammates ever again, it makes the short time they spend at Iowa State that much more valuable.

“You want to get away from ever saying ‘what if,'” Fennelly said. “‘What if I would have worked a little harder?’ ‘What if I would have not looked past my freshman year?’ I had one of my freshman say to me the other day, ‘I can’t believe how fast it went.’ Well, they are going to say that to me in three years, and it’s going to be all over.”

For Ronhovde, it is all over. It’s on to the next phase of her life. But her athletic experience changed her for the better and prepared her for life after basketball. She doesn’t have any “what ifs,” only a sense of peace.

“It’s friendships that you are going to have forever, and the relationships that I have with my coaches, that’s something that’s going to last a lifetime,” Ronhovde said. “You really can’t help but smile and just be happy about being a part of it.”

As she walked off the court one final time, the crowd cheered, and she cried. But she didn’t cry because it was over. She cried tears of joy because it had happened.

“Like I always tell them,” Fennelly said. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened – I think she lived that.”

This article is the last in a series. The previous story is available here.