In todays society sports has become a major part in people’s life, with the emerging of professionalization it’s become a thriving business that generates big money. An outcome of this evolution of sports as meant that most athletes must put more time and energy in to their athletics to have a chance to reach their dreams of being a professional athlete. And if an athletes dream get cut short somehow, the process of moving out of sport has been shown to somtimes be a difficult process for athletes that don’t have anything to fall back on. That’s why it is important for athletes to have the option to be able to combine their athletics with academics. The purpose of this study was to examine how a duel career, support services and life skills help to balance out the negative outcomes of pursuing a professional career in sports while also working for a higher education. During this study eight men and two women that where playing ice hockey and studying at an NCAA division 1 university where interviewed about their perceptions being student-athletes in a high performance university that has high standards on academics and sports. The results showed that most of support services offered to the student athletes helped them in reducing stress and having a more balanced life between sports and studies. The results also showed that the student-athletes perceived that they prioritized hockey and studies highly and their free time to do other things suffered because of that. Another aspect in the result showed that community service, which was part of the student-athlete program, helped them with putting things in perspective and affected them in a positive way in being student-athletes.