What Am I When I Am No Longer an Athlete

Summary

Rishav Khanal, a Nepal-born, US-raised tennis player who taught himself the sport and built a business career starting with a pre-graduation LinkedIn rotational program, addresses the identity crisis that athletes face when competitive sport ends. His story moves from self-teaching tennis in Nepal through Virginia Tech (where he studied Business IT) and into early career development, where he has written a book and developed a framework specifically for college student-athletes navigating the transition from competitive identity to professional identity. The episode is a candid examination of the “athlete identity void” — the psychological crisis that occurs when the defining structure of an athlete’s life disappears — and practical strategies for navigating it.

Guest Background

Rishav Khanal was born in Nepal and moved to the United States in 2006. He is largely self-taught as a tennis player, having developed his game without formal coaching infrastructure in his early years. He attended Virginia Tech, where he studied Business Information Technology (Business IT). Before graduating, he secured a competitive LinkedIn rotational program position — a selective early-career placement that gave him immediate exposure to tech and business at scale. He subsequently wrote a book and built a career development framework for college student-athletes making the transition out of competitive sport. At the time of the episode, he is a young professional with direct, recent experience navigating the transition he writes and speaks about.

Key Findings

1. The Athlete Identity Void: When the Defining Structure Disappears

The central concept of the episode is what Khanal calls the athlete identity void — the psychological disorientation that occurs when competitive sport ends and the primary structure of a person’s identity, time, relationships, and sense of purpose is suddenly removed. For athletes who have organized their lives around training and competition from childhood, the end of that structure is not just a schedule change; it is an identity crisis. Khanal argues this is underaddressed in the transition support available to college athletes.

2. Under Armour Observation: The Ex-Penn State Tennis Player

Khanal recounts a specific observation from his work at Under Armour: a former Penn State tennis player he encountered who was struggling significantly with post-athletic identity. This person had been a competitive college athlete and found the transition to corporate life disorienting and difficult. Khanal uses this as an illustrative case for why the identity transition deserves dedicated attention and preparation, not just a one-time career counseling session.

3. Self-Taught Tennis as a Model for Autonomous Learning

Khanal’s background as a largely self-taught player frames how he approaches learning and development more broadly. The resourcefulness, self-direction, and ownership required to develop a skill without formal infrastructure translate directly into his approach to career development. He is a practical example of what player-led development looks like — and what it produces in terms of autonomous, self-starting career orientation.

4. LinkedIn Rotational Program: Pre-Graduation Entry as a Model

Khanal’s pre-graduation placement in a LinkedIn rotational program is presented as a model for how college athletes can and should build career capital before they graduate, rather than scrambling afterward. The rotational program gave him exposure to multiple business functions, accelerated professional development, and a credential-by-experience before he officially entered the job market. He advocates for athletes pursuing similar structured early-career programs rather than treating career development as something that begins after sport ends.

5. The Book and Framework: Career Development for College Student-Athletes

Khanal has written a career development book and framework specifically for college student-athletes. The framework addresses identity transition, translating athletic skills to professional contexts, networking, early career strategy, and the psychological work of building a non-athletic identity without abandoning the values and qualities that sport built. The existence of this work signals a growing market for structured athlete career transition support.

6. Athletic Skills as Transferable Capital

Khanal argues that the skills built through competitive tennis — resilience, time management, competitive drive, coachability, ability to perform under pressure — are genuinely valuable in the professional world but must be consciously translated, not assumed to be self-evident to employers. Athletes who do this translation work explicitly (in resumes, interviews, and professional networking) outperform those who leave the translation implicit.

Actionable Advice for Families

• Begin career development conversations with your junior athlete before they are in college — the identity question “who am I when tennis is over?” should be explored while they still have tennis, not after they’ve lost it
• Encourage college athletes to pursue structured early-career programs (rotational programs, internships, pre-graduation placements) in parallel with their athletic careers, not as an afterthought
• Help your child build an identity that includes but is not limited to tennis — interests, relationships, and skills outside the sport create the foundation for a healthy post-athletic transition
• Read Khanal’s framework as a practical resource for the college-to-career transition conversation

INTENNSE Relevance

• Player lifecycle support: INTENNSE’s players will retire or transition out of the league; building identity transition support into the player services model (not just performance support) would differentiate INTENNSE as a league that cares about players as whole people
• College-to-pro bridge: INTENNSE draws players from the college pathway; players who have thought about life after sport before arriving in the league will be more professionally mature and less likely to experience the identity crisis mid-career
• Content and storytelling: Khanal’s self-taught, Nepal-to-LinkedIn story is the kind of non-traditional athlete narrative that INTENNSE could amplify as part of its content strategy — diversity of origin and unconventional paths resonate with modern audiences
• Community programming: INTENNSE’s community presence in Atlanta could include career transition workshops or resources for junior athletes and college players in the region, building goodwill and deepening engagement with the talent pipeline
• Partnership opportunity: Khanal’s career framework book and platform could be a programming partner for INTENNSE’s player development or community engagement initiatives

Notable Quotes

“When tennis ends, the schedule is gone. The team is gone. The identity is gone. Nobody prepares you for that. It’s a void.”

“My athletic skills got me into the room. But I had to translate them. I had to explain what resilience and discipline actually look like in a business context.”

“Start building your professional identity while you still have your athletic one. Don’t wait until the sport is over to figure out who you are.”