When the time comes to transition, there is often uncertainty with regards to your own next steps. Luckily for Canadian athletes, Game Plan is able to help ease this process.

To gain a better understanding of an athlete’s transition, we spoke with Evert McLaughlin, a national team sailing athlete in the Laser class who competed for five years internationally, attending the Worlds from 2013-2016 and competing in the 2015 Pan-Am Games in the Snipe class. He walked us through the different steps he took to make his transition as painless as possible. In this three part blog series, we will walk through Evert’s journey from competing to the workforce and dive deeper on the different steps he took to ensure a successful transition.

“When I found out I didn’t qualify to go to the Olympics in the Summer of 2016, it was a slow decision to decide not to continue with my training”, said Evert.

From the get go, Evert met with Rolf, his Game Plan Advisor, to devise an action plan. “I used him throughout my transition, taking notes every time we met. At that time, I had no resume, my LinkedIn profile was a mess – so we worked together to get everything up to speed.”

Furthermore, having Rolf available was more than just someone to go through job applications with. “It was great to have someone else consistently on your team. It was an extension from what I was doing and a bridge to the real world”, said Evert when asked about the best part of working with Rolf.

With his CV ready and LinkedIn profile cleaned up, Evert embarked on the application process for his Smith School of Business Master’s Degree….

Stay tuned to read more about Evert’s story.