This is not necessarily true. According to Ryan deGroff, a player should confide in and trust a few close friends about his or her condition. Says deGroff, "Teammate needs to know less than coaches, but I made sure I had certain kids around me that could I could trust and that could help me if I needed it. I had an incident where I was low in a football game, but I was unresponsive. Two of my teammates who know me and of my Diabetes called a time out and got me off the field."

With a little bit of knowledge sometimes comes questions that an athlete with Type 1 simply does not want to address. deGroff laughs as he relays the story of one of his teammates in college asking if he [the player] could get Type 1 from sharing a cup with DeGroff.

Lastly, there is the wild card of player's parents and how they may react to their child having a teammate with Type 1. For the most part, according to deGroff, he didn't feel that his condition was an issue. "However," he says, "a parent may have problems she thinks that a child with Type 1 is getting more playing time because of his condition or push as to why the Type 1 came off of the field." Yet once athletes reach high school, parents are less of influence.