attendance policy

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guys,

looking for some input...i've had several girls miss tournaments and/or tournament games and/or too many practices. it's my fault i've not had an attendance policy in place but that changes now. we're 14U.

curious what you're thoughts are (too strict, too ***, too vague) on the policy i'm about to implement. it's located here:

Lady Bomber Fastpitch

thanks,

jay

 

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I would stress with whatever policy you adopt the reason for the policy is because it's a team sport with your fellow teammates counting on you and how you are letting them down when you don't practice or show for games. Letting your friends down is the main effect of not being there.

 

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You have to nip it in the bud now or it will only get worse. Musty speaks the truth, friends or not, the girls will be let down and start talking when certain players don't show up time after time....and that is when the drama starts. You can't always be fair with playing time but you most definately can be fair in rules and enforcement.

 

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BEFORE jumping into travel ball, a family must evaluate their level of commitment. Missing a few rec games for vacations, movies, etc. is generally understood, but tournament travel ball is a totally different mindset. If your team parents are not committed to EVERY single weekend, they should NOT be attempting to juggle a travel ball schedule. I make no apologies when I say that travel ball, by design, is for kids with college ball goals. Some make it, some don't. Having an uncommitted family (or two) on your team spoiling the rest of the team's dreams is simply not acceptable. Make it VERY clear from the very beginning that missing practices and games is forbidden. DD's team once had a kid with a broken leg cheering on the bench every game one summer. That's what commitment and team spirit are all about.

 

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Have to agree with Sammy. The commitment level is different in travel ball. Don't get me wrong there are some rec girls who are very dedicated, usually they end up in Travel as well. It takes a lot of time and sometimes $$$ to stay committed to travel. Either you have a love for this game that is unrelenting or you dont.

 

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Would have been a lot better if this had been made known at tryouts.

 

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I guess I am in a similiar situation. My DD is in her first year at 10U and her team is having a hard time getting girls to practice. This past Sunday we had all of 5 girls show up and we have a game tonight and then our 2nd tourney this weekend. It is really frustrating to me that we can't get better participation from the other girls and parents. I guess I was expecting more from travel ball than what I have seen thus far. I know this isn't how every team runs things, but I just needed to vent a little. I am at a point now where I have actually been looking under the teams needing players thread.

 

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Last week we had a girl miss her softball awards banquet to attend a team practice. And, she was early to practice. Sad that she missed her banquet, but impressed none-the-less. Coach told her "Next year, you will miss practice."

We have girls whose families drive 3-4 hours round trip to attend practice, and those who can't drive 45 minutes. Fortunately, I'm Not A Coach.

 

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Fortunately, I'm Not A Coach.

LOVE that! I usually wonder what some screen names mean.

 

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No disrespect to Sammy but I'm not sure travel ball can be lumped into one basket anymore. He's OLD school. hehe. There are a lot of "travel" teams who don't travel much. There are teams who don't like the competition of rec in their area so they play tournaments but don't leave their region. Other travel teams do nothing but travel and go out of state. I will be spending close to 30 nights in a hotel room this summer with my DD but I like sitting by the pool drinking beer. Many teams are in between.

So if you want more then you are getting from "rec" don't be afraid to look into travel. Find a team that fits your goals. Find out what their commitment expectations are. If college is your aspiration then find a travel team with an ASA schedule that hits the road a lot and plan on being at all of the MANY practices and games.

All teams should spell out their goals and expectations at the beginning, if they don't ask a lot of questions! Families most know what they are looking for and be sure they understand what they are getting into and what's expected from them

 

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No disrespect to Sammy but I'm not sure travel ball can be lumped into one basket anymore. He's OLD school. hehe. There are a lot of "travel" teams who don't travel much. There are teams who don't like the competition of rec in their area so they play tournaments but don't leave their region. Other travel teams do nothing but travel and go out of state. I will be spending close to 30 nights in a hotel room this summer with my DD but I like sitting by the pool drinking beer. Many teams are in between.

So if you want more then you are getting from "rec" don't be afraid to look into travel. Find a team that fits your goals. Find out what their commitment expectations are. If college is your aspiration then find a travel team with an ASA schedule that hits the road a lot and plan on being at all of the MANY practices and games.

All teams should spell out their goals and expectations at the beginning, if they don't ask a lot of questions! Families most know what they are looking for and be sure they understand what they are getting into and what's expected from them

So......If I had a pool..................Just saying. I have a particular affection (or affliction) for Bud Light, single malts, and Margueritas. I also enjoy a good cigar, dislike wars, and avoid women with back hair.

 

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18U gets tricky. Team practice is once a week after high school season ends and always on the same day. DD missed the 1st one for Baccalaureate and 2nd one tonight for Commencement. She will skip the Senior All-Star game next Tuesday so she can go to practice. In hind sight, she should have skipped Baccalaureate and played in the All-Star game. Tough choices to make.

 

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Good Luck!

Highly suggest having a policy in place at the time of your try-outs. Have the written policy in hand and make sure each family is aware of your policy.

If we ever find outselves sitting around the pool drinking our favorite beverage, watching nac smoke his blower and avoiding hairy back women.... I will share my first year of travel ball story which was a complete nightmare.

Our current team allows excused absenses for girls who are playing "in season" sports. Our coach seems to seek athletic girls and not necessarily softball only girls. (if that makes sense?) .... this typicaly creates a team of multiple sport athletes.

Now that my oldest DD is entering HS, I am dealing with an entirely different stress. We are 5 days into the first week of June .... she is having pressure being put on her to attend Basketball and S O C C E R camps and other functions which conflict with fastpitch. We have always prioritized "in season" sports with fastpitch usualy trumping other sports, even if in the witner. My, going to be, freshman could potentialy make varsity in all three sports as a freshman. Every sport being a year round committment is going to force her and/or her parents to make a choice ........ What is the correct thing to do?

 

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If you and your DD have the energy, she could play high school for each of these sports. As for a year round commitment, I would choose the sport that she has the most passion for and devote each summer to that sport. It's really difficult to combine an active summer travel fastpitch schedule with active AAU summer Basketball or active summer club s o c c e r.

If fastpitch is the "year round" commitment, you are still going to have to miss some fall and winter fastpitch events if your DD is playing s o c c e r and/or basketball. But as much as we hate to lose players for fall and winter travel ball activities, we believe that a commitment to a high school season means that the high school sport almost always takes priority when it is in season.

Am I mistaken or is this one of those years again where Ohio fall HS sports begin practice before travel ball nationals are completed? Because that can be a huge problem, especially if the HS coach won't accept attendance at nationals as an accepted excuse for those first few days of practice. We had a player who was told by the fall sport HS coach that she could not try out for the HS squad if she went to nationals. So she had a very hard choice to make. She choose to attend the fastpitch nationals, but it was painful for me (and more so for her) to see her pay the price of not playing the fall sport.

 

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guys,

looking for some input...i've had several girls miss tournaments and/or tournament games and/or too many practices. it's my fault i've not had an attendance policy in place but that changes now. we're 14U.

curious what you're thoughts are (too strict, too ***, too vague) on the policy i'm about to implement. it's located here:

Lady Bomber Fastpitch

thanks,

jay

I looked at your proposed policy. You can never cover everything, but one thing that jumped out at me is the "extenuating circumstances". Of course a death in the family is one, but how about a cousin getting married? Or relatives coming into town on short notice? I could go on and on.

Another thing I noticed is that anyone could miss practice and be fine so long as they notify you before the practice? That's fine, so long as everyone knows this way in advance, such as before they accept a spot on the team. Otherwise, you'll have people missing practice left and right and you will have no way to do anything about it. That will make the more dedicated families upset. Also, I'm not sure what "prior to tournament" means. Is that 2 days before a tournament, a week, a month?

Now that the season is upon us, my advice is to go with whatever you might have laid out last fall. If you didn't specify anything then, explain to the families that you should have, and now in lieu of that, you are going to fashion something as reasonable as you can, which could be the plan you attached onto your post. And then at your tryout in the fall for 2012/2013, have something specific in writing that everyone must agree to before they join the team.

Oh, one other thing now that I'm thinking of it. The "Not start the next game" choice can be meaningless in travel ball. Most girls know they won't start every game, and if they don't actually play any less with that penalty, it has little effect.

Again, be as specific as you can in your tryout literature, leaving yourself some wiggle room. For example, I think I allowed any player to miss one tournament of their choosing (except for Nationals or Colorado) for any reason, so long as they notified me at least a month in advance and no more than one other player was already missing that tournament. If they missed more than one, they wouldn't be coming back the following year. I noted that the exceptions were few and far between and needed to be obvious, such as death in the immediate family. I think I indicated that the exceptions were to be judged solely by me and that my notion of extenuating circumstances was probably much more limited than that of most people. If you allow everyone to miss one tournament, that takes away any complaining that families can't have a non-softball vacation in the summer, especially before volleyball or other tryouts begin for school.

Again, be specific, leave yourself an out for a true emergency and then follow-up on your plan. You might need to tweak each year when you discover that a penalty is too light or too harsh.

 

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Thanks joe. Im holding off on doing this due to the same theme you outline above. With the policy i drafted, one of mt better players, and best kids, would be dismissed in just a few weeks due to conflicts with summer league play...all the while not missing a single tournament game...i need to rethink this...

 

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Carol you are right. Fall sports tried to start one week earlier but got turned down by the OHSAA. Still can't start till 8-6. The other issue is the mandantory 10 day contact practices that are going on now during the summer. . It is getting tougher to play multi sports. What many are doing are telling players they must attend a camp first week of Aug, but they can't make it mandatory

From OHSAA August 1-5 is a period of time where you CAN NOT use the ball or have any type of organized "practice". Conditioning and weight training are permitted as are unorganized open fields. So NO coaching or instruction! Basically we can use our 10 touches up to Tuesday July 31, but CAN NOT touch the ball the rest of that week Aug. 1-5.

So if your travel team has practice every tuesday and a high school coach tells you they are using the 10 day contact every Tuesday and Friday ( games every Friday), kind of puts the kid in the middle this summer!

 

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So......If I had a pool..................Just saying. I have a particular affection (or affliction) for Bud Light, single malts, and Margueritas. I also enjoy a good cigar, dislike wars, and avoid women with back hair.

Jello shots and Mikes quart jar of apple pie fire water too. I don't know, there is something intriguing about a lady with a thick carpet of hair on her back......

 

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@fastjay:

I would take Joe's comments to heart. Many of the issues that he raised jumped out at me when I read your policy. But note that the thrust of Joe's comments is toward greater strictness, as long as the policy is laid out at or prior to tryouts.

 

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Am I mistaken or is this one of those years again where Ohio fall HS sports begin practice before travel ball nationals are completed? QUOTE]

We return from Nationals Sunday August 5th ....... High School and Middle School s o c c e r begins Monday August 6th.

We are lucky that our Girls HS s o c c e r coach believes family vacations and the committment to softball are excused absenses. His words "Family vacations and Nationals are memories that will last forever".

My son is not so lucky .... you show up or sit the bench.

I plan on allowing both DDs play whichever sport they wish however, you are right, we will have to choose which sport will be their year round committement. So far it is fastpitch!