One of the things I'm dealing with in taking over the AD job is that we have several sports where our athletes participate on travel / rec / whatever teams at the same time. There have been instances where our athletes will miss a high school practice to go practice / play with the "other" team. I realize this is a severe issue with the coach and I will address that once I take over but I feel an across the board policy for all sports would be more effective.
So my question is - does your school have a policy on this or does each individual sport / coach have their own policy?
My principal has given me permission to look into creating a policy as long as I research what others do in regards to this.
I would also like your opinions on this overall as well. To start the discussion here is my argument.
I strongly believe in commitment and through that I feel that all players who make the decision to go out for a team should respect that team until it's season is over. I'm a big believer in choice and putting that responsibility on others so they cannot have the recourse to come back and blame the school if they are not happy with their choice. Each team (even the "individual sports" have a team concept) has a range of players in terms of their ability and talent. Some are the studs and some are the role players and there are even some whose sole job is to supply the practice against team for the frontline players. I'm looking to protect that kid who is the last one on the team. That kid - male or female - shows up to practice everyday and works as hard as they can to prepare the frontline players with very little actual game time. Their only claim to fame is to say they were a part of the team who won _______. In 20 years when they take their own kid to the gym to watch a basketball game he can look up into the rafters and point at a banner and tell his kid "look at that banner - I was a member of that team who won _____". It doesn't matter to that small child if his father or mother never stepped foot on the field / court. In their eyes their parent is amazing. So it's not fair to that last player on the team when the studs go off to play on other teams and get hurt which hurts the team from winning ______.
Best example of this - this year our starting second baseman in softball got hurt playing travel team on the weekend. She missed about two or three HS games because of this injury. That is not fair or right to put the rest of the team in that position.
Don't get me wrong I'm not against travel anything because I know there are some great teams who do a tremendous job in helping kids. I just think they need to realize their place is the offseason / summer.
I would like to come up with a policy that says if an athlete is found to be participating on a high school team and an outside team they will be brought into a meeting (with parents) and told they have two days to make a decision as to which team they stay with. They want to stay on the high school team then they have to give up playing on the outside team until the high school season(s) are over. If they choose to stay with the outside team then turn their equipment in and I wish them best of luck. This should be their choice but there needs to be consequences for that choice. You can't always get what you want in life and this should be one of them due to the factors I've explained and many others like overuse injuries.
I know what the main arguement against my policy will be is that how can the school tell a family what to do in their own time. Well like I said the school isn't saying "you HAVE to quit". It's saying if you wish to be a member of this HS team these are the requirements you have to meet. Now it's their choice and not the schools. I realize it's a semantic argument but I feel it's a valid one. Now if it's football season and dad and son want to go work on freethrows then by all means go right ahead. I'm not trying to stop family time but I'm trying to gain control of situations where out of control outside teams affect the integrity of the sports under my command.
Now the give part in this is that summer is open for grabs. I feel that summer is about playing on the best possible team / competition you can find. If two sports are going to share an athlete then there needs to be a meeting where a schedule is made out so that athlete can participate equally in both sports with some rest in there.
One last example is that if a girl plays volleyball for the HS in the fall but does not play basketball in the winter. Then she should be able to play travel volleyball in the winter because she's not on a HS team. My policy is about fulfilling a commitment that is already there in pursuing a state championship.
One of our football coaches is from South Carolina and he said that SC has a state rule against this other participation. I know this will be a huge fight and radical change as to what's going on but I'm willing to fight that fight. I'm even going to have to fight some of my own coaches because they are going to gripe and complain they will lose players over this. My rebuttal will be to do your job - get in the hallways to recruit kids and coach the hell out of them.
So what do you guys think?
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