time conflicts with other events

1. As a parent, where does baseball fall into priority compared to YOUR kid's other ALREADY scheduled events? Parents job is guidance. Daddy may want the next A-Rod but junior may want to be the next Wynton Marsalis. If kid is already on the Jazz band and a concert had already been scheduled then it comes down to choice time (dependent on the flexibility of the Jazz instructor and Coach). Personally, if already committed, I would asked that he fulfill his prior commitment and explain why.

2. How do the coaches feel about question 1?

3. Where does a parent fall into determining priorities? At the top of TOP.

4. In general, do coaches have a "holyer than thou" mentality when dealing with other school activities? Some do. Football especially at my stepsons school. Other school actvities there are Basketball and Baseball among others.

5. If it comes down to it who will your school administration support, athletics or academics?
Whoever has the best case. In this example Jazz Band, IMO.

regarding this specific case, I added some clarification on the other thread.

I have to say if Jazz band takes the priority over baseball, the player either is one helluva musician or not a great baseball player.

In our house, baseball will come first every time.

Jemaz,

Without considering this a dig because I think you and I are on the same page. A facetious question.

What about the "teammates" in the band that have practiced hard and are relying on you for the scheduled concert, are they now "second fiddle" ?

Thinking this way are parents sending a message to the kid that says it's ok to quit and letdown a team as long as you're happy?

Baseball came first in our house also with my support, but, if my son was going to be involved with another activity, the "first come first serve" rule applied. In other words if there is a potential conflict with baseball don't get involved, or discuss it with all parties to make sure all are on the same page. My guess the band guy will say "later dude".

rz1:

Baseball -- and other sports, as well -- at a high level precludes commitments at a high level to other activities such as band. Sometimes, especially in middle school, kids are required to take band or chorus. I have allowed (told, decided on behalf of, whatever way you want to put it) my sons to miss these "required" events if it conflicted with Little League games. I figured that if the band director was dumb enough to schedule a conflict then he was smart enough to figure a solution to "his" problem rather than having the LL coach (me) have the problem. I also did not much care if any of my sons failed band in sixth grade. I know that might not be ideal, but all three boys have done very well on the field and in the classroom.

I have viewed baseball as akin to scouting for my sons, since baseball precluded scouting. They have all been on serious high level teams that have stayed together and they have gotten far more out of those teams than just baseball. In short, they have gotten many of the things that scouting provides.

If one of my sons happened to be a serious musician that truly demanded tons of time, I would advise him to cut back on the baseball from the start (I have yet to see a kid who was truly talented in both, although I am sure they exist ala Denny McLain, the old Penn State lineman and others).

My middle son on his own took up the guitar and has become remarkably good, again all on his own. He even has his own band, informal though it may be. As he goes off to college (probably without baseball, although he has offers that don't come close to his academic offers) he can play the guitar all he wants and it will never conflict with baseball.

It just seems to me a no brainer, and if the band suffers in the meantime, I really don't care (and I know that is a bad attitude, but it is very heartfelt). I remain stunned every time I see a kid -- or his parents on his behalf -- select band over baseball. But then I rembember (almost every time) what kind of baseball player the kid is and I totally understand.

Jemaz,

What if a HS baseball starter, who also was a promising musician had the conflict and selected the band option, what would your opinion of that player and his priorities be? Taking into account the band concert was scheduled first

I don't mean to put you on the spot, but you do have an opinion, not necessarily wrong, that may not be shared by parents of musicians.

As I said, in our house the baseball always comes first. But in our house, we wouldn't be scheduling band concerts during baseball season -- particularly the high school season.

My oldest son delayed his confirmation by a year because of potential conflict with high school baseball games/practices.

I do agree that each endeavor is counting on the participants, which is why that even if one of my sons were a great musician, he would not be playing in the band during prime baseball season. In the fall, it would not be a big deal (unless, of course, it interfered with football) but in the spring he would nto be in the band.

Actually academics comes first. But I'm not one of those parents that feels that A's are all important. An overall 3.0 is just fine with me. (Keeps the car insurance down :-) I have seen parents pull a kid from the team when he didn't have a 4.0.

Baseball comes first. As I mentioned in another post the coaches won't have it any other way.

Having said that, the boys have remained in Scouting. However, Scouting is structured to where a member can pretty much get his advancement at his own pace and work around other committments.

The biggest plus for us is that the Scoutmaster and the Committe Chairman (me) realize that boys have lives outside of Scouting and we support that stuff. We even suggested to the boys that they change their meeting date to Sunday afternoon. The troop overwhelmingly voted for it and now attendance is at 90%. Of course campouts and Saturday activities are still at about 50%, but most of the boys have a chunk of time at some point during the year where Scouts can be a priority.

My oldest did finish his Eagle even while playing varsity baseball, graduating from high school, and starting college.

My youngest has everything done including all the paperwork on his final project. As soon as baseball season is over, he'll actually execute the project.

Like a previous poster, my oldest was required to be in band in 6th grade. He actually stayed in band through 8th grade. As it turned out there was only one concert that interfered with a LL Baseball game over those years. I did make him go to the concert because it was a grade. If it hadn't been a grade, he would have probably chosen the baseball game.

I think it comes down to establishing a clear set of priorities for your situation and clear communication by the parents and kid to establish the order or precedence when there are conflicts. Most reasonable people will respect and work with that. If there's some minimum commitment level you know you can't meet, then don't do it.

Even so, that doesn't always keep people from having hurt feelings, or feel your actions are unfair. Sometimes you're going to be forced to make a decision and choose. My advice: if you see conflict coming, address it early and clearly, make sure it's communicated to multiple people ... in writing if necessary. If you think conflict is unavoidable, make your choice clear and early so there's no chance of anyone getting confused, forgetting, misunderstanding, or worst case running with their own agenda where you get squeezed in the end.

We had a really nasty event several years back, before HS ... my son, along with three other players, played together on a travel ball team. All four players also joined a local community Pony elite team that also played USSSA tournaments. I made it clear to the Pony coach at tryouts that the travel team was our first commitment if there were any event conflicts, and that the team had already qualified for a national tournament in the summer. He said no problem ... he could pull up players from other teams for a game here or there and was happy to have the four kids on the team. Turns out we never had to miss a single game.

Our travel team did very well, and qualified for the Superseries Nationals in Phoenix. I told the Pony coach in March that we were going to Phoenix in July. Coach said no problem. Then the Pony team qualified for the USSSA World Series ... the Pony coach starts lobbying my son to go to Texas with him instead of Phoenix with the travel team. This didn't last long as the President of the Pony organization said the team could not go to Texas ... they would have to do Pony All-Stars. We asked the coach specifically if our Phoenix trip in July would conflict with All-Stars. He told all four players it wasn't a problem ... play the first round of All-Stars, go to Phoenix between rounds, come back and re-join the Pony team as they enter the 2nd round. I don't know Pony All-Star rules, so I assume he's checked and knows what he's talking about ... if it was a problem we would simply drop off the roster so he could pick up another kid.

1st of June the Pony coach says there might be a problem. I ask "might be" or 'is'? He says he's not sure and checking on rules. I tell him that he needs to make it clear one way or the other ASAP because if it's a conflict we need to drop off so he can pickup other kids. He said he'd let everyone know if there were a rules issue. As a group we hear nothing more on the topic ... until two weeks before we leave for Phoenix in July. He calls a parent meeting and the four families get jumped on by all the other upset parents for abandoning their kids because they JUST FOUND OUT. Turns out there is a Pony All-Star rule ... once a player leaves to play on another team, he can't come back. The coach acts like he also just found out about the Phoenix trip to the other parents and Pony President. The coach is stuck, he lied to the other parents and to the Pony President ... he was hoping that the 'pressure' from the other local parents would force the four families to pull out and abandon the trip.

At that point we all say the Pony coach was informed MONTHS ago, yet chose his roster with that knowledge in hand ... and we won't pull out of an out-of-state trip with less than two weeks away and impact all the other families on our travel team. If he had raised this issue two MONTHS before, as a group we may have made a different decision ... one of the four families was the manager of the travel team. The coach had played a little game of cat and mouse ... and lost.

That night the Pony coach called me trying a hardball tactic ... said that if my son didn't stay and play for him, that he would ensure my son never played HS baseball for our local HS. I told him I wouldn't be blackmailed, this was all due to his screwup, and that I would talk to the AD about the HS program. Short phone call.

The AD is a wonderful stand-up guy and was very understanding ... just disappointed that it had come to this, and assured me that this had no bearing on a kid's ability to play HS ball. I told him it wasn't about baseball anymore ... it was about teaching my son that you follow through on your commitments. Unfortunately, the Pony coach thought he could leverage it, so someone was going to get hurt no matter what. The only thing left was living up to your word. We had been open, honest, and direct about our plans and commitments for several months.

To this day there are still some hurt feelings among some of the parents ... the only thing I would have done differently would be to simply turn down playing on All-Stars altogether from day one and avoid even the chance of a conflict developing.

If someone makes a commitment, he is obigated to be responsible and fulfill that commitment. If there are conflicts, a commitment shouldn't have been made to begin with (it's called planning ahead).