Attendance Expectations: Part of a Winning Plan

1. Attendance Expectations: Part of a Winning Plan Why you want them and how to do them By Alan Versaw and Kevin clark

2. It’s All About Communication Jon Gordon: Recommend to all my coaches. - When teams break down, it’s usually because of poor communication - Where there is a lack of communication, negativity fills it.

3. Communication Builds Trust • Do you have a parent meeting? • If your athletes know your expectations or decision making process, parents usually don’t have questions. • Doc Rivers: Individually communicates with all athletes

4. Team Handbook • Is it posted online where parents can access it? • Does your AD have a copy of it? • Is your lettering policy spelled out? • Excused vs Unexcused Practices: penalties listed? • Athletic Training Rules: school wide or district wide policy • Social Media Policy: do you have one?

5. Enforcing Team Rules • Are you willing to apply the same rules to your top athlete vs a JV athlete? • If not, don’t make it a rule. Only have rules that you are willing to enforce on all athletes. • Set yourself and coaching staff up to be consistent. • If questions, feel free to contact me at (970) 613-5220 or kevin.clark@thompsonschools.org

6. Why Take Clinic Time to Discuss Attendance Expectations? What better time to talk about this than at a clinic? Irregular attendance negatively impacts training. Attendance problems get worse, not better, with inattention/indifference. Absences give birth to more absences (and everyone’s reason is better than the last person’s reason) … Irregular attendance negatively impacts morale of both team members and coaching staff. Irregular attendance destroys team culture; and team culture wins state titles.

7. The backstory on this presentation: Fall of 2016. TCA cross country is struggling (morale, commitment, performance) … Kevin Clark refers me to Kent Rieder’s attendance policy (http://mohirunning.com/team-policies/) I express my frustration to Emily Hanenburg in the spring. She asks me why I allow things I didn’t allow when she was running for TCA. I have an extended set of meetings with my AD. If I had been any less frustrated by the situation of our team, he would have talked me out of it.

8. TCA Implementation: Fall, 2017 Varsity status: Max of five unexcused absences in season. No more than one absence in five practices leading up to a meet. Policy spelled out (and distributed in hard copy) at spring interest meeting. Spelled out again and attached to summer email. Spelled out one more time at beginning of season. All at the strong suggestion of my AD. I got parent pushback. Two in particular… Our best season in years, in team morale, in state meet performance, and eventually in parent morale, in the fall of 2017. Kids loved the program again. The head coach loved his job again.

9. Year Two: Fall, 2018 Extra week of practice in schedule. Kept absence limit at 5. Two sets of freshman parents indicate at spring interest meeting they already have international travel plans booked for (all of) fall break. Later, one of those parents asks for a Saturday practice in late August to be made optional. The dust settled on that tempest. We had an outstanding season of team morale, and both aforementioned sets of parents have been won over (in a big way, actually).

10. Is This about Track or Cross Country? Well, both, but the implementation is more difficult in track. Track demands more flexibility than cross country, but track still needs standards. This is my plan, not Coach Daggett’s. Not to say he doesn’t have expectations with sprinters, but he’s had to work his expectations differently. Distance expectations are not the same as sprint expectations, or hurdle expectation, or triple jump expectations …

11. Whom Does the Policy Address? Not the Tanner and Mason Normans of this world. Kids who need standards to make highly regular practice attendance a priority. Kids who are discouraged by poor morale and lack of effort around them. Of the seven girls on our state cross country team this fall, three fall into the “kids who need standards” category. One was among those who had a parent push back at the initial implementation. At least three of the seven fall into the “kids who are discouraged” category. In short, what you saw at state this fall simply does not happen without this policy. (Greg Weich comment at state.)

12. Nuts and Bolts Unexcused: Routine medical appointments, discretionary travel, recreation, jobs, three requests to leave practice > 15 minutes early = unexcused absence Excused: Seeing medical practitioner over injury, family emergency, ACT or SAT test (limit one), college visit for senior (limit one, two if for official visits), illness, marching band conflict (limit two). All absences count against limit of not > 1 to run varsity that week (exceptions only considered for state week and then not guaranteed) All absences must be made up, if appropriate.

13. More Nuts and Bolts Varsity team members do not participate in powder puff or peach fuzz. Three or four run-on-own days in fall practice schedule. PSAT administration day in fall break is a “no attendance taken” practice day. Athletes not required to attend meets they’re not running in. I schedule as many Saturday meets as I can for a reason. Not > 2 absences/non-participation days to run in meet at sub-varsity level.

14. Caveats If you allow 5 absences, families will take (at least some of) them. How do you handle that? I don’t try to manage stuff outside of TCA. Fool’s errand. You will occasionally have to be creative if you want the system to work. It needs to be clear to all that your expectations of yourself are at least as high as your expectations of the kids.