In CROSS COUNTRY how do you get kids to attend practice?

Is your performance evaluation tied to attendance metrics? If not, not sure I'd worry about it. Focus on the ones who want to be there and do the work.

One of the great things about running is that it is a sport where you directly get back what you put in. (Yes, there are plenty examples of gifted guys that never run but still hit 430 in their first race, BUT those are the outliers.)

If a kid wants to be good, they will come to practice and they will work hard in practice. If they are OK with a B Level performance but they also are involved in Scouts, Drama, Latin Club, and all that stuff, why should I stop them?

I coach who is there. I can't worry about who is not.

If you have only 15 people, or 12 people, or even 10 people do not fret about it. There are some very knowledgeable coaches who take a boy and girl to the state meet every year. Hey, some schools graduate 20 seniors or less! A friend of mine is like that, what is he supposed to do, beg for a budget to recruit from Kenya?

If I’m going to rebuild/remodel a house it’s going to get bad before it gets better. Set standards and stick to them. You might loose a few but the ones you want will stay and help bring in others like themselves. Stay the course and just keep working!

I won’t repeat what has already been said but we decided at the beginning of the season that we wanted a team of committed kids and that means showing up. I tell the kids that if they want to get better all they have to do is show up.

Make it something they want to do. I want practice to be the best part of their day. We have pasta parties, try to pick fun meets, we have a summer camp to help kick off summer miles and hold optional summer runs. We started the season with a breakfast run that was very popular. The kids ran and we had pancakes for them when they got back. Keep them coming back by coaching every kid. We had a kid last year in track who was new to running and it was tough for him. We were patient and he is back for cross country with summer miles and brought a friend who will probably run on our varsity team.

I'm old. I don't even understand the question. In my day, if you committed to something, you showed up. On time. Every time.

Not showing up for something you committed to? I don't get that. I'm old.

"You must have no more than 2 unexcused absences to compete"

I agree with this and this is an interesting discussion.
Enthusiasm in these young guys also depends on their personal situation.

I recruited from the middle schools, attended nearly every middle school meet and it seems the cross country team ended up with the poorer kids.

The best teams at the state ( I got the guys there after 3 years) had these dads who were runners, young, professionals, it seems, wearing Frank Shorter jackets and wearing wire rimmed glasses. They were professionals of some kind who instilled that discipline in their young…

I actually had two brothers, who worked at Hardy’s.. they couldn’t show up for Saturday practices because they were the bread winners of the family. No mom. They actually got their dad on at Hardy’s

Id get in my car and several

times go to their apartment and try to get them while practice was going on… they were too tired. They had worked until closing. The priority was and should have been work. A lot of things go into this I guess.

Showing up for practice. Enthusiasm.
Luck, where you live, what the parents do.

Are any of your runners charismatic alphas (regardless of their running skills?)

Send them amongst the flock to generate enthusiasm.

Take attendance. Don't allow it to be a drop in sport. Make them communicate before practice if they are going to miss. Put on a good program. Train hard but have a fun vibe. If they miss too many practices without a viable excuse that they have communicated then remove them from the team.

You've gotta weed out kids whose parents are just making them join a team and then they only show up a day or two a week. The parents should know they're not actually attending practice and that that isn't ok and they need to be in or out.

Hard to motivate kids when they see 1/3 of the team showing up and jogging a mile 2 days a week because their parents are making them technically join a team.

I found a way to get rid of those kids a few years ago. One of my assistant coaches is a guidance counselor. At our parent meeting during the first week of school, he gives a little speech stating that top tier universities don’t consider JV sports in their admissions process. He tells them that GPA, testing, essays, and impressive volunteer and academic based extracurriculars are what gets you admitted. Four years of JV cross country and track doesn’t matter. The next day, I get e-mails from 10-15 kids informing me that they are quitting the team. Those are the kids that don’t want to be there and are being forced by their parents.

I don’t feel bad about this because they were not motivated by sport or a sense of self-improvement. I don’t care if a kid runs state record times or can barely handle a 10:00 mile, if they want to be there for the sake of running, then I will happily coach them. If they just want to use my program to tart up their college applications or to fulfill their parent’s vicarious wishes, then I really don’t want them because it takes attention away from kids that truly want coaching.

I've seen it from both sides. I ran for large and storied programs where almost every runner was bought in and the top runners treated it as if it were life or death.

I also coached a brand new program at a small private school. It was incredibly difficult at the time getting everyone's buy in. Even my assistants (parent volunteers) weren't sure we could have a season due to poor turnout and morale. But at the end of the season we had an underclassman state medalist despite no one running over the summer.

I have a lot of thoughts on that year. One of the most significant is you have to completely believe in the team and the kids even if you feel like you're delusional. I found that if you're approachable and charismatic that the kids will listen...eventually. You also have to be patient and let them make friends with each other. I guess there's no guarantee that will happen, but you have to create an environment where that's possible by being the best coach you can be and relying on positive reinforcement.

Maybe I'm showing my age here but my policy would be that if you have an unexcused absence in a particular week you don't race in that week's meet. If you have three unexcused absences you're done for the season but you're welcome to come back next year.

The way I see the business of getting kids to want to come to practice is that you explain at the start of the season that they're in a competitive sport, that it's your job to make them and the team into the best runners you can. If they're serious about the sport you shouldn't need to make them want to come to practice. They should want to come to practice because they understand that's what will get them to be as good as they can be.

Of course you have kids who really don't care about the competitive part of the sport very much. They're there because they have friends in the team, to add an extracurricular activity for their college applications, and so on. That's fine as long as they understand that they need to show up.

I don't take away racing as a punishment. The couple kids I have trouble with every year would probably prefer not to race.

We don't have a strict attendance policy. We're probably unique as a coaching staff in that every one of the coaches on our staff grew up as a multi-sport athlete. We see the value in kids trying different activities and making the decision on their own on what to prioritize.

That's not to say that we don't encourage great attendance. We celebrate the underclassmen that choose to come to an optional run for the first time. We celebrate upperclassmen that run carpools for new runners. We celebrate mileage landmarks and new long runs. We preach good communication and planning in advance when you have a conflict and celebrate those athletes that get in a solo run when they have to miss a practice.

Most importantly, we create an atmosphere where kids have fun at practice and we get good results, so kids want to make the commitment. If I look back at our top 7 in school history, only 2 started high school with cross country as their primary sport.
If we had incredibly strict attendance, we'd end up losing those kids before they even gave the sport a shot. Watching them fall in love with the sport and make the jump to serious runners and state champions is one of the best parts of coaching.

I don't mean to second guess you but if they would prefer not to race why are they there? What's the point of them being at practice if they don't want to race? Across sports "if you don't practice you don't play" is fairly common.

HRE, I did have the rule that if they missed practice they would miss a meet and I stuck to it even if it meant we would finish last in a meet we had a chance to win! However, looking back it is easy to see that there were exceptions to this rule and I like the suggestion that the consideration of the individual is a good idea. In the 2020s I do not know how they tolerate all the exceptions they do, that would have driven me to running over a cliff in my younger years! I am thinking that I would have to do a ton of explaining before the first practice and that the first year I might have to look the other way a few times and then explain to them later that it was a no-no to miss the practice the way that their family did. Nowadays it is often the parents, not the kids as much. It was good to hear from you!

I worked at several different schools during my career and in some cases the discipline among the staff administrators was extremely lacking! But even so you must think and talk positive and ultimately remind yourself that we are called to be servants. Admittedly I did not always do that!