We sick the goons out to get those who miss practice. If they miss a second time, we send the butt pirates after them. They never miss three times.
Come to think of it.... sucks in- this is your second time missing isnt it? You missed on purpose, didn't you?
No one has mention that the coach is hired to do a job....
Its in his best interest to get all his athletes to practice every practice....
If his/her runners don't practice every day they don't run to their potential and eventually he will not be hired back...
This is college he is the coach...if you want to run on his team you have to do what he says unless he is breaking some rule...
If you are a student athlete and can't handle going to practice every day then you should not be on the team plan and simple....
The excuse that an athlete might have a class at the same time as practice is bull....I went to mid sized school with about 12,000 people never once had a problem scheduling classes around practice...there are probably some exceptions to this however the exceptions are very very rare not a common thing....
If your an athlete and you don't like the rules....QUIT
I think that it should depend upon why you miss the practice. I feel and I tell the team that the primary purpose for going to college is to get an education. Part of this education is to become responsible for your actions and time management. When something comes up you should do everything in your power to avoid conflicts with classes and practice/meets. If a prof wants to meet with you tell him the times you are available (not when you have other commitments- classes, practice & meets). I agree that it does not matter if you are DI, DII, DIII, NJCAA, NAIA- you made a commitment to be part of a team. On my team if you are late or miss practice for a %$#@ reason (over slept, time slipped by while you were at the mall, etc)you will be in charge of taking care of the team tent for the next meet (loading/unloading it on the bus, setting it up/taking it down,etc).
College coach wrote:
Honors Student wrote:Isn't school important?
What if you have class during practice time?
Not only is school important, that is obviously why you are at college in the first place, or at least it should be and therefore it should be more important than sports. However, that doesn't mean you can just skip practice whenever you don't feel like showing up. Of course if someone has a class during practice time they are not expected to show up. Or if they have to meet with a professor and the only time they can meet is during practice time. But you will find that many college kids will try to take advantage of this if you let them. Sometimes a class is only offered during practice time and if it is a class an athlete has to take that sememster, there is not much you can do. But some of the less dedicated athletes will take a class during practice time that they don't have to take, just to get out of going to practice. It is all about the coach figuring out why practice is being missed and if it is a legitimate academic reason, you work around it. If it isn't, they should be disciplined or removed from the team. It is as simple as that.
If ur a Division II athlete or even a college athlete that is on scholarship I wouldn't think you would try to weasle ur way out of getting out of practice.
We all know school comes first. A coach really shouldn't have to set guidelines for skipping practice at the collgaite level. I would think a college athlete is in a college program because they want to improve and be a serious competitor.
I am probably wrong.
It isn't high school and college athletics are voluntary and if a person isn't going to take it serious don't waste the time.
I am surprised that if you are on a college team you would want to try and skip proactice.
This is sad.
I always tried to arrange my course load to not have class during practice. This took some creativity. There was one season where I had a class during practice but I was always in contact with my coach on wat I need to do and wat needed to be done. I always went down to the fieldhouse too just to see wat was going on because there would usually be like 5-10 minutes of practice left when i got out of class.
Listen, this thread should never have even been started.
Are you seriously complaining about missing practice?
I went to a major D1 program. We did not miss practice.
It simply did not happen.
I don't know about D2 programs, but in my program, I wouldn't have expected to be welcome back had I missed a practice.
I would assume that if your coach had to make a rule about missing practice, you are a JV program.
Hold On Cowboy wrote:
Listen, this thread should never have even been started.
Are you seriously complaining about missing practice?
I went to a major D1 program. We did not miss practice.
It simply did not happen.
I don't know about D2 programs, but in my program, I wouldn't have expected to be welcome back had I missed a practice.
I would assume that if your coach had to make a rule about missing practice, you are a JV program.
How true
And you're probably one of the people that bitch about Cross Country not getting the same respect as the football team.
Ask one of the football players what happens to him if he misses practice.
I agree that at the major D1 program I ran for it wasn't common for people to miss practice. If they did, it was because they had a class conflict and they worked something else out with coach, or they were sick. If you want to be good why would you want to miss practice anyway?
If someone would have started pulling stuff like that it would have been immediately obvious. It wasn't like it was cool to miss practice and do as little as you could to stay on the team, we were they to run fast. If I were coaching and kids were actually skipping practice the law would be laid down pretty quick and the team dynamic would change even if it meant losing a lot of the team.
"swofford11," I went to a school a third the size of yours and lacking critical mass in many areas, there were many potential obstructions to practice. Among these were mid-semester midterms for many large, multi-section courses that were given simultaneously to all sections at 4:00. By senior year most of my courses had only one section, take it or miss it.
Most of the potential pitfalls were well known by the coach, who paid attention to which athletes were in which courses that gave "4 o'clocks" -- he once held a team van to a meet for me until I ran out from the exam room with my spikes -- and which labs were prone to overrun the 3 hrs. He'd also make damn sure the kid checked in with him when it happened. Most would do their 800s or whatever alone, after everyone else. He'd make a joke about the nuisance of college courses getting in the way of important college sports.
"Vince Lomabrdi," you're telling only half the story...how do football coaches react when they learn a player cuts class? (excluding willful ignoreance).
It is a disgrace to put down the D2 athletes and programs....great athletes in America rise up out of humble beginnings and programs...in basketball Larry Bird came out of Indianna State. Frank Shorter came out of Yale, while a D1 school they are not a track or distance powerhouse. Steve Scott came out of U.C Irvine. These men are a credit to their schools, coaches and programs.....Did you know that Lou Gehrig played for Colombia? Thousand of great American athletes came out of small, not feared programs.
Great Point????? Every school you mentioned is Division I!
Nice try.
King Snapper wrote:
Balanced social life? You just lost all credibility.
What you prefer kids pretend like they aren't in college? Get real.
The key is both commitment from the athletes and respect of that commitment from the coach. Most kids that continue to pursue running at the collegiate level WANT TO BE THERE. If you're blowing off practice to be lazy then you deserved to be cut from the team. If your missing practice because you have class or test then there should be an understanding that you'll make up the workout during a time when you are free.
Wow, I didn't expect to get so many responses. To defend myself/ my team a bit, I'll be a senior and I think the only time I've missed practice was for mono, and I wasn't aware that our team had a problem with people skipping practices (sometimes being a little bit late, yes, but not skipping practices). I was just curious as to whether or not other team have policies on missed practices in place already or if it they are on a case by case basis as they should rarely occur in a serious program. I didn't think that DII runners would be ripped apart for being less talented and *apparently* less committed. Admittedly, we've had a couple of athletes (you get all types) that have been known to not be at practices, however, I was under the impression that our coaches were dealing with it.
I asked because I'm a senior, I'll be going on interviews (oh god, I hope), preferably during the week rather than missing a meet on a weekend, and probably miss a couple of practices. So it will come up, and I just wanted to know if most serious, hard core, runners like yourselves had coaches who made rules or whether you have programs like I'd prefer where you are there to be serious runners and the coaches work off the assumption that that's the case and so a formal policy never had to be put in place.
Thanks for all the responses though!
Exams are one thing....they are once maybe twice a thing during a semester...
There is no reason that you have to schedule a class right at the time of practice...
I did my undergrad in a D1 school and never had a problem with scheduling classes.
I did my graduate classes in a D2 school much smaller with fewer class choices than my D1 school and still never had a problem....
Most schools if you are part of the athletic program work with you and professers will alow you to take exams before are after your practice.
But this all just from my experiance just like its from your experiance to. So who's to say another school isn't differant.
My OPINION is that if you want to be apart of the program you work your schedule around practices not the other way around.
Either way this is a stupid argument haha but its letsrun after all
UC Irvine was Division 2 at that time. The other schools, though all D1, are either smaller programs, or ones without athletic scholarships.
Actually, the NCAA mandates that class cannot be missed for practice. If one has a class scheduled during practice time, cutting the class to go to practice is an NCAA violation.
That said: other posters' comments are pretty much accurate. I worked for a head coach who never had a problem if one of your required/in-major courses met during practice hours--you'd just work out at another time.
But if you scheduled your "gut" course during practice time, he'd have a meeting with you immediately i.e. Week I of classes, so there'd be time for you to sign up for another course or section.
By the way, I too have often asked track/x-c athletes to compare themselves and their team to football/basketball. It's often a good mental exercise for the athlete.
[One of my captains was so committed that his parents wouldn't schedule his sister's wedding until they were sure it didn't conflict with a meet. I later asked the b-ball coach what he would do if one of his guys wanted to miss an NCAA tournament game to go to a family wedding. The coach just slowly shook his head...it was inconceivable. Why should our sports' attitude differ?]