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

Jed Clampett wrote:

I was a teacher/coach for 30 years. Ten of those years were in varsity Athletics; the other 20 were mostly in other sports, especially basketball.

Here is an idea I would love to try:
When I coached, I always had the kids vote for the captains, and I always had one vote just like the kids. But I had very few, if any, meetings!
If I could do it again, I would have the kids vote for captains in every grade. The total number of captains would depend on team size. If there were only 15 on the team, I would not have more than four captains. As often as possible, I would want to meet with the captains and plan future practices. The team would be instructed to take all of their complaints and suggestions to the captains so they could give them to me during the meetings.

The kids would be responsible for recruiting kids to go out for the team. Not that I would turn people away, but I would not be overly aggressive about recruiting people like I was before. You want people who are eager to come out for the team. One of our most successful XC coaches said that he took attendance during the meets, and he was successful in winning and having more athletes out for his team than probably any other team in our state!
I like the idea of treating each team member as an individual. I would talk to the parents and kids about that at the first meeting of the year. I would encourage them to define a good excuse for missing a practice and also give my examples. You tell the group what a reasonable excuse is and what is not, and you keep defining that for people each year. You cannot force people to "behave."
My best example for them is that the best year we had with my best team was when we had the best attendance. Hardly anyone missed a practice all year! I would shoot for that as a goal.

I would love to receive feedback, even if it is nasty. That is the reason why I am writing on LRC!

Jed Clampett wrote:

Jed Clampett wrote:

I was a teacher/coach for 30 years. Ten of those years were in varsity Athletics; the other 20 were mostly in other sports, especially basketball.

Here is an idea I would love to try:
When I coached, I always had the kids vote for the captains, and I always had one vote just like the kids. But I had very few, if any, meetings!
If I could do it again, I would have the kids vote for captains in every grade. The total number of captains would depend on team size. If there were only 15 on the team, I would not have more than four captains. As often as possible, I would want to meet with the captains and plan future practices. The team would be instructed to take all of their complaints and suggestions to the captains so they could give them to me during the meetings.

The kids would be responsible for recruiting kids to go out for the team. Not that I would turn people away, but I would not be overly aggressive about recruiting people like I was before. You want people who are eager to come out for the team. One of our most successful XC coaches said that he took attendance during the meets, and he was successful in winning and having more athletes out for his team than probably any other team in our state!
I like the idea of treating each team member as an individual. I would talk to the parents and kids about that at the first meeting of the year. I would encourage them to define a good excuse for missing a practice and also give my examples. You tell the group what a reasonable excuse is and what is not, and you keep defining that for people each year. You cannot force people to "behave."
My best example for them is that the best year we had with my best team was when we had the best attendance. Hardly anyone missed a practice all year! I would shoot for that as a goal.

I would love to receive feedback, even if it is nasty. That is the reason why I am writing on LRC!

My best team might not have been the most talented and I made some mistakes that year which may have cost us to lose our best runner. What we had was senior leadership, everyone doing the same workout, and almost perfect attendance! That is how we won. How would you improve on the above? Was there anything you liked? I am looking back at a long teaching and coaching career, hopefully there is someone who has some pointers! If not I guess we are done and that is okay, good luck with your season!

4 Minute Mi-liar wrote:

Focus on quality not quantity wrote:

That’s why I could never be a high school coach. Dealing with kids who are only there for resume filler and don’t really like or care about running would drive me crazy. You high school coaches are saints for putting up with that stuff.

It is interesting though. Some of those "disinterested" kids can become "interested kids"... and some of them can end up being really good.

And even the "resume fillers" can get caught up in the value of being on a team if they are given any attention at all.

We had a kid on our team that was basically out there to lose weight. Coach nicknamed him " the locomotive" and he became a highly valued member of the team even though he never got to race. We cheered "the locomotive" through his workouts and "the loc" did the same for us in races.