High School XC Coaches and Attendance

You could try allowing 3 absences, for WHATEVER reason.

Have forms on your door for athletes to schedule make-up miles before school.

Missed practice is missed practice, for whatever the reason. That time cannot truly be made up (from a team perspective).

Doctors? That's one.

Date? That's two.

Sickness? That's three.

Adios, let me find you a program that is less strict so that you can be successful, Timmy.

HSXC wrote:

What are your policies on attendance and how are they enforced?

1. An absence is excused for the Big Four only: School, Family, Faith, and Health. Our sport does not belong at a higher priority than any of those. I will push back, however: Scheduling a group project during practice is technically a "School" excuse, but should not have been scheduled during practice. "Family" means "My grandmother died and we're going to China for her funeral," not "It's my brother's birthday dinner." "Health" includes "I have pneumonia and can't come to school" but not "I have a doctor's appointment." "Faith" well, being non-religious myself I'm not about to put myself between someone and their God.

2. Absences must be excused ahead of time either in person yourself or through XCStats. XCStats is encouraged, because I have 84 kids on my team and really hate facing a parade of students telling me why they can't come to practice.

3. Any other absence is unexcused.

4. We have 55 seats on the bus and 84 kids. Seats are allocated based on attendance, performance in practice, and performance in meets.

5. I remind the team often that those who come to practice get better, and back it up with proof (my favorite part).

I'd love to take a hard line, and admire the coaches that do, but It depends on the culture of the school and community. Teens these days are pushed much more strongly towards "over-commitment" than I was in high school, and the school I coach at buys right in. For example, the school sanctions "Senior Cut Day," and marks those kids present. When that's the official line, there's little I as a coach can do. If I draw my line in the sand, I'm going up against not only teenage time-mismanagement, but the administration and community as a whole. If I started making cuts, I'd have no one left. After three weeks of taking attendance, I have ten kids with zero absences. Out of 84.

I'd love to hear some ideas to better teach/foster/improve commitment though, hopefully some contributions come forward.

Coach Tim wrote:

HSXC wrote:

What are your policies on attendance and how are they enforced?

I have 84 kids on my team .

Just think how hard it is for coaches at small schools that have 8 kids on the team.

Tim, how can your school possibly sanction "Senior Cut Day" and mark those kids present? What type of school do you work at? Any public school in CA would be in massive trouble if they did. You're telling me your school is openly stealing money from the government? That's pretty risky!

Do you take attendance on XCStats too? I've started coaching our off-season track program and these kids are the bad news bears compared to my XC team. The previous coach left me with a lot of work to do in regards to the culture of the track team. My goal is not to cut a bunch of the kids, but it clearly needs to happen and I'm not entirely certain how to go about doing that without a bunch of parents freaking out or having my AD upset with me due to him being forced to deal with crazy parents.

I'll second most of this, I would love to hear more ideas.We have an 80% attendance requirement to earn a varsity letter, maybe it helps some I don't know. I'm not sure kids these days care about lettering as much as we probably did, I don't see many kids wearing letter jackets around town.The other thing we do is have the kids fill out and sign a form at the beginning of the season with their commitment level and goals on it. We explain to the kids that the coaches are committed to helping the athletes achieve their goals and that the coaches commitment level will mirror the athletes'. This way the majority of the coaches' time is spent focused on the most committed kids, who are typically the top performers as well. I once heard another track coach call their bottom commitment level "suntan level", meaning those kids' main goal is to get a suntan during track season and that the coaches will then be committed to helping those athletes achieve their suntan goal.I generally put up with a lot when it comes to attendance: kids missing practice, kids constantly showing up late, kids needing to leave early, it seems like it's always something. Frankly the parents are as much to blame as the kids, which is one of the reasons I can't bring myself to come down on the kids more in this area. The one reassuring aspect (for me) is most of the time the more dedicated kids are the most successful, they're the ones earning the varsity spots, they're the ones qualifying for state. That to me is a far better life lesson than anything I could teach through enforcing some attendance policy, it's just too bad some kids learn it way too late in their high school careers.The last thing I'll add, in our district at least, kids pay to play sports. I've had kids pay their $200 for the season, show up for one or two practices and then never come back. The more kids we have on our roster at the beginning of the season, the more assistant coaches the AD can justify letting me hire. This is great especially for track when it's nice to have specialty coaches around for field events, hurdles etc. So part of me is fine with having lots of kids on the roster, even if a good chunk of them aren't very committed.

CO Coach wrote:

I'll second most of this, I would love to hear more ideas.

We have an 80% attendance requirement to earn a varsity letter, maybe it helps some I don't know. I'm not sure kids these days care about lettering as much as we probably did, I don't see many kids wearing letter jackets around town.

The point of lettering isn't to wear a jacket. The point of lettering is to have an award you can list on your college apps. It shows that you were an active participant rather than just a kid who signed up for things to build his/her resume and then showed up just often enough to avoid being booted. In an era where even middle-of-the-road colleges are becoming competitive, kids definitely care about such things.

Different expectations for different levels of commitment (and ability), that's how we handle it. We have a very big team so we can afford to take this approach. We have a varsity squad (top 16 runners give or take) and a JV squad. Varsity runners are expected to be at *every* practice, including morning practices, barring extreme cases (family emergency, doctor's order, home sick from school, etc.). Varsity cross country is expected to be a top priority for these runners. We ask parents to schedule Dr's appointments and other errands NOT during practice time. If you are hurt, you still show up (and cross train or do rehab instead of run of course). We don't have a set policy of number of practices to miss for varsity guys because it's basically never a problem. If they miss one practice without communicating with a coach about it beforehand, they get the 3rd degree from the coaches. If it continued to be a problem, we'd hold the kid out from a race, or in a severe case demote to JV team until attendance improves. Or boot him. We have never had to do any of this.

For the JV kids it is more lax, since we are a high achieving school and kids have a lot of commitments as others have echoed. Band, church, mom's birthday dinner, family trip to the football game, whatever. You can't realistically expect the same commitment level from a 20:00 freshman as a 16:00 senior. We still have incentives to show up - you don't get to run at the conference meet (last major meet for JV kids) if your attendance is poor.

This is how we balance a high level team with high expectations and also allow over-committed kids to be on the team for social, fitness, or resume-building purposes. It would be really hard to drive a hard bargain with attendance if our team was a lot smaller (currently ~100) and if we weren't very good. If I had to boot a 17:30 guy because he wanted to do travel soccer 3x per week instead of show up for practice, it's not a big deal. For a smaller school where he might be one of your best runners, I feel your pain.

The varsity team does different workouts and often goes to different meets, so it's definitely a coveted place to be.

For what it's worth, my own high school coach used to take attendance every day (with 100+ kids on the team!) and you were booted if you missed 3+ practices without an excuse. Boom, gone. Very old-school. As above posters echoed, then you have to deal with the endless litany of excuses from kids on a near-daily basis. My hat goes off to him for dealing with it. This is a huge pain in the butt, but it WORKS: set a high bar for kids and they will by and large rise to that level. This was also at a rich, suburban high-achieving school, by the way.

Yes, you'll lose some people. But a lot of kids are skipping practice BECAUSE they know there's no punishment. The start of the season is a good time to change attendance policies. If you're ever in doubt, ask the football coach what he does. If Jimmy 2nd-string JV runningback misses 3 practices a week, what does he do?

Look at it this way: you have three groups of kids. 1) kids who will be there every day no matter what. This is a small group. 2) kids who will not run XC if they have to be there every day. This is also a small group. In the middle you have 3) kids who are looking to you and to their peers for guidelines on what is acceptable from an attendance standpoint.

If you don't want to go all the way to cutting, you can always limit meet participation for kids who miss practice.

Our district "letters" every senior, so we have kids who sign up for XC, show up once a week, and collect their letter at the end of the year. Makes me sick. I could boot them, but as others pointed out what's the harm in throwing them on the JV roster? Extra money for the district and no bother to me I guess. I don't like it, though.

p.s. seconding the motion on how crazy it is that your district sanctions senior skip day. Yikes.

We allow 3 missed practices (if we are notified in advance). After practice number 3 is missed, you must meet individually with the coaches to remain on the team. Depending on why they missed the practices, we set an individual expectation for the remainder of the season. If they just have been sick or overwhelmed with academics, the meeting is an opportunity to talk about healthy habits and set goals to reduce absences. If they have been slacking, the meeting is an official notice that any additional absences will result in them being off the team. Our school supports us if the issues are well documented, which is why we always hold a meeting and give an "official warning" before kicking someone off.

Let me clarify: My source for the sanctioning of Senior Cut Day was not the Principal or an actual teacher, so it's entirely possible I was misinformed. This was also several years ago, and it's possible it could have changed. It's more likely they're marked absent but the matter is dropped there, whereas in the case of a typical unexcused absence there is (presumably) some follow-up. I imagine this is the case partly because you it's a waste of time to have your admin staff calling the homes of literally every senior, and partly because the parents are willing to let this one instance slide. Fortunately, as our track program has improved, it's become less of a problem. Last year the seniors at practice that day were proud to stand apart from the crowd, and their teammates appreciated their continuing to contribute.

I've used XCStats for track for several seasons now, but this is my first time coaching XC and first time using it for attendance. I like it. I hear you on the notion of Track kids being different than XC kids. If I didn't have the assistants that I do for track, I'd never be able to get through to them. For your struggle, try and get an assistant with a different communication style. Maybe reach out to the football staff? I know that I can connect with the distance runners reasonably well, but the sprinters and throwers not so much.

I have a three unexcused absence rule for our team. They have to inform me of the reason for the absence prior to the practice so I can either ok it or tell them it will count as an unexcused absence.

Good excuses in my opinion are sickness and academic related. I am a little more lenient of the freshman than any other group. If they are missing a lot of practices for legit reasons I will usually have a conversation with them about the idea of leaving the team for their own good.

I do not allow them tl play another sport. We have a team loyalty policy. It's poisonous to the team for anyone to have different expectations placed on them. I don't care how fats they are. Team culture ensures that your team is fast when these kids graduate.

I have 33 girls on the team. Typically I will have 30 at each practice so this policy seems to work well.