Today was the first captains' practice for high school and the first captains' practice my daughter has ever attended (first time playing school ball). I had a very clear idea of what captains' practice was supposed to look like. I assumed it would be run exclusively by the captains. Turns out it was run by one of the captains' dad who treated it like boot camp. Yelling, making them do sit-ups for errors, etc. This can't be normal, can it?
more high school problems - captains' practice
- Thread starter 29dad
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Unfortunately, it's all too common for parents of current players, booster club members and various other people being used to circumvent the rules against HS Coach/Team interaction outside of school ball season. Sometimes you get lucky and have someone that can actually help the girls and sometimes, well...
I've never heard of a captains practice. Is this an out-of-season thing?
There are states such as ours, here in Ohio, that do not allow any HS Coach-Player interaction outside of the specified dates set aside for that HS sports season except under certain extremely specialized circumstances such as 1 on 1 hitting for an hour a week. There are others as well. To circumvent this, The HS coaches get together with a Booster club member, players parent or someone else that supposedly has coaching experience and they run practices through out the Winter months (around her) or other pre-season months under the guise of conditioning, Captains practices or whatever other term they want to call them. Thus, since the HS coach is not taking part and it's outside the official school season, technically no rules are broken. Many of the HS coaches will have attendance lists, be seen outside the gym doors watching these supposed conditioning practices and use various other ways to keep track of who shows up and who doesn't.
That said, other schools will actually use the Captains of the team which were voted in at the end of last season to achieve the same goals.
It usually ends badly for those that want to play yet don't show up for these practices. Not saying always, just, IME, usually...at least around here.
That said, other schools will actually use the Captains of the team which were voted in at the end of last season to achieve the same goals.
It usually ends badly for those that want to play yet don't show up for these practices. Not saying always, just, IME, usually...at least around here.
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Oh, it was voluntary practice. Yes. My kids had those. But, no. There was no dad there yelling at them. Geez.
Wow. That is the first way to chase off girls from getting extra work in. Me and two other dads held a voluntary practice this morning for those kids that wanted to come. We invited both JV and Varsity girls to participate, but only 9 showed up. We worked on things that needed improvement based on what we saw at last night's games. Hitting the outside pitch and bunt coverage. For school ball, it needs to be fun and loose. For once, we can be the good guys. Let the high school coaches be the bad guys.
LetsPlayTwo
LetsPlayTwo
It seemed to work have worked reasonably well for my 3 Dds over the years-especially when they were freshmen just to get used to the program and make connections with the upper classmen. As far as I know there wasnt any rule bending. The 6-8 coaches for the 3 teams took turns simply being the 'adult' present. I'm sure a list was kept but lack of attendance wasn't held against anyone- particularly if a girl was in a winter sport. The only problem was a wound up too tight TB coach / father that somehow managed to insert himself into these practices a few years back. He got some kind of pass as a volunteer but every one pretty much assumed it was veiled lobbying for his dd.
I believe the official start date in Indiana this year is March 7th.... No coaches can organize or facilitate a practice until then. So instead the coach will typically name his dd and her best friend as captains and then they call a voluntary practice and are supposed to follow dads script, but it ends up being a big joke as 29 has found.
- Sep 29, 2014
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Always depends on the school and people involved. Does not really happen at our school but at another school in district a friend of mine said his son ran Captains practices for LAX. He described it exactly as it sounds the team captains run practice, I think there were three captains all seniors and all playing in college now, so they knew the coaches system and knew the game, it was just a way to get a head start especially here; all Spring sports have no contact until March 21st!