High School Athletes, Coaches About To Crank It Back Up Again
Posted
Roger Grossman-
I don’t care what the calendar or the weatherman say: summer is over in Indiana. We are now in the final few days before fall sports teams begin their official practices, and in a month all teams in all sports will have played their first games. Girls’ golf teams get one official day of practice, which is Friday, before their season can begin with matches and tournaments on Saturday. Everyone else (all of the other fall sports teams) can officially meet and start gearing up for the season next Monday. The thinking behind the girls getting one official day of practice before they can play matches is that they have all summer to play golf on their own. It seems kinda clunky but it’s been that way for as long as I can remember, and so it is what it is. The problem is, will kids notice the difference between their summers and next week? When the IHSAA opened the door for coaches and teams to be together more often during the summertime, coaches did what coaches do—they start filling up kids’ summers with open gyms, team camps and team-building trips. Who can blame them for that? It’s their job to get their teams ready for the next season and any coach worth anything is going to do everything they can to get them there. Plus, they KNOW that the other teams in their conference and on their schedules are doing it so they have to do it too to compete. They really don’t have a choice. So then the kids on those teams and their families are put in a tough place. They have worked and gone to school all fall, winter and spring. They need a break. They need to go put a line in the water in Minnesota, or go lay on the beach in Gulf Shores, or go visit Mickey Mouse and his crew. But can they find a week when there is nothing going on? They can, but it’s not easy. There currently is one week that is the common oasis for Indiana coaches and players alike. It happens each year during the week that includes Independence Day, and it’s called “moratorium week.” No practices. No camps. No contact. Nothing. You know what…it’s not enough. It’s time for the IHSAA to take another look at this policy. Their intentions were good when they put the schedule in place. They were trying to give our kids the best chance to be their best when the seasons start, which then raises the level of play for everyone and makes Indiana sports better. How can that be bad? Well, what’s happened is kids and families have told the IHSAA and their coaches that there IS a limit they will go to play multiple sports for their high schools, and they have shown them where that limit is. Fewer kids are playing more than one sport, and hardly anyone plays in a sport in every season anymore. And I don’t blame them either. We, as a sports-loving community, have to take a look at the cold, hard facts and make an adjustment to give kids and their families a little piece of their summer back. We are trending toward making kids like members of the adult workforce anyway. More and more schools are going to the schedule that stretches out the school year with longer breaks in the fall, Christmas and spring and a shorter summer vacation. I hate that schedule! Now we are doing it with sports teams, and kids and their families are facing that ‘fork-in-the-road’ decision that no one really wants to make—“Does Johnny have to pick ONE sport and focus on it?” Thirty years ago we wouldn’t have even considered not playing in any sport we wanted. If you wanted to play football, basketball and baseball—you did it and didn’t think twice about it. You want to play volleyball, basketball and softball—every coach would be glad to have you (well almost every coach). Even 10-15 years ago kids played two and three sports and didn’t blink. But this is 2015, and it’s time for the IHSAA to help kids be kids during the summer while still giving them time with their teams and coaches to put a quality product on the field, court or soccer pitch when their season starts. I love covering high school sports, but what I love more is being around people who love what they do. Not as many kids feel that way anymore, because they never really have a summer.
