When student-athletes go on a family vacation during their playing season, should you penalize them? More and more athletic programs are revising their policies in this area.
By David Paling
David Paling is the Director of Athletics, Health, and Physical Education for the Middleboro (Mass.) Public Schools. He is a frequent contributor to Athletic Management.
Last May, when Middleboro (Mass.) High School Head Softball Coach Tanya Sullivan learned that one of her starting players would be leaving the team for a two-week vacation at the mid-point of the season, she was thrown for a loop. The starting third-baseman wouldn’t be back until the final game of the regular season.
To make matters more complicated, the player had been elected as a team captain and was a senior. In past seasons, she had established herself as a reliable, dedicated, and talented player. She had provided advance notice of the trip and described it as a once-in-a-lifetime family opportunity.
Clearly, her absence would negatively affect the team. The squad was small and she was by far the best at her position. And when she returned, any games she missed due to a suspension would continue to hurt the team as it finished the regular season and began the playoffs.
A 27-year veteran coach, Sullivan was divided between upholding standards or compromising them in hopes of winning. “Should I suspend the player for the same number of games she will miss?” Sullivan asked me. “Should I allow her back to the team only after she eventually works her way back to a starting role at practice?
“Or should I dismiss her from the team altogether?” she continued. “What about her captaincy? I’d like to teach a life lesson about commitment, while at the same time recognizing the importance of family and doing the best thing possible for the team.”
In the past, athletic directors and coaches met little resistance when enforcing attendance requirements with athletes. The rules were clear and athletes and parents followed them. But there has been a gradual paradigm shift. Now, family vacations, as well as student council and class trips, have become more prevalent. And parents are demanding that their kids not be penalized for choosing family or other extra-curriculars over their athletic team. Athletic departments with inflexible polices come under fire for having unreasonable expectations.
Yet, policies that extend allowances and give athletes opportunities to work their way back to their team can put coaches between the proverbial rock and hard place. How much time to “re-train” is enough? How do you achieve the right balance between the family and the team? How long do you wait to restore the absent athlete to their original position when the team clearly needs them?
HOW IT READS
As Athletic Director at Middleboro, I worked with Sullivan to review our policy and listened as she talked through the options. The dilemma made me realize how vacation policies have become a tricky situation and prompted me to ask other athletic directors about their ideas on the issue. I found that many athletic departments are currently re-examining their policies, and that they vary greatly from school to school.
At our school, the policy says family vacations are not excusable absences from team practices or games, and penalties may range from game suspensions to dismissal from the team. Here’s how it reads:
Athletes are expected to attend all scheduled competitions and practices during the course of the entire season (including tournament competition after the regular season has ended). Exceptions may be granted by the coaches and may include medical/dental appointment, family emergency, religious obligation, and tutorial assistance.
Coaches may suspend athletes from competition for unexcused absences and dismiss athletes from teams for repeated offenses of this rule. Athletes who miss practices or games due to family outings or holidays, vacations, jobs, or participation in extra-curricular activities other than athletics risk losing their position in the team lineup and may not receive letter awards. Coaches may dismiss athletes from teams if, in their opinion, there have been excessive misses for these reasons.
With this policy, we are trying to emphasize that commitment to the team is critical, and even trips planned ahead of time aren’t always allowable. When the team is in season, its success very much depends on all players contributing during practices and games. We strive to have athletes and parents understand and accept this.
We then purposely leave the determination of consequences for violations up to the coaches. This way, unique factors can be considered.
At Blackstone Valley (Mass.) Regional Technical High School, the athletic department has taken a different approach. Athletic Director Mike Denise recently changed the policy to make it more family-friendly and encourage greater levels of participation.
Blackstone Valley’s policy states that: All student-athletes are expected to attend all practices, scheduled scrimmages, and games on varsity and sub-varsity levels. One exception to this policy is a planned family vacation in which the student-athlete will be in the company of his or her parents and have so informed the coach in writing at least two weeks in advance of the scheduled vacation dates.
Denise has been working hard over the last few years to increase the level of participation in his programs, and he feels this new policy is helping to prevent problems. “Different coaches were dealing with family vacations in different ways,” he says. “I think this policy will keep us all on the same page. With more and more athletes on teams, there certainly was the potential for conflicts.”
However, student-athletes who take vacations also understand that they may be compromising their position on the team. “We tell them that a coach’s first priority is to those student-athletes who are faithful to the tradition of the team player,” Denise explains. “Yes, we allow an athlete to miss time in a season because of a family vacation, but the athlete understands that when he or she returns, their role on that team may have changed.
“We don’t specify in our policy exactly what that role change will be, as we believe it should be up to the coach to decide,” he continues. “But we make it clear that our focus will be on those athletes who are here from start to finish.”
Hamilton-Wenham (Mass.) High School has also recently revised its policy. Previously, athletes who missed time for vacations would have to sit out the same number of days they missed. So if they missed two practices and one game, they would not be allowed back on the team for another three days after returning.
When Athletic Director Don Doucette assumed his new job at Hamilton-Wenham two years ago, the superintendent urged him to formulate a more lenient vacation policy. There had been complaints about the way athletes were being penalized, and the superintendent felt parental problems could soon follow. A committee consisting of teachers, coaches, and the principal was formed to review the policy and help come up with changes that didn’t penalize athletes so harshly.
The school’s new policy begins with a statement regarding the importance of commitment and obligation to the team. It states:
Upon returning from a vacation, the vacationing student-athletes will immediately begin practicing and dressing for games. A student who has missed four to six days should practice a minimum of three days prior to participating in a game. A student who has missed three or fewer days should practice a minimum of two days prior to participating in a game. However, it will be at the coach’s discretion to evaluate the length of the absence and the amount of re-conditioning necessary for their sport.
Bill Johnson, the longtime Athletic Director at Silver Lake (Mass.) Regional High School, has no detailed policy on this issue. He explains that his school expects athletes to attend practices and games, even during school vacation periods, and lets coaches handle specific situations.
“We let our coaches decide how and when athletes can participate as they return from vacations, and also whether or not penalties are applied,” Johnson says. “Although this allows inconsistencies to exist among teams, we’ve found no standard policy to be best.”
Duxbury (Mass.) High School makes a distinction between varsity and sub-varsity level athletes. Freshman and junior varsity players have optional practices during vacation, while varsity athletes must attend practices and games at the discretion of their coach. From there, individual coaches determine any penalties they feel are necessary for missed time. The penalties range from less playing time to dismissal from a team. Duxbury Athletic Director Thom Holdgate believes the vacation policies are working.
While policies may vary, there does seem to be a consensus that flexibility is important and that coaches should have the final say. Written policies are removing words such as “will” and “must” in favor of “should” and “may.” When you state, for example, that athletes may be suspended from competition (rather than will be suspended), the coach has the ability to make a determination based on the individual situation. More and more schools are deciding that one size does not fit all.
BACK IN THE LINEUP
The one downside of flexible policies, however, is that they put the onus on the coach to make tough decisions on when an athlete should be allowed to compete again. A way to give coaches some guidance is by asking them to evaluate the conditioning of the athlete.
“We don’t want to risk injury or decreased performance because of an athlete’s conditioning level, which may have dropped off during their absence,” says Doucette. “That’s why our policy states that an athlete must attend a certain number of practices after they come back from vacation before competing again.”
Sullivan appreciates the safety and conditioning aspects of requiring an athlete to undergo “re-training” once they’ve returned to the team. After all, training and performance levels do diminish quickly. But she finds this method problematic for some sports and would not want a blanket policy on it.
“I suppose a track athlete could be timed in their event to see what they might have lost,” she says. “But how do you do that for baseball or softball? It would present large inconsistencies between how different coaches operate.”
Coaches also need to make decisions on when a first-string player can return to their starting position. Whenever possible, I ask coaches to base this judgement on hard facts. For example, a tennis player who was absent can challenge a teammate in an established team ladder position. Now the coach has an accurate appraisal of where, from a performance standpoint, the player belongs. In track and field, you can time an athlete to see if he or she should resume their position on the relay team.
Of course, the decision is harder in sports such as basketball and baseball. You have to trust the coach to decide how and when the vacationing athlete has the right to return to the position they left. Reason and balance have to prevail.
SCHEDULING
As parents want more leniency in athlete vacation policies, I think we will see fewer and fewer games scheduled over school breaks. I make a conscious effort at Middleboro to schedule games over vacations only for those coaches who indicate they want games then. I ask coaches to perform a head count to be confident they will have a full team, or at least enough of one to perform competitively.
Silver Lake’s schedule in the nine-member Patriot League is intentionally structured to include games over school vacation periods only when absolutely necessary. To take advantage of hard-to-get indoor track facilities, for instance, all league members may be required to schedule one meet during winter vacation. Spring baseball and softball schedules, on the other hand, have no scheduling conflicts, so they do not utilize April vacation days.
“Not scheduling games helps in part because it minimizes problems,” Johnson says. “But I also think that when you don’t schedule games, you may be leading athletes and parents to view these periods as not part of the season, which may lead to more athletes going away during school vacations.”
At Apponequet Regional High School in Lakeville, Mass., Athletic Director Bob Liljedahl uses preseason surveys to determine athletes’ intentions. The school is part of the South Coast League, which routinely schedules games over school vacations, and some Apponequet teams have struggled to be competitive during those time periods.
“Because we have practices and games during vacations, we consistently find ourselves in problem situations,” Liljedahl says. “So we administer a questionnaire before our seasons start to help us determine our athletes’ availability. That way, we at least have some idea of how to proceed with developing the team and possibly rescheduling games, and there are no surprises.”
A DELICATE BALANCE
When the Middleboro High School softball player came back from her two-week hiatus, only one regular season game remained. She dressed in uniform, but was relegated to the bench to support the team. Middleboro won the game, and the team began practicing the following day to prepare for postseason competition.
One week later, the squad took the field for state competition, which is a single-elimination tournament. The vacationing player had worked out with the team in the days leading up to the game, and was placed in the lineup as the designated hitter.
“The designated hitter she replaced at that point had the lowest batting average on the team, so that part of it was not complicated,” Sullivan explains. “But I had to perform a balancing act between this player’s absences, some absences by the player who replaced her at third base, fairness to the team as a whole, winning the game, and the fact that it was possibly the last game the seniors would ever play.”
Sometime around the fourth inning, the opposing batters began successfully laying down bunts on the third-base side. Sullivan inserted the vacationing player at third to counter the tactic. Middleboro eventually lost the game, with three seniors (including the vacationing player) striking out in a row to bring the season to a close.
“I had told the individual players and the team what I was thinking in advance of the game,” Sullivan says. “I think they understood, and accepted the decisions I made. But this was difficult. I’m not sure you can get something like this exactly right in everyone’s mind. But you follow policy and make your best judgement and keep reminding yourself that it’s all a learning experience.”