Sharing athletes/time during the summer

Forget the incentives. Best players play.

In a situation like that you need a strong AD who can help mediate so there are no undue conflicts for the kids or between programs.

We do our summer workouts in the morning so kids can't use Baseball or any evening activity as an excuse to miss.

We only do a few 7-on-7s and on a night where Baseball isn't playing-practicing (our Baseball coach has cooperated with us).

And our three-day camp is mornings-only last week in July.

Luckily,our AD just scheduled a meeting in the last hour so we can get this ironed out. We also have just been allowed to put full pads on in the summer after an acclimaztion period so those people may miss a lot of the serious football work and put themselves behind which would take care of itself.

It's just unfortunate it had to get to the AD to intervene.

Welcome to coaching coach... just set a program up and set the standards you can live with and just go from there. Work your tail off recruiting the kids and get a core group that you can count on being there all the time. I know a couple of programs around here have a "no summerschool" policy. basically, if they NEED summerschool, they just cut themselves from football.

I'm really growing more opposed to all sports developing "season creep." we can't complain about AAU basketball of we have 9 months of the year blocked off. Specialization here starts at grade 6 or 7, and every sport is losing out on quality players because of it.

WORD!

I remember a time not all that long ago when kids weren't expected to be working on organized school sports all summer long. Too often we (adults) forget that football will never be as important to most (almost all) of our players as it is to us. Specialization is leading to burnout in more and more young athletes. Too often adults are taking the fun out of organized sports by placing too many demands on the kids' time. Put yourself in the shoes of a typical 15-16 year old boy and ask yourself how you would feel about having to meet all of the demands that are being placed on you if you wish to be a multi-sport athlete.

We ask our football players to lift weights for an hour in the morning 4 times a week for the summer, and we have a one week team camp (really just 3.5 days) that we ask them to attend. That is it.

We are a small school in a small rural community. Most of our players have summer jobs, and many of them are involved in summer baseball and summer basketball. A large number of them are involved in wrestling camps as well. Their parents make them go on family vacation. I don't want to add any more things that they "have to do."

I also wonder how important all of the summer activities really are. Obviously strength and conditioning is important in developing athletic ability and preventing injuries, but not going to team camps at colleges and not doing 7 on 7 has not hurt our program in the least. We have made the playoffs for 5 consecutive years; we have been in the semifinals once and in the quarterfinals twice in the past 3 years; we have had 11 players sign to play at the next level (including a DI this year) in the past 5 years.

cclement is right when he says that it is difficult to complain about other sports if we are going to have such high demands during the off-season.

Kids tend to be stretched too thin.

They want to play summer baseball or hoops, have a job and still be part of the football program.

The kids arent going to change, I suggest you do.

We do all of our lifting, year round, at 6 oclock in the morning. We are finished by 7:30 so they are free to do whatever else they want to do. If they have summer school, they are all set, if they have a job, usually they can still workout. If they play other sports, they are fine. If they have a girl friend, no problem.

We do our football camps the same way, we lift first, then go out for our summer installation.


Every situation is different though, you might be better off doing everything after 9pm.