keeping kids eligible

we review grades every two weeks, it helped at the last place I was at - the wife of our Soph HC was an administrative assistant for the school (who had access to the grades)....and offering tutors (and admonishing kids to mentor younger players) to kids who are having trouble. That, and basically keeping tabs on how kids are doing in classes and school in general (by position coach).

If we were a bigger school, we may have set up a study table.....maybe

btw- we were on a 4-block system....not many classes to track.

Grade checks every couple weeks.

Mandatory team study hall on Mondays and Thursdays (since we have shorter practices those days).

I tried to develop good relationships with the teachers so they would tell me in advance if something was coming up/student was not turning in work etc.

Those grade checks are sometimes a toughy b/c unless your administration is on board some teachers will simply not figure grades for you. I was in a school where I tried to get all the teachers to help me be pro-active and only about 50% got on board b/c the admin would not push it.

Also need to start when they're younger. Stress how good grades can translate into scholarship opportunities. Have former players who have gone onto college come back and share how their academic skills helped get them college successes.

We have a "daily performance sheet" that we have the kids get their teachers to sign EVERY day after the class is over. It's a simple checklist that teachers have to do minimal writing on. The kids come into weights and conditioning class, sit at tables, we check the sheets- any "bad" comments or poor efforts- they see the "special man". It only takes about 5 minutes to check about 55 sheets. It has helped TREMENDOUSLY on our GPAs and classroom behavior problems. Teachers love them also. It makes sure that our football players are being model young men.
Punishment that the "special man" gives out- perfect 20's; wall sits; backpedal and plant; pretty much anything that burns the hell out of their legs.
TOG, if you guys want, I'll have the sheet scanned and I can email it to you.

Threeback,

I would love a copy of your "daily performance sheet". My e-mail is epcoach99@hotmail.com.

We do a weekly check of eligibility. It sucks to lose a kid for a week, but we can fix it and get them back the next week unlike some who lose their players for the rest of the year.

threeback, that would be great
can you download it to the download section?

how do you guys deal with faculty about this?

That's one place I'm lucky. All the gradebooks are kept on a computer and updated as the teacher puts in the grades. The parents get a password so they can log on anytime they want and we can check them daily if we want to. School gets out here at 2:30 and it is usually way too hot (South Florida) so we have a mandatory study hall every day. One of the few advantages of a smaller school is that it is easier to keep up with things like grades and in school behaviour. I'm not coaching football these days but I still do coach baseball and one thing I like to do is find the kids that need help in a subject and group them with a teammate that does well in that subject and let them work together during study hall. We don't have enough players for a JV team and a Varsity team so it is helps integrate the freshmen into the team. Plus it makes everyone feel important. Even if you are not a starter you can be irreplaceble. My wife is a math teacher at the school and she runs study hall for me during Baseball season. At first kids weren't taking it serious but we invoked the rule that if you didn't have any homework to do you either tutored a teammate or you cleaned her room. It's amazing how much homework was done. By the end of the year every player on the team had a higher GPA than they had at Christmas and not a single player had a GPA under 3.0 for the semester despite practice and games everyday.

When you make a starter do his homework in the dugout as part of his suspension from the game for doing poorly on a test you tend to gain a lot of respect with the kids and the parents and once the grumbling stops grades go up.