Stuff Said to Skip Practice.... Excuses

We had several.

Family reunion..... on Columbus Day

Player: "I won't be at practice for the next few days."
HC: "Why not?"
Player: "I need to study for the ACTs."
HC: "When are the ACTs?"
Player: "In December."
HC: "I won't call these unexcused practices because they're due to academics but you need to realize you won't be playing any time soon if you miss a week of practice."
Player: "I'm a student-athlete with the student coming first coach."
HC: "Yup and you'll be a student first on the bench this week as well."

The “studying for the ACT” racket is one of the bigger crock of {censored} industries that have popped up in recent memory.

I just tell them if they miss that day of practice you’re not playing that side of the ball.

Kid: "Have to watch my little step-sister after school."
Dad shows up ten minutes into practice to watch and wonders where why he is not at practice.
Dad: "He does not have a sister or step-sister. He is skipping to watch soap operas. He loves General Hospital!"
Me: Still laughing!

We had a kid, heck of a football player, show up to Monday practice on crutches and sporting a knee brace.  He said he & his mom got T-boned in a car accident over the weekend and he had "badly damaged" his knee.  We were crushed, just about to make our playoff run and this kid was a playmaker at defensive end.  The next day at school he was in a lunchtime basketball tournament going ALL OUT.  When the game was over he walked over, put his knee brace back on and hobbled away on his crutches.  Our HC grabbed him and said, "WTH is going on?  I thought you were in an accident and your knee was hurt?!?"  Kid says, "That's just what my mom told me to say because we're suing the other driver.  She said a P.I. might come to practice or games so I can't play." 

Sometimes dead is better

This is awesome! gotta love deadbeat parents

And then today a player told me he couldn't come to lifting from 2:30-3:30 after school because he was packing to leave for Thanksgiving. Mind you, we have school tomorrow as well as next Monday and Tuesday.

I asked him why he had to start packing now to be ready to leave after school tomorrow and followed that with he better be packing for 8 straight hours at home. No response...

This came to me today.

Kid missing our football PE class. Our season is over...but...

"Hey Coach I meant to message u this morning but didnt get around around to it. I wont be at zero tommorow either, i had to put my dog down today and am going to take tommorow off to recoup"

We had a kid who missed practice. When we got back to the field house/locker room there he was sitting in the locker room. We asked why he missed practice and the kid tells us "I was locked in the locker room and couldn't get out". The door has a latch to unlock it from inside where he was sitting throughout practice. We still laugh at this one from time to time.

We call them ERW's.  Eat ride and watch

I've told this story before, but I'll tell it here just to show that I think it's important to note that parenting has drastically changed the number of excuses that are appropriate as reasons to miss a practice, and I totally believe that this has happened in the last 15 years.  I wasn't that tough.  My mom just gave me no choice in the matter.  

When I was a senior, we actually had 2-a-days, where we practiced twice a day, six days a week, for two or sometimes three weeks, depending on how August 1 and the start date of school aligned that year.  With about three days left in camp my senior, I was in a car accident at about 11 PM.  (Just to be clear, not telling this story to sound cool, just wish there were more parents like my mother around today now that I'm coaching).  By car accident, I mean that I rolled my truck, and I was ejected through the rolled-up window on driver's side and thrown between two large trees that were in someone's yard and nearly all the way across their 1 acre yard.  I was bleeding to an extent most would call profusely.  I remember crawling back towards my truck, which had stopped rolling upright on its wheels, thinking that I was hurt and needed to get into that truck and drive myself to get help.  By the time I got near the truck, I was shaking pretty badly (from fear mixed with blood loss, I imagine) and the farmer and his daughter came out to check out the commotion.  I recognized her because she was just a little older than me in school.  I said hello to her by name.  She nearly fainted, she told me later, because I was talking almost normally, while on all fours crawling through her lawn, but my entire face was covered in blood so that the words sprayed blood from my mouth, etc. as she figured out who I was.  She gave me towels to clean my eyes, etc. and quickly the ambulance came.  They worked on the bruises that I had internally while I kept telling them that I felt it was pretty important that they fix my left arm, just above the elbow, because it was, you know, cut to THE BONE!! haha.  Anyway, between the local hospital and my transfer 90 minutes away, I received well over 100 stitches and staples all over the place, literally from head to toe.  Mix that with the internal bruising they were worried so much about, and i was feeling pretty terrible when I was discharged the following afternoon from that hospital wearing scrubs because they cut my clothes off.  I was on just enough of their drugs to be semi comfortable while talking a bit out of nowhere.  Before arriving home, my mother made it a point to drive me by the school to make sure that I caught the second 2-a-day practice, walked out to the field, and talked to coaches about what  new plays I might need to be learning while I was injured, and what I needed to do to be ready when cleared by doctors.  Not saying that I was just that tough.  But my mom's thoughts were that I better just say thanks for not being dead, and part of that was to go out and do everything I could almost as a way of saying thanks.  

15 years later, I don't know of any parent that would bring their child out to a practice in that condition.  Don't doubt that she loved me.  But there were very few excuses that she would allow for missing a practice that I had signed on for, and that morning edition of the 2-a-day that I missed was the only one I missed from the 3rd week of my Freshman year until I graduated, for ANY reason.  Seems too much like parents these days want to help their kids by telling them that they don't have to do this or that rather than telling them that they should do it because they made a commitment.  

It's changed that fast, and it definitely IS NOT getting better as we speak.  

Ha, I called them most of my team this past season