A Kid Playing Two Sports Same Season

When I’ve seen it done it’s always been a spring sport and track where the kid is just naturally gifted at a track even and just goes on meet days and does the other sport the rest of the time. Or football kicker and soccer and we work special teams around the soccer schedule.

A lot of this depends on the sports seasons in your state. In our state soccer is a spring sport so all of our kickers are soccer players. Sometimes, though, they also golf, which is a fall sport. We work our ST practice schedule around golf. That means that he misses one practice a week while he's at a match.

Definitely can cause some headaches.  My ignorance at the inner workings of track and baseball practices definitely could make my opinions wrong, but I can see a valid solution since track is so individualistic and baseball is a slower paced and somewhat individualistic sport. 

We only allow it if the club sport doesn't interfere with the school sport. We have a pretty good discus thrower that wants to play baseball this year. He played in the minor league club last year and there weren't any conflicts with track practice or meets. However, he will be playing Legion this year and he's looking at missing a lot of track practice time and meets because of it. He is going to have to make a choice this season. His mom is having a fit about it but we're not going to have him showing up for track practice and meets when he feels like it. It just sets a bad precedent. 

We encourage kids to do everything that they can here. We are a smaller school in Texas with 350 kids in the high school. We have to share kids in order to make sure all of our teams are as good as they can be. Our track team will workout at 6:30 on Mondays so the kids can go to baseball right after school on Mondays.
Baseball plays on Tuesdays so if you are in both you go to the baseball game on that day and not track practice.
Wednesdays are track priority after school, but we keep practice light so they can get to baseball right after. They are usually off the track after 45 minutes.
Thursdays are track meet days so the kids who do both will go to the meet and not baseball.
Friday is another baseball day so they will be at baseball if they are in baseball. We also lift our kids 3 days per week in the offseason period here. If you're competing that day you don't lift.
It would be nice to have kids that can practice more, however I've had plenty of kids who could practice both and be good at both. 5 years ago at a similar size school our shortstop was the district MVP and qualified for the regional track meet in 5 events.
I've always had kids that crossed over and were successful. I've also been blessed with baseball coaches that were supportive and helped us get kids in a position to be successful.
Again we are in this business for the kids. If we can win some track meets along the way that's a bonus.

A story about club sports:

Our kickers are all soccer players. They're good kickers but they're soccer players first. One time we had a Saturday afternoon game. Our kickers approached our HC and told him that they had a club soccer game that morning and asked if, rather then coming to the school and riding the bus, if they could go right to the stadium after their soccer game. For a position player he would that wouldn't have been an option but these are soccer-first kids and very good kickers so he reluctantly agreed. 

They were supposed to be on time but we get to the stadium, no kickers. We stretch, no kickers. Warmups, no kickers. Our HC, a very nervous guy (He was 10 years into coaching when he finally stopped puking before games), is going trying to figure out what to do if we don't have any kickers. 

During the coin flip they finally show up. They're in full gear, ready to go but they're wearing those Pippi Longstocking knee-high striped soccer socks. No problem. We play well, they kick well,, and we win. 

To me, the moral of the story is that if you want to have a long, happy coaching career you need to be flexible. 

California it is illegal. Can only play 1 sport during that "season" (fall, winter, spring)

Coaches have to be the ones that can handle a track kid missing practice to compete in a Baseball game and have the baseball kid miss BP to run in a track meet. Need to have an acceptable schedule where the coaches understand:

Games are more important than practice... game (meet/match/whatever) in one sport over-rides practice
No games in either... alternate by day of week, week to week, whatever
Both have game on same day... hope the times/locations work and they can do both, or you have to live with one of your guys not being there to compete.

It can be done... it is usually the adults who screw it up, not the kid

Are you sure about the illegality in California. We had a ton of kids do other sports and track last spring.

 Maybe just the central section I was in... always had to get kids to pick track or baseball when we were out there

Yes, I have had kids run track and play baseball. I also had a kid who wrestled and played basketball. This last kid was a senior who wasn't getting much playing time in basketball and I could use a heavy weight. He won a couple of matches. He practiced once a week with us. Track and baseball, we have them sign a paper declaring one sport as their primary, so when we have a track and a baseball event on the same day they go to their primary. We are a small school, I got a kid who medaled last year in state in the triple and long but he is the pitcher on the baseball team.

Had one a few years ago who played soccer and was our nose guard (yes, you read that right). He was also a wrestler kid (hence why him playing Nose at 150 made him a terror). His senior year he wanted to play soccer, so I let him....he ended up being their 2nd leading scorer. We worked it out to where he came to football one full day a week (Wednesday's) & then for about 20-30 minutes on Thursday's before their games.

I figured he didn't need to spend 8 hours worth of practice time with us to know the basic calls from the slant 50 we ran (and, he didn't).

...some of the older guys on our staff didn't like it, but I didn't care. As I told them, "It's not like he's going home to eat cheetos and watching spongebob." haha (us and soccer practiced right beside each other, so it was pretty easy keeping tabs on him).

In 2006 my dad had a kid on our state title team that played DB/WR/Return man who was also the leading scorer on the soccer team & he was 2nd in the state in interceptions. He did the same W/Th schedule.

I agree, to a point. We've had issues with track and baseball in the past because some kids will use one sport as an excuse to get out of another. I described a good discus thrower in a previous post and we did have one issue with him playing two sports last year. We had a track meet about three hours away on a Friday. He didn't want to travel that far and tried to use baseball practice as an excuse. He had missed a few baseball practices in the past because of track meets but said meets were closer.


I pulled out the track and field contract he and his mother had signed that stated that he it would be considered an unexcused absence from a meet and a) he wouldn't letter and b) he would be one step away from being removed from the team (skip two meets and you're gone). His mom was upset about it but I reminded her that we discussed the situation before the season started and that we agreed track would come first. The baseball HC had agreed to it as well because the baseball season was twice as long as the track season; he'd finish up in May and be able to focus solely on baseball all summer long. 

To be honest, some of this comes to down my goal of turning the track and field culture around in this school. Track has always been viewed as a tertiary sport for our kids. They've played baseball, joined traveling basketball and volleyball teams and showed up for track practices and meets whenever they felt like it. Before I took over as HC, we had a dominant relay team that we scratched out of several meets because the kids skipped for another sport. It let the other kids on the relay team down and the team as a whole. So, I became a hard a-- when I took over the program. Thankfully, we've been quite successful in track and it's quickly becoming a priority for the kids and the community. 

Unfortunately, we're going to run into this issue this season. Our boys basketball players have all decided join a traveling team and several of their parents have already approached me about "being flexible". I have told them that track comes first if they decide to come out as they have all summer to play basketball. Most of the parents have backed off as their kids really aren't interested in track and would rather play basketball. A few are still harping on me but I won't give on it. The traveling teams play games all weekend long and I'm not going to have the boys picking and choosing what meets they go to. One has threatened to go over my head to the administration (I'm the AD as well as head track coach) and I already told him I would step down as head track coach and AD if I was over-ridden.

I've only had this happen once with a kid that played water polo and football. Water polo was mostly morning practices so it wasn't a big deal. We had just gotten into it when we had our 1st home football game. Kid is a bit tired pre-game, as kids get, but played a good game. Afterwards as we're walking off the field he basically starts collapsing on the field. Get the EMT's, already walking with parents so they are there, goes to the ER. Kid is dehydrated and exhausted. Apparently he had been in a 2-day water polo tournament and had finished his last game like an hour before the football game. So he had played 6-7 water polo games and then came out for our game. Never told any of the staff that this was going on, we had no idea as it was an away tournament. He choose football after that, I didn't have to force anything. That was the last time I've had that issue.

Several weeks later another parent used that as an example of how I didn't care about the players, how I was a bad coach. That's the same parent, that, I kid you not, got a Dr. note for his son that said he could play football but could not get into a 3-point stance because it stressed his back. Had him at OT for a couple of games, he was also our Sam, got 250-300 yards rushing each game with him there. Dad wanted him to be the B-back in our flexbone offense so he got 'hurt', went to the Dr, and came back with the note. Had to remove him from the OL, averaged less than 210 per game after that.