Hoop Mom: Missing Practice

This week, Teresa ponders dealing with the frustration of dealing with players who miss practice for not the best reasons.

What do you do when players and their families are not communicating about attending practices? Like a lot of teams, many of our players commute a long way, and our coaches leave jobs early and of course give up their evenings. Sometimes we have unexpectedly small groups and cannot conduct the practices we planned out. Or we end up running shorter practices. Any suggestions you have for solving this problem would be much appreciated.

Frustrated Coach

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Dear Frustrated:

This issue is, by far, the one I most frequently hear about from coaches – probably because of the wasted volunteer time and effort involved in planning a practice and then not being able to accomplish their goals due to no-shows.

First, make sure you have a clear policy in place for what is an acceptable reason for missing practice and what is expected in terms of advance notification that the player will be gone. There’s not much you can do about a girl who has come down with the flu, but some parents are amazingly lax about letting their kids blow off a practice at the last minute because a better offer came along (i.e. tickets to a concert) or, even worse, simply because they had a bad day or didn’t feel like going.

Parents need to know that their girls are expected to attend every practice and make it a top priority (in our house, sports commitments rank second only to schoolwork). If a girl has decided to play at this level, she and her family must accept both the good and the bad – the good being the opportunity to play lots of basketball and the bad, having to practice diligently in order to play lots of basketball!

Missing practice not only frustrates the coach, it affects every other team member who has come to work hard – and it impacts the team as a whole. It’s impossible to run drills or learn new plays designed for 10, when you only have five at practice.

Also communicate clearly to your players and parents what happens as a result of a missed practice, excused or not. Many coaches directly tie game minutes played to practice attendance, and those who miss practice – regardless of the reason – sit for at least part of the game.

Hoop Mom

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Teresa Wippel is team manager of the Warriors Basketball Club, a 6th Grade girls' team from the Seattle area, and mom to Warriors post player Amanda Waldron. In her other life, she is a freelance writer and editor. To ask Teresa a question, email her at

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