Iowa High School BEDS count 24-25
- Thread starter qwerty
- Start date
As a former varsity coach, I would have had no problem with the kids getting a week or two off for breaks between sports, especially after baseball/softball before the fall sports start. That would include weight training. Say July 15th to August 1, no contact with the kids whatsoever. Gives the parents and coaches time to be with their families and would do very little harm to the kids getting in shape.
Heck we were having kids lifting 3 days a week, playing baseball and then coming in for 7 on 7 football on Sundays, for a couple of months during the summer. A couple weeks break would be good for everyone.
They have a break from games and matches over Christmas but everyone is still practicing except for a few days.
Great in theory, but you already see during family week at end of July that clubs and colleges load up on camps, etc to take advantage of no HS conflicts.
In soccer we have only two weeks of practice before our first game and one of those two weeks is spring break. After that we play 2-3 games a week and barely have time to recover, let alone have productive practices.
We need some out of season contact days. More you limit contact with HS coaches, more they get pushed to club...and pay for play.
It would help if they condense some of these seasons a little more. For example baseball and softball should be playing their championship games over the 4th of July, not just starting the tournament then but finishing up. If that was the case, most teams would be finished by the first week of July and you could give them a no contact 14 days right there.
I think a challenge with younger kids moving up in most sports is that they might have a small role at the varsity level, when they might get developed better playing JV, JV2 or even 8th grade. If the sport is conducive to suiting and playing multiple levels then it’s probably fine. But I remember a few weeks my son did double duty in baseball, playing JV and Varsity before moving full time to varsity. It was brutal. JV BP at 8, JV games, Varsity BP, Varsity double header. It was usually a 14-15 hour day. There were kids that do that all year.
I also remember a couple times when my daughter was a freshman suiting all three levels of basketball. Start the JV game, leave it early and go to the other gym for varsity, then leave and go back to the other gym to play some JV2. I didn’t agree because they had plenty of other kids to play JV2, but luckily that was short lived. But at least that was fairly easy. She was there anyway, so might as well suit and play in multiple levels.
While it’s cool for the young kids to get called up, a lot of times it's for a specialty. The common thing in baseball is a young kid can come up and pitch a little, but isn't in the lineup hitting much. It's easy for a coach to say they also want younger kids suiting varsity just in case they want to use them. And there's a lot of benefit to that. But I'd like to see coaches be a little selective just to make sure kids aren't burning it at both ends or missing development opportunities for spot varsity duty.
My kid always had Christmas Eve, Christmas and the day after off from basketball. As well as Wed, Thurs, and Friday off over Thanksgiving. They usually had a scrimmage on that Saturday though.
Yep. About three days off from practice. That's the price for playing varsity basketball.
Before our conference agreed to a 5 day shut down, it was Christmas Day off for a few years.
For thanksgiving, it was thanksgiving day off. Practice Friday and then the weekend off.
Agree about baseball. Start baseball a week earlier. Maybe two weeks earlier. ****, they play USSSA baseball in freaking March in Iowa. Maybe end baseball by early/mid July. Sick of the track excuse. God forbid anybody mess with the track schedule.
I really hate this for kids.
Not to say sometimes there aren't Fr or even 8th graders that are so good you can't keep them out of the lineup, but I think with decent programs that's very abnormal. It seems like bad teams try this approach of erring on the side of playing young kids with the hope that when those kids are Jr/Sr they can make a run. That just doesn't work too often. When building a program, slow and steady tends to win the race.
My HS FB coach was the pretty much play all Srs and Jrs and every once in a blue moon there would be a So good enough that he had to play. This was at a IA/A school. The idea is if you show that you put in the work eventually there will be a role for you. And that was really true. Pretty much every 4th year guy had a role every game. Maybe it wasn't much, but special teams, a certain package on offense or defense, something to keep as many guys fully engaged in the offseason and every week in practice when they know they have a role in the game.
Anecdotal, but when my kids played at 4A/5A I was shocked how often underclassmen played. It's like if they think a kid is 1% better they're playing them, and their grade didn't make a difference. Not what I noticed at the smaller schools that seemed to be more upperclass dominated.
My son swam in high school and they got thanksgiving day, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off that was it for days off. They didn’t have any meets but they had extra long practice every day over winter break.
Multiple FB champions, some runner ups in other stuff. The football stuff did wear them out. Championships on Thursday/Friday and basket scrimmages Monday and games on Friday. They wore out over the years if in 4 sports.I hope they won multiple state titles and earned D1 scholarships.
Run state track on Saturday and play a baseball on Monday when others have already played games. Baseball team was the worst of them so they got the summer break but then camps and individual workouts filled that time.
Wrestling wanted them in there all the time to make sure weight was held. Problem is, one kid goes and the others don’t want it held against them.
I will say one of those kids that got pulled up to play baseball in 8th is really good. One of the scouting services has him ranked in the top 10 for the class 28. The other two, no business being there over an upper classman.
I hear ya. My son played four sports in high school. Club basketball and USSSA baseball up until his freshman year. Ran at state track all four years. Deep post season runs every year in the other three sports with a state title. It's an extremely busy time of life. Seems the only coaches that didn't hog time 12 months a year were the football coaches. They wanted them to lift and try to do a team camp if possible. That's it. Baseball and Basketball wanted them doing things all year. I hear soccer and wrestling are just as bad if not worse.
Yeah, the idea is to help with JV rosters. Coaches aren’t stupid and going to throw 8th graders up against varsity kids too often.
I was pretty sure the 8th grade bill died in committee last year anyway.
Agreed. We've got to save some of these coaches from themselves.
