Travel
This is a question for those of you who do travel or club sports. The allstar team I recently coached completed our season and we decided to stay together this fall for some tournaments. I had the 14 players on my team plus 2 others agree to participate. We are playing this weekend and I have people backing out left and right, committing then changing their mind. I am down to 10 guys. How do you combat this short of keeping 20 plus players? What strategies do you use when forming these teams?
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Comments
That is a tough question. This is a major problem in intramural activities too. There are some coercion techniques like penalties and fines for not showing up to play. For example, it may be possible to take a deposit at the beginning of the term, and fines are pulled out of this when people bail out. Another would be to ensure that the contests are very meaningful, by
making sure they are in a league where they are competitive or playing
for something. Other more intrinsic techniques are to build good team cohesion so that the peer pressure keeps them from wanting to bail out. Being a good coach that they want don't want to let down (referent power) is helpful too, right?
I too would be interested in hearing what works for others. I don't like the idea of overstocking a team, because that leads to further problems when players aren't getting a chance to play when everyone shows up.
I agree completely on overstocking which is why I don't want to do it. Obviously I am carrying more than I need as I expected this problem to some degree on a week to week basis. I expected a week to week variation but didn't forsee people committing to a tournament and then backing out at the last minute. It has left me scrambling and only taking 11 this weekend. I see the penalty issue working for some, however this group of parents is a little more "blue collar" than most travel teams. This is more of an effort to keep this allstar team together for team building for next summer than a true "travel team" that you try out for. I was still curious about what sort of things are done. Thanks for the input.
Yes, being a good coach helps. Maybe I am in the dark but I think most of the issues have been parent issues as opposed to player issues backing out.