Equal Playing Time: Absolute or Within Certain Guidelines

Kirk,

This is the problem with too many rules. Coaches should have the ability to distribute playing time, period. If a kid does not practice, he should not play equally with others who are at practice all the time. This is really prevalant these days when kids are doing 2-3 sports in the same season. A kid will miss baseball practice because they have a soccer game and visa versa. Or they'll play on an "elite" team and be on the house teams roster and just show up and play when they can.
The effect these rules have long term is that you no longer have kids at the high school level who are just "happy to be part of the team" like generations past. Kids see when they are 15-16 years old they aren't going to play much in games and simply quit. So many smaller schools don't have JV or freshman programs because kids think they are "entitled" to varsity minutes. They (and their parents) have been programs since they were 5 years old that everybody plays.

Johnny

Kirk, thanks I believe I've read that thread before. It's funny, the post by Pam Brooks made the most sense. Why? Because THE COACH had some flexibility in deciding playing time, and CURCUMSTANCES played into it. There wasn't this dead, set fast rule that Johnny plays 3 innings and Bobby plays 3 innings, regardless if one comes to practice and one does not. I appreciate Brooke's original post, but this was one specific story, with one team, and her son was involved, so she's got an emotional attachment to it. In my opinion, MOST coaches do a very good job building the team and follow good common sense practices regarding playing time and positions.

. . . .and we wonder why we have a generation of "entitled" children? They're being taught that they DON'T have to work for what they get. These children are being raised to believe that they are entitled to do/have what someone else does/has - no matter what their commitment or work ethic is. I can't imagine what kind of adults this generation of children will be.

Thank goodness our Recreation Department doesn't have a rule quite like the one discussed. The kids do have a minimum amount of time that the coaches have to play them - but the coaches have the discretion to penalize kids that habitually don't come to practice or don't call when they can't be there. It makes no sense to me to play a kid that doesn't care enough to come to practice (w/o a good reason) as much as a kid that gives it his all.

While I agree that kids at the younger age groups should all play, one of the by products on the negative side is less kids are playing at the high school levels. Many schools, regardless of size, used to have varsity, JV, and freshman teams. Some even had freshman or jr. high A and B squads.
What I've noticed over the last few years is that kids simply don't go out anymore in high school. If they aren't in the starting lineup or one of the first reserves, they don't play. Some also think it's a downgrade to play on the JV or freshman team.
Remember in high school years ago when there were always a couple of seniors who hardly ever played, but were just happy be part of the team and worked their butts off in practice? We've lost those kids because we've conditioned kids to play equally at younger ages. When they have to sit later, they just won't do it.

To play a game it's necessary to do practice. If any person plays game without practice then I will say that he is breaking the rules and will surely not perform well in the actual game.Practice makes you perfect and you need to be perfect to play the game.