All-Star Best Excuses To Miss Practice...

[cccheermomx2]

Last year this girl on my team was always late. One day she was super late and didn't call. When she finally came in, she sat down on the floor and ate her dinner!! Seriously!! :banghead:

This is my pet peeve, I HATE seeing girls stroll in late to practice. Taking their time putting on their precious nfinitys that can't be worn outside and taking off there jackets/pants, brushing their hair.....grrr. When my cp is even 1 minute late, she puts on her shoes in the car (if they get ruined it is her/my fault, we shouldn't be late) and RUNS her happy tale into that gym.

 

[yooolizzi]

i have three favorite one. . . . . im sick- umm hello we compete tomorrow, and if your sick two to three times a week you need to go to the doctor and get that checked out. School activities- ok. . . REALLY? I understand if its for a grade but every other day come on!!! Last one I'm tried? One im tried too, and so is everyone else

I'm tried too.

 

[Kelli Nicole]

From one of our Senior girls while discussing who could be at the performance at a car dealer in the area on a Saturday:

"Yea, I can't on that day..."
"Why not?"
"I start an internship the following week."
"Um ok...and that means?"
"I have a lot to prepare...And I have to give a presentation in my seminar. I just don't have time for the 2 hours on Saturday"

 

[Tamzin]

One of the girls on my team said she had slipped a disc in her back and didn't come to practice but later on that night she'd been tagged in pictures on facebook at a party whipping her hair back and forth Willow Smith style like sure that's great for your back -.-
Another week three girls didn't come as two of them were cheering the other one up because she was upset smdh.
But seriously people need to get their priorities sorted or just not bother trying out to be part of the team.

 

[lakerfantlc]

if you need an "excuse" to miss practice...you do not love it enough to be a good team member....seriously consider a solo sport where you only hurt yourself....I always SMH at parents who accept this behavior all the while paying tons of money for their CP to plot ways to NOT come to practice.....the nut usually doesn't fall far from the tree....

 

[coach12]

I started this thread because of all the crazy excuses we hear.
But now that brings up another question - What do all of you do
when kids miss for no good reason? Do you have an attendance policy?
For one of my teams this year we have had the worst attendance ever!!
We sent out countless emails to parents stressing the importance of being at
practice. We were coming close to our first comp. so about 2 weeks before
we sent an email and said that if anyone misses any practices from now
til our first comp. we would have to take them out of the routine.
Well 2 girls missed & we replaced both of them. As hard as that was,
it changed everyones attitudes & attendance is soo much better now!

 

[cupieqt]

We have excused and Un-excused absences spelled out in our handbook. The list for excused is very short. Death. Hospitalization. Graded school event. The list for unexcused is infinite.

coach12

I allow 3 un-excused absences a year. I will remove kids from the program if they miss more than 3. it's in our handbook and I take attendance. I also send attendance reminders ("you have 2 un-excused absences"). This helps a lot with our attendance.

I only have rules Im prepared to enforce at any time.

 

[Kelli Nicole]

I started this thread because of all the crazy excuses we hear.
But now that brings up another question - What do all of you do
when kids miss for no good reason? Do you have an attendance policy?
For one of my teams this year we have had the worst attendance ever!!
We sent out countless emails to parents stressing the importance of being at
practice. We were coming close to our first comp. so about 2 weeks before
we sent an email and said that if anyone misses any practices from now
til our first comp. we would have to take them out of the routine.
Well 2 girls missed & we replaced both of them. As hard as that was,
it changed everyones attitudes & attendance is soo much better now!

We calculated percentages for everyones attendance for about a 7 month period (90 practices in total). Of that, the average was abour 82-85% for each individual.. However, our percentage for 100% attendance at practice was only at 15%! (At around 14 practices of the total 90 we were complete with everyone there).

We passed out letters for the parents and kids so that everyone could see how things were... Needless to say, we had a few parents come to us about how the kids now feel under pressure to not miss practice etc. Um yea, that's kind of the point???? And how the parents were offended because they try so hard to get their kids to practice etc etc.
A few of the kids even argued with us that they hadn't missed that much practice and the percentage had to be wrong. -.-

We have since created team rules and a point system, e.g. 2 points for 100% attendance in a months period, 1 point for no unexcused absences, -1 point for excused absence, -2 for unexcused etc.

Sadly, things haven't gotten much better, as we haven't had a practice with everyone since we passed out those papers...

But, it's kind of hard because club sports are completely different here in Germany than in the US. So it's like a different world for me Cheerleading isn't as expensive as in the US - basically anyone can come and go as they please and pay in our club 10 EUR/month as a member. So there's definitely a problem within the team that some of the kids see if more of as a hobby rather than a team sport and the importance of being there so that we can get our routine in shape rather than 2 people are missing and therefore 2 stunt groups can't practice and then an entire pyramid sequence.

 

[Keep_Believing]

If you miss practice 2 weeks before a cheer comp. without our Coaches approval you will be removed from the team. She will either have another girl replace you or makes changes to the routine. She is tough, but I am glad. It makes for strong cheer teams. It also weeds out the girls that shouldn't really be there. You don't want one bad apple to spoil/ruin it for the whole group.

 

[cupieqt]

David Hanberry once wrote the best post about absences. I'm going to try and find it but I know I read it in 2005 so it's most probably gone from the original source.

 

[coach12]

coach12

I allow 3 un-excused absences a year. I will remove kids from the program if they miss more than 3. it's in our handbook and I take attendance. I also send attendance reminders ("you have 2 un-excused absences"). This helps a lot with our attendance.

I only have rules Im prepared to enforce at any time.

I like these. We are definitely going to make sure we have this in our handbook next year. We never had much of a problem til this year.

 

[acheer]

How about all us dedicated cheerleaders on here make a squad, we sure would be awesome with none of us missing practices!

 

[yojaehs]

I started this thread because of all the crazy excuses we hear.
But now that brings up another question - What do all of you do
when kids miss for no good reason? Do you have an attendance policy?
For one of my teams this year we have had the worst attendance ever!!
We sent out countless emails to parents stressing the importance of being at
practice. We were coming close to our first comp. so about 2 weeks before
we sent an email and said that if anyone misses any practices from now
til our first comp. we would have to take them out of the routine.
Well 2 girls missed & we replaced both of them. As hard as that was,
it changed everyones attitudes & attendance is soo much better now!

After reading through this thread I was thinking the same thing. I think it really depends on your situation, but I'll say what we ATTEMPT to enforce. If it is a garbage excuse, I will do EVERYTHING I can do to remove that person from the routine and replace their spots or move them as far back/out as possible so even if they stay on the team, they are limited in the involvement. The week of a competition there are NO EXCUSES to miss practice (sick bring a bucket), if someone misses we will double team someone to replace their "irreplaceable" parts, (most often pyramid). Depending on the competition, we have in the past pulled a stunt group down. Again, this all depends on the situation but I believe the more you can show "anyone is replaceable" the fewer absences you will have. This has really helped our program with absences. Also, we TRY to reward those stunt groups that have good attendance, letting them work on "new skills" if other groups are struggling having to catch up for time missed. When there are several absent I try to make practice as fun as possible so that those that missed really do "miss out".

 

[FierceandFearless]

My coach has a policy that we are allowed a certain amount of absences every "class session" (which is 3 months) I believe it's 5 absences and you get put on a "probation" type of thing if you miss 3 or 4 practices, and then if you miss another one usually you're off the team, or you don't compete at the next comp. It just depends on the situation and time of year, honestly. But my coaches are very strict about attendance. The coaches offer a "5 minute cushion" at the beginning of practice. So if practice starts at 7, attendance and our warm-up isn't started until 7:05.

 

[12mowerd]

this one girl was nasty flexible. she used to sit in practice and put both of her feet behind her head and like waddle around. Shed just do gross things to her body. One day she came up to my coach and said her back was sprained. (i wonder why)

needless to say she quit and litteraly sat at the basketball games in the stands with her friends doing gross things to her body.