Pre-Season Parent meetings

Shane Roy

For our pre-season parent meeting, it will be essential that we have this event prior to our spring football practices so that parents have an understanding of what the summer looks like heading into the fall so that they can plan vacations and similar travels accordingly.

Our topics of discussion:

1. Welcome - The Head Coach will introduce himself and his background to the parents and players along with his coaching staff and their qualifications/experiences in the field. It is important that all coaching staff members are present at this meeting.

2. Program Philosophy and Five-Year Plan - The Head Coach will discuss and share with parents what the program will provide for the player, team, school and community. As a new coach, it is important to deliver this message with confidence and assurance in his words. There should be no mixed signals as to what the programs represents when people leave this first encounter with a new regime. In addition, the Head Coach - as a new hire - will outline what the expectations going forward will look like from year one to year five. Parents should have a feel for what the program wants to lay down as a foundation in the first year and what the continual building of said program appears as in the future.

3. Program Expectations/Code of Conduct - What will it take to be a member of this team? This question will be answered in this section. Responsibilities as a student-athlete will be spelled out during this time, ranging from academic expectations to discipline issues as it relates to attendance and conduct. A contract will be passed out during this time for players and their parents to go over regarding this code of conduct. Questions regarding its contents in the meeting will be encouraged. This agreement will be recognized and signed by the player and parent. This will be a core component of what we are all about going forward - making sure every person connected to this code is on the same page is crucial.

4. Other Forms - School forms regarding student-athlete contracts, medical physicals, concussion forms, return-to-play protocals and other insurance items will be discussed and passed out at this time.

5. Summer Schedules -

CAMPS - The expectation in this program will be to have our own team camp when school concludes. This camp will last nine days. Currently in my role at Colville High School in Washington State we are able to go to Eastern Washington University to get one full day with the university staff to not only work in individual drills but to also get two scrimmages with high school opponents. This comes after we have had 8 practices together. It is important that we conclude our camp by playing someone else, but we appreciate the time in our controlled setting prior to that to instill the foundational traits of our team and work exclusively with our coaching staff on our schemes and the techniques that we feel will be essential to our success. If there is not a university near by or one that will not agree to have us for a single day, then we will look to schools close to us to scrimmage with to conclude our camp. We will host or travel. If the other school(s) want to go through individual and group drills together prior to scrimmages we would love to accommodate this.

WEIGHT ROOM - Times and schedules will be given for our strength and conditioning program. We will expect full attendance throughout the summer (and year) from 6:30-7:45 AM, four days per week (MTRF). If there are family vacations, we will be accomodative without question. Summers are for families to spend time with one another. Other sports should not conflict with the early times of our lifting, unless of course there are camps that our student-athletes are away at. We will just stress that communication in these instances are key for our trust with one another. We need to know if one of our players will be not attending and for what reason.

7-on-7 - We will look to participate in the evenings with schools that are near us if there are opportunities. These 7-on-7 sessions will typically be in the evenings, with rotating schools hosting. If we have multiple-sport athletes playing baseball or basketball, we will never force the issue with our players. If we get more experience with youth in these settings because someone is away at a baseball game, so be it. We would love to have everyone there for these appointments, but the reality dealing with multiple-sport athletes is that will not occur. To encourage multiple-sport athleticism, we have to be flexible here.

FALL CAMP - Dates of our fall schedule (the first few weeks prior to contest one) will be provided here as well. These practices are not optional and players need to be there from day one to become eligible to play at the beginning of the season. The Code of Conduct will have hit on this already.

6. Fundraising/Booster Club - Discussion of the structure of what we do fundraising-wise (in-season and out-of-season) and how we want to be organized will be discussed here. Leadership structure and responsibilities will be introduced in this general meeting, but there is no doubt future booster meetings will have to be held for decisions to be made regarding the structure and meeting norms of the club going forward.