The Plight of the VCS Athletic Program

So as a coach of the soccer and basketball teams, I deal with many things (circumstances) that I don't think coaches in the states have to deal with due to the culture of the USA. Here are two examples JUST FROM THIS WEEK (note that there is about 1 strange request like these per week)!

After our game on Monday, a young man asked me if he could miss practice on Tuesday so he could go shopping to get a suit in order to go to a ball with his girlfriend. Now what US high school basketball player has the boldness to actually tell his coach that is why he is going to miss practice. To top things off, you have to know that we had just told them the practice would be over by 5, and stores do stay open later than 5 here. It was just a surprise to me that he would WANT to miss practice to go shopping for a suit.

Then just a few minutes ago, a player walked into my room (its a game day) to ask me if we "needed him to play in the game tonight." He is in the starting 5!!! How do you respond to such a question? His reasoning was that he was invited to go to the Austria vs Germany soccer game tonight. Well the soccer game starts at 8:30, our game will be over by 7, be he felt he needed to be able to "get ready" for the soccer game.

It is just really hard for me to believe that players WANT to miss practices and games and its like no big deal to them. Us coaches here at VCS deal with this on a weekly basis.