Calling all sports/cheer/dance moms

I've heard of a few kids being bumped off the top team in soccer for missing mandatory camp. I know one had a family vacation that couldn't be rescheduled, I'm not sure of the others. I think they just slotted them onto the less competitive teams.

Well it might mean your off the team. Unless of course the athlete/dancer is do fabulous that the team can't do without you. I've seen both situations.

Our experience in competitive cheer was if you had a previously scheduled vacation planned, then you would be excused. Otherwise, you could lose your place on the team. I will say, though, that the indiscretions of the very talented were overlooked more often than those who weren't as talented.

Dd does competitive dance. She is currently in her mandatory summer dance intensive. It is always the last two weeks before school goes back.

They call it mandatory, but if you have a vacation booked that can't be moved it seems the owner is ok with that.

Meanwhile, there are kids from her group who are doing other camps around town this week and next week and the owner doesn't know. Perhaps they said they'd be away, but one showed up where my younger dd is doing musical theatre.

So there are only two kids from dd's dance group in the intensive out of 8 and I'm pissed. Dd is learning their dances already. It is supposed to speed things up in September but most kids won't know the steps and my dd will be ahead and bored.

Of course it isn't the other mothers' faults, it is the fault of the dance school for not having strict rules. It is either mandatory with a consequence or it isn't. I spent $800 on this camp so dd was following the rules and she has two friends from dance having play dates because their parents didn't want to sign them up. I'm aggrevated. The problem letting one person off for a vacation is that others begin to realize that it really isn't mandatory. In the other groups, all of the children are present or the camp. Just our group went AWOL.

Paige.

My only experience is with soccer, and we never had mandatory camps. But if you miss even a single practice (most teams) you were either not played at all the next game, or only minimally played as a sub.

This seems to be fairly consistent across the levels that my kids played, except when they were really young and played rec ball.

My DD is on her company competition dance team. They get two absences, and then they're off the team.

My DS is in the high school marching band, and they've had two-a-day practices since July 31. If they miss a practice, they don't get to march. He also runs XC, and missed the first week of practices because of band practice. As soon as they started having them early (6:30 a.m.), he started going and he found out today that he made the varsity team!