Practice Sessions Aren't Working

[eagerlearner102]

I tried hosting regular practice sessions that include ones after school and I expect my members to show up at least once a week on Saturday or Sunday afternoon by Zoom. The problem is that not all the members show up. Some of them prefer working privately, which I understand. Others show up to their events they like but not the ones they aren't as interested in.
This is my first year hosting them and they aren't working that well. Do you guys have any advice on how to make the practice sessions more productive or how to make my members participate?
I was thinking of having mock competitions before each invitational or setting clear member expectations, which I haven't really stated yet.

[UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F]

I anticipate having the same problem, and some of the potential solutions I've thought about are mandating people to log the amount of time that they work on their events, mandating taking practice tests on certain dates (with flexible scheduling obv), and attending more invitationals this year. Let me know what works!

[SilverBreeze]

mandating people to log the amount of time that they work on their events, mandating taking practice tests on certain dates (with flexible scheduling obv)

I don't think more invitationals is a bad idea if you can get enough people to show up, but as someone from a middle school who did both of these, please please please don't do this. It is micromanaging and irritating. It gets on the nerves of your people who are actually productive but don't keep track of every single minute they're working on it, and some people don't learn well from practice tests. Meanwhile, the people who don't care are just faking the logs.


I don't know if you have enough people to pull a "if you don't do well you'll get kicked off the team" on them but if you can I would try. Also try getting the club a little more publicity and more members so more people means the slackers need to work a little harder to keep their spots.

For people showing up for events they like, do you mean they aren't showing up for all 23 events(which is reasonable) or they aren't showing up for events they were assigned but dislike? If the first I would get off their backs about it, but if the second I would try to talk about how you guys are a team and that not preparing for and doing really badly in one event negates the hard work of everyone else on the team and drops your placement (if team placement matters to them).

Also ask them to message or email you privately if they prefer to study on their own so combined with competition results you know who's slacking and who just doesn't like practices.

Can you set a tangible goal to work for based on past results? It can be something like "get above xth place at regionals" or "qualify for states." If you have something you can get them to work toward and can motivate them with it might help.

Finally, if nothing works, you might need to abandon trying to make practice sessions solely for studying. Team bonding is really important and can draw people into a club, so maybe mix up studying and games.

TL;DR: try to get enough people to be able to kick slackers off competing team, talk about working as a team, set goals, and if all else fails turn to making it more about having fun and bonding than getting results

[EwwPhysics]

I’ll try to keep this brief, but as someone who went from an extremely hands-off middle school to a high school with a lot more organization, collaboration, and accountability for your work, I prefer the more organized model (although I’ve only been with the high school for a couple months). I do agree with Silverbreeze that too much micromanaging is a bad thing and I definitely don’t think that logging the hours that you study is a good thing, but I do really enjoy internal testing to an extent. Making practice tests opt-in (signing up to take short quizzes every week or so) or required only for people attending the next competition would make it less stressful, especially for people who don’t learn well from practice tests as silver mentioned. I think this is a good way to let people choose at which level they want to participate - although this model will probably not work for most teams which have tryouts and expect everyone to be fully committed.
Meetings are a lot less helpful online. if you have enough people then I definitely recommend focusing on event-specific meetings and having team wide meetings less often, mainly for big announcements and stuff like that. With event meetings, experienced members can help new members find resources and get started.
Hope this helps!

[UTF-8 U+6211 U+662F]

mandating people to log the amount of time that they work on their events, mandating taking practice tests on certain dates (with flexible scheduling obv)

I don't think more invitationals is a bad idea if you can get enough people to show up, but as someone from a middle school who did both of these, please please please don't do this. It is micromanaging and irritating. It gets on the nerves of your people who are actually productive but don't keep track of every single minute they're working on it, and some people don't learn well from practice tests. Meanwhile, the people who don't care are just faking the logs.


I don't know if you have enough people to pull a "if you don't do well you'll get kicked off the team" on them but if you can I would try. Also try getting the club a little more publicity and more members so more people means the slackers need to work a little harder to keep their spots.

For people showing up for events they like, do you mean they aren't showing up for all 23 events(which is reasonable) or they aren't showing up for events they were assigned but dislike? If the first I would get off their backs about it, but if the second I would try to talk about how you guys are a team and that not preparing for and doing really badly in one event negates the hard work of everyone else on the team and drops your placement (if team placement matters to them).

Also ask them to message or email you privately if they prefer to study on their own so combined with competition results you know who's slacking and who just doesn't like practices.

Can you set a tangible goal to work for based on past results? It can be something like "get above xth place at regionals" or "qualify for states." If you have something you can get them to work toward and can motivate them with it might help.

Finally, if nothing works, you might need to abandon trying to make practice sessions solely for studying. Team bonding is really important and can draw people into a club, so maybe mix up studying and games.

TL;DR: try to get enough people to be able to kick slackers off competing team, talk about working as a team, set goals, and if all else fails turn to making it more about having fun and bonding than getting results

I’ll try to keep this brief, but as someone who went from an extremely hands-off middle school to a high school with a lot more organization, collaboration, and accountability for your work, I prefer the more organized model (although I’ve only been with the high school for a couple months). I do agree with Silverbreeze that too much micromanaging is a bad thing and I definitely don’t think that logging the hours that you study is a good thing, but I do really enjoy internal testing to an extent. Making practice tests opt-in (signing up to take short quizzes every week or so) or required only for people attending the next competition would make it less stressful, especially for people who don’t learn well from practice tests as silver mentioned. I think this is a good way to let people choose at which level they want to participate - although this model will probably not work for most teams which have tryouts and expect everyone to be fully committed.
Meetings are a lot less helpful online. if you have enough people then I definitely recommend focusing on event-specific meetings and having team wide meetings less often, mainly for big announcements and stuff like that. With event meetings, experienced members can help new members find resources and get started.
Hope this helps!

Thanks, I'll keep both of these in mind! They were really helpful.