(Area) “Family Week” also known as “Dead Week” is a time for families of high school athletes to get away and not have to worry about missing any team activities.
From Sunday, July 25th through Sunday, August 1st no activities are allowed.
Doug Newton is the Exira-EHK boys basketball coach and admits it is nice for the coaches and athletes to be able to get away for a week and do their own thing. “It’s a good time to just let kids get away and be a kid.” Newton says, “This way they can have at least a week or so to not worry about missing weights or working hard enough at open gym or that sort of thing.”
Newton acknowledges there’s a lot of demands on an athlete’s time these days. “Usually we go three days a week and this summer I told them we would try to do more with less so we only went two days a week after weights.” Newton says, “You hope some kids do a lot of stuff on their own because they have to. We always tell them the kids playing at Wells Fargo in March don’t sit around all summer long. They are getting shots up during baseball season. You have to do it, but it does stretch the kids a lot of different directions. It’s hard on them.”
We’ll discuss more of the details on the Iowa High School Athletic Association and Iowa Girls High School Athletic Union’s “Family Week” on Wednesday with Audubon AD Sean Birks.
