See if this makes sense to you.  You get to your sports practice before school every week for four months.  You practice all the fundamentals of that sport and put those fundamentals together to create something that a crowd would be impressed with.  And then, for the one game you have scheduled after all this practice, you go tell the coach that you can’t be there because you have a music program, one of many music programs you’re going to have over the next couple of months but the music teacher has said you have to be there or you won’t get to participate in any of those other music programs. You’re only option is that you’ll have to miss the only game you have scheduled after all that work.

Of course that makes no sense.  No coach in their right mind would allow a child who is part of their team to practice for months and let them get away with not performing with the team for their one game.  And yet, this is what “music coaches” have to deal with year after year when it comes to students involved in their ensembles who also play organized sports.

Some people say, well it’s just important for the child to have the experience of singing with others.  Okay, let’s use that analogy with sports.  Let’s say I have a football team and right before a game, my star receiver says he can’t be there.  Well, that should be okay, right?  After all, there are a lot of people on a team – they won’t miss just one person, right?  A choir, after all, isn’t a team, so what’s one person missing?  Well usually for me, there are several of my students playing on the same team, so that may be 10% of my choir.  What if 10% of a team just decided they had something more important to do?  It would never happen because somewhere, somehow, someone has decided that extracurricular sports are more important than music.  Despite the fact that music has been identified as an academic subject by law.  Not an activity.

And yet, it shouldn’t be a matter of importance.  It should be adults who can work with a student and their family and compromise.  I have been fortunate to work with dance instructors, theater directors and coaches who have been willing to work out schedules to allow the child to do as much of both as possible.  I have parents who are willing to dress their child in their soccer uniform, have them sing in a play and zip them off to the game as soon as they’re finished, or bring them directly from a ballet dress rehearsal in full makeup to be at a performance on time.  It is not always easy, but it is possible if adults are willing to not take the easy way out and work on the all important compromise.

In this world, there are athletes involved in music and musicians involved in sports and they are able to balance these two worlds because, quite frankly, they have a lot in common.  We all teach kids how to collaborate and cooperate with each other.  We teach them that in working as a team, we create something bigger than ourselves.  In a lot of cases, things like sports and music keep kids in school.  I’ve never really understood the animosity that seems to arise when it comes to sharing time.  After all, it’s just another way to teach kids how to balance priorities in a healthy way.  We know that this is going to be an important life skill as they grow older as they begin to juggle school, careers, family, and leisure time and what better way to teach them than by allowing them to watch adults who are willing and able to help them juggle now.

But in the meantime, some of these students, who have worked so hard on the fundamentals of music, memorizing lyrics, rhythms and harmonies, balancing parts, matching pitches, will perhaps be throwing softball pitches and balancing soccer balls instead.  All practice and no game.  Just doesn’t make any sense to me.