A parent emails on a Wednesday. "Hey, Jayden missed practice last week because of his school basketball game. Is there a make-up session?"
Your coach reads it, sighs, and does one of two things. They either say "sorry, we don't offer make-ups" and hope the parent doesn't push back. Or they say "sure, come to the other team's practice on Friday" without checking with the Friday coach, who now has four extra kids on the field and no idea why.
Neither answer is great. The first one leaves the parent feeling like they paid for something they didn't get. The second one creates chaos for a coach who didn't sign up for surprise roster additions.
And here's the part that makes this a bigger deal than it looks: families don't usually quit over one missed session. They quit over the feeling that missing a session means losing value. When a parent pays $200 for a twelve-week season and their kid misses two weeks for school sports, they're doing the math. That's $33 they feel like they wasted. Multiply that by a few conflicts across the season, and the internal narrative shifts from "this program is great" to "is this even worth it?"
Make-up sessions aren't an inconvenience to manage. They're a retention lever hiding in your inbox. The programs that build a simple, sustainable system for handling them keep families. The programs that wing it lose them. Not with a dramatic exit. With a quiet decision not to re-register.
Why Most Programs Don't Have A System
The reason most programs avoid formalizing make-up sessions is understandable. It sounds like a logistical nightmare.
Coaches are already stretched. Practice slots are full. Facilities are booked. Adding make-up sessions feels like adding work to a staff that's barely keeping up with the regular schedule. And the fear is real: open the make-up door even a crack and suddenly every family expects on-demand rescheduling for every missed practice.
So programs default to one of two extremes. Total rigidity, where missed sessions are simply gone and no accommodation exists. Or total informality, where coaches handle requests individually with no consistency and no guardrails. The rigid approach protects staff but frustrates families. The informal approach tries to please everyone and burns coaches out in the process.
There's a middle ground. It requires a little upfront design, but once it's running, it actually reduces the workload on your staff while giving families the flexibility that keeps them enrolled.
The Designated Make-Up Window
The simplest and most sustainable model is a designated make-up window built into your existing schedule. Not extra sessions. Not overtime for coaches. A specific, recurring time slot that already exists in your programming, designated as the landing spot for kids making up missed practices.
Here's how it works. Most programs run multiple teams across multiple age groups on different days. Your U10 blue team practices Monday. Your U10 red team practices Wednesday. Your U12 team practices Tuesday. Instead of creating new sessions, you designate one existing practice per week as the open make-up window for that age group.
A kid on the Monday U10 team misses practice for school basketball? They attend the Wednesday U10 session as a make-up. The Wednesday coach knows to expect a few extra kids because make-up players are part of the system, not a surprise. The session runs as normal. The make-up kid gets their practice. The Wednesday coach doesn't need to redesign their plan.
The key is that this is a known, published system. It's not a favor. It's not a one-off accommodation. It's how your program works. Families know about it before the season starts. Coaches are trained on it. And the whole thing runs without anyone needing to make a phone call or send ten emails.
Designing the System Without Burning Out Coaches
The reason make-up sessions kill staff morale is usually one of two things: coaches feel blindsided by extra kids, or coaches feel like they're working additional hours. A good system eliminates both.
Cap the number of make-up players per session. Three to four extra kids in a practice is manageable. Ten is chaos. Set a limit and make it first-come, first-served. Families learn to claim their spot early, which spreads make-ups across multiple windows instead of everyone piling into the same one.
Give receiving coaches advance notice. A simple shared signup sheet, a Google Form, whatever your program already uses for communication, lets coaches see how many make-up players are coming before they walk onto the field. The difference between "four extra kids showed up" and "I knew four extra kids were coming" is the difference between frustration and planning.
Make sure make-up players integrate, not disrupt. Set the expectation that make-up kids follow the receiving coach's plan. They're joining a session in progress, not requesting a custom experience. This keeps the receiving coach in control and prevents the dynamic where make-up players become a sideshow that pulls attention from the regular roster.
And most importantly, don't ask coaches to run additional sessions. The make-up window uses practices that are already happening. Coaches aren't working extra hours. They're absorbing a few extra players into sessions they're already running. That's a very different ask, and it's the reason this model is sustainable long-term.
The Credit Bank Model
Some programs take it a step further with a credit bank. Instead of directing families to a specific make-up practice, they bank the missed session as a credit that can be used flexibly.
The credit might be redeemable at any open practice within the same age group during the current season. Or it might carry over to a camp, clinic, or skills session your program runs between seasons. Or it might apply as a discount toward next season's registration.
The credit bank works because it gives families a sense that their investment isn't lost, even if they can't attend a specific make-up session that week. The parent doing the mental math on whether the season was "worth it" gets a different answer when unused sessions convert into something tangible instead of disappearing.
This model does require tracking. But it doesn't require complicated software. A simple spreadsheet logging family name, missed session date, and credit status works fine for most programs. Some team management platforms have built-in features for this. The tracking burden is minimal compared to the retention benefit.
Communicating the System to Families
A make-up system nobody knows about is the same as not having one.
Include the make-up policy in your registration materials. One short paragraph: "We understand that families, especially multi-sport families, occasionally miss sessions due to scheduling conflicts. Our program offers a designated make-up window each week so your athlete doesn't lose the practice time you paid for. Details are included in your season welcome packet."
That paragraph does heavy lifting. It signals that your program is flexible. It normalizes multi-sport scheduling conflicts instead of treating them as a problem. And it removes the awkwardness of a parent having to ask whether make-ups are available. They already know the answer before the season starts.
Reinforce it in your weekly parent communication. When families know the make-up window is every Wednesday from 5:30 to 6:30 for U10 players, they don't need to email the coach. They don't need to ask permission. They just sign up and show up. The system handles the logistics so humans don't have to.
What This Does for Multi-Sport Families
February is the peak of overlap season. School sports are in full swing. Your families are stretched across two or three commitments. The ones playing multiple sports, which the research strongly supports, are the most likely to miss a practice here and there.
Without a make-up system, these families experience every missed session as a loss. They paid for twelve practices and they're only getting ten. That gap eats at them, and eventually the math tilts toward "maybe we skip this program next season."
With a make-up system, the calculation flips. They missed Monday but made it up Wednesday. They missed two practices in February but banked the credits toward spring camp. The value doesn't leak. The family doesn't feel shortchanged. And the decision to re-register next season is easy because they know the system will be there again.
Programs that support multi-sport participation aren't just saying the right things in their marketing. They're building operational systems that make multi-sport life actually work. A make-up session policy is one of the most tangible ways to prove you mean it.
The Refund Conversation You'll Stop Having
Every director knows the email. "My child missed four sessions this season. Can we get a partial refund?" It's uncomfortable every time. Say yes and you set a precedent that eats into revenue. Say no and you risk losing the family entirely.
A make-up system makes this conversation largely disappear. When families have a clear path to recover missed sessions, the perceived need for a refund drops significantly. They're not asking for money back because they didn't get what they paid for. They got it. Just on a different day.
The programs that field the most refund requests are almost always the ones with no make-up option. The programs that field the fewest are the ones that gave families a way to get their value without asking for a check.
Keep It Simple
The temptation with any new system is to over-engineer it. Detailed policies. Exception protocols. Escalation procedures. For make-up sessions, resist that urge.
One designated window per age group per week. A cap of three to four make-up players per session. A simple signup form so coaches have advance notice. A one-paragraph explanation in your registration materials.
That's it. The whole system fits on an index card.
The families who miss a practice don't need a complicated accommodation process. They need to know that their kid can show up somewhere else this week and get the session they paid for. Make that easy, make it predictable, and make sure every coach in your program knows how it works.
Missed sessions are inevitable. Lost families don't have to be.
Ian Goldberg is the GM of Signature Media and the Editor of the largest and fastest growing sports parenting newsletter. He's been recognized as an industry expert by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, the US Olympic Committee's Truesport, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Ian is also a suburban NJ sports dad of two teenage daughters and has over 2,000 hours of volunteer time coaching them (which he calls the most fun form of R&D for his newsletter content). Ian and his team provide players, coaches, parents and program directors with the articles and content they need to have a great sports season. Ian has spent most of his career in digital product development and marketing and got his start at the White House where he worked for the economic advisors to two US Presidents.
