Dual sports participation is back

Just nine years after Creston schools became the only district in the Hawkeye Ten to ban dual sport participation, the school board has approved bringing it back for the 2025-26 school year.

In 2016, Creston coaches unanimously supported the ban, citing lack of practice participation and issues with fairness.

“The choice has been nice to offer folks, but an issue you run into is ‘I’m not at practice every night this week because I had two tennis matches, so then I’m back for practice, and I get loaded up on the four-by-four relay team,’ and somebody’s upset because they were at practice every night, and they didn’t get to be on the relay team,” previous CCSD Superintendent Steve McDermott said in 2016.

However, between declining enrollment and the movement of girls tennis to the fall, the district felt it was necessary to bring the option back.

“We had a number of tennis girls who are also volleyball players, and so with our current setup, that was going to force them to choose one or the other,” CCSD Activities Director Scott Driskell said. “Almost 50% of our projected tennis team, if not more, we could have lost.”

While the vote to add back dual participation wasn’t unanimous in the coaches, Driskell said they all agreed to work together.

“There was some good discussion, but in the end, enough of our coaches supported it and we felt like we didn’t have a choice but to move forward in an effort to make sure our programs are viable,” Driskell said. “The other factor is, the reality of declining enrollment for us, that means less potential athletes, which means the need to look at this a little bit more too.”

Aside from athletes doing both tennis and volleyball in the spring, Driskell said students taking advantage of this change will likely be in spring sports.

“Where we hear it the most is in the spring, between track and soccer, tennis and golf,” Driskell said. “I think ultimately you’re probably talking about 5% or less of our kids. You’re talking about a handful of kids that would be potentially interested in doing two sports.”

With the fall semester less than a month from starting, fall sports coaches are working hard to figure out the best way to run dual participation.

“I already talked to Coach Sharp with volleyball and Coach Cooper with tennis in working out some things, and we’re working on procedures as we go,” Driskell said. “The big thing is making sure we get our coaches on the same page and the athletes and their families on the same page, as best as possible, so that we’re all aware of what is going to happen.”

Student athletes will be required to chose a primary sport and secondary sport in case games are on the same day. However, they are expected to attend some practices for both sports.

“The big thing is balancing practices, because you can’t just show up and do both, you have to practice in your participating sport. If you’re doing two of them, that means you have to manage two sports and practicing two sports, and what does that look like,” Driskell said. “There’ll be some bumps along the way that we’ll have to work through, but I think the more that we can have that open communication, that clear communication, the better off we are.”