The new sports practice attendance policy requiring students to attend 90 percent of all practices, recently implemented for the winter sports season at the end of October, will continue to be the official policy for the rest of the Sequoia sports.

There was no sports policy before this new policy was put into place, and each sport had different rules on attendance. With the new policy, every sport has the same rules regarding attendance at practices.

“I think the biggest thing is that at the end of the day, being on a team is a class. There are attendance requirements for courses, and so what was happening was we weren’t really applying that same logic behind athletics,” Athletic Director Melissa Schmidt said.

Before, some sports would practice every day after school, while others would only  practice once or twice a week. Now, each team practices every day and the coaches keep track of attendance at every practice in order to keep track of their team’s attendance.

“I think that  if you are going to make a commitment to an after-school sport, then it’s  a commitment. Part of the goal of high school sports is to teach you a lot of things beyond just the sport, and I think that one of those things is teaching commitment and responsibility, and what it looks like to be part of a group and working together towards a common goal,” Schmidt said.

The new policy may challenge some students to make it to all of their practices. Freshman Isabelle Simon is a member of the track team but is also involved in music lessons outside of school. She misses practice once a week for piano and violin lessons, and worries that she won’t receive credit for participating in track.

“It can be hard [to get to all the practices]  because I do have some after-school conflicts that require me to miss practices, so it’s causing me to be a little bit stressed about it,” Simon said. “But I think [the policy] is good because it motivates people to want to attend practices more.”

Instead of running with the wind in her hair, freshman Anja Linkwitz splashes through the pool. She is part of PCC’s swim team and swims with Sequoia’s varsity team as well. As part of the varsity swim team, she has practices every day of the week, ioptions to attend two practices in the morning before school.

“Sometimes [practicing every day] is not very convenient because sometimes I want to do something other than swimming in the afternoon, but I’m pretty used to going every day,” Linkwitz said.

Overall, the new policy will be holding students accountable for attending practices when they choose to play a sport.