Rattlers Athletic Association

Over the last 20 years or so, the group known as Red River Christian Homeschoolers has changed and grown in some amazing ways! What started as a handful of families meeting for park days has grown into a group that serves over 100 families in many delightful ways! One of the most impressive aspects of our group is the Red River Rattlers athletics teams, including some very talented basketball and volleyball players! And guess what? A track team is in the works!

As the athletics portion of our program grows, we need to continue to promote the Rattlers and everything we stand for. Our coaches have worked very hard over the last eight years forming relationships with public, private and homeschool groups. They know us as the Rattlers and respect our teams. We get compliments from refs, other players, and parents of other teams about the outstanding conduct of our players, coaches and parents. To continue to grow, we need a system in place that will help us deal with concerns that parents have about coaches or situations, and organize the program so that everyone is on the same page. For example, Steve Ayers is the current athletic director for the basketball team. If anyone has a concern or complaint they can address it with him and they sit down for a discussion with the people involved.

In order to accomplish setting up such a program, I believe our approach should be to promote cooperation between players, parents, and coaches of all sports. Our foundation for our athletics program needs to be founded on Christ and our conduct should follow accordingly.

In addition, it would also be very helpful if we knew what the other coaches/sports teams are doing so that we do not overwhelm our group with fundraisers or activities. Coordination of the schedules and season would be a big help. It gets to be very difficult for players and families when they are involved in more than one sport.

Basically, the point of all of this is to conduct a meeting to discuss the formation of the Red River Rattlers Athletic Association. Many parents have expressed interest in having an athletic director over each sport. These directors would form the committee over the association. This association would help to achieve many things, such as:

• Promoting cooperation between players, coaches, and parents of all sports
• Agree on a code of conduct for our coaches, parents, and players
• Create a mission statement for the group
• Verify a list of established coaches for each team and a determination of who is on what team
• Get 503(C) non-profit status, allowing a tax deduction for donations to the teams
• Provide conflict resolution

The Rattlers currently have a website: www.RRRattlers.com. We would like to develop our web-site so that all sporting events, coach’s information, etc. could be in one place. That would make it easy for schools to contact the right person for scheduling or questions. (Dallas Thunder has a good web-site, as does CHANT).

This meeting is open to all families who are currently involved with Rattlers sports or who would like to be in the future. Please join us on Friday, January 27 at the Cooke County Library in the Meeting Room. Meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. We look forward to all the great things God has in store for our group and our teams!

Go Rattlers!

Nicki Truesdell