The First Game of the Season
Use the first game to test the routine rather than to perfect the meal. Set the shopping day, the pre-game meal, and the after-game plan before the season starts, run them once, then change exactly one thing.
What the first game is really testing
Nothing about the food is new in week one. What is new is the timing: a Saturday morning that starts earlier, a kit bag nobody has packed since spring, and a fridge stocked for a different season.
Watch what breaks rather than what your kid eats.
Setting the routine before the season starts
The week before the first game is the cheapest time to decide all of this, because nothing is at stake yet.
Fix the shopping day
Move it to whichever day now precedes the busiest stretch. A season changes which day that is.
Choose the pre-game meal
One meal your family already eats, cooked the night before the first game. It becomes the season's default.
Decide the after-game plan
What happens for lunch or dinner afterwards, decided before you leave the house.
The first game itself
Run the plan as written and resist improving it in the car. A routine that survives one imperfect Saturday is more useful than a better routine that gets redesigned every week.
Standard game-day rules still apply: familiar food, the meal well before the start, water throughout, and nothing new.
What to change after week one
On Sunday, name the one thing that went worst and fix only that.
- One change, not five, so you can tell what worked.
- Fix logistics before food. The bag and the leaving time cause more trouble than the menu.
- Write down the leaving time that actually worked.
- Buy the missing thing before the next game rather than the night before it.
When the schedule turns out to be worse than expected
Sometimes week one reveals a season that does not fit: three sessions on school nights, a game an hour's drive away, and no evening left. That is worth confronting in September rather than in November.
Deciding early which nights get a cooked meal and which get a reheated one is the difference between a hard season and an unmanageable one.
Questions about the start of a season
Should we practise the game-day meal beforehand?
Choosing a meal your family already eats does the same job with no extra effort. The requirement is familiarity, not rehearsal.
How long does a new routine take to settle?
Usually about three weeks, which is roughly how long it takes for the leaving time and the shopping day to stop being decisions.
What if my kid's appetite changes during the season?
That is common as training load rises. Adjust portions rather than the structure, and raise anything that worries you with your clinician.
- Feeding Your Child Athlete, Nemours KidsHealth, kidshealth.org.