The Pre-Season Athletic Clearance Checklist for Athletic Directors

Pre-season clearance is the most compressed, highest-stakes administrative window of the athletic year. Everything that needs to happen before the first practice — form distribution, physician clearances, parent consents, coach setup — has to happen at once, while families are still in summer mode and coaches are eager to get on the field. Having a clear checklist before the season starts is the difference between a controlled rollout and a chaotic scramble.

This checklist is organized by timeframe, working backward from the first day of practice. Adjust the timelines to your program's calendar — the sequence matters more than the specific number of weeks.

8–10 weeks before first practice

• Confirm your state's current required physical form. Download the current version directly from your state athletic association's website. Requirements update periodically — verify you have the current year's form, not one from a prior season.
• Audit your full form inventory. List every form your department collects: pre-participation physical, emergency contact, parent consent, sport-specific waivers, concussion acknowledgment, and any district-required forms. Know what you're collecting before you set up campaigns.
• Identify which forms require multi-party signatures. Physical clearance forms typically require student, parent, and physician signatures. Parent consent forms require parent only. Knowing the routing requirements for each form prevents campaign setup errors.
• Set up or update your clearance platform. If you're using FormVault, digitize your forms using AI Smart Form Scanning. Upload PDFs or clear photos of each required form. Review the field mappings before publishing.
• Update your roster. Remove graduated seniors, add incoming freshmen, and confirm that returning athletes' grade levels have advanced. If using a digital platform, confirm the year-over-year rollover has run correctly.

6 weeks before first practice

• Launch campaigns for all fall sports simultaneously. Sending everything at once gives families the maximum runway to schedule physician appointments, which can book 2–3 weeks out in summer.
• Communicate via multiple channels. Email to parents, post QR codes on the athletic website, print and hang QR codes in the main gym and weight room. Athletes who are already on campus for summer training should have direct access.
• Set your internal deadline two weeks before first practice. This gives you a buffer to handle exceptions without athletes sitting out due to paperwork alone.
• Confirm automated reminders are scheduled. Your platform should handle follow-up automatically. Verify the reminder cadence is set and active — you should not be sending manual reminder emails at this stage.

3–4 weeks before first practice

• Check completion rate by sport. Look at the dashboard weekly, not daily. Significant lags in one sport (below 30% at 4 weeks out) signal where to focus targeted outreach — a sport-level email or a personal call to the head coach to cascade to their athletes.
• Communicate with physicians and athletic trainers. Remind your athletic trainer and any partnered sports medicine providers that digital clearance signatures are available. Walk them through the process if they haven't used the platform before.
• Identify athletes who haven't started. At three weeks out, athletes who haven't opened their form link need direct outreach — phone call or text, not another email. Identify these athletes by name and contact parents directly.

2 weeks before first practice

• Set up coach portals. Invite each head coach and any assistant coaches to their sport portal. Walk head coaches through the clearance view in your pre-season staff meeting — most coaches grasp it in five minutes.
• Handle access exceptions. Athletes who need accommodations — no internet access at home, a language barrier, or a physician who requires a wet signature — should have their forms uploaded manually by the athletic office. Digital and paper workflows can coexist in the same clearance dashboard.
• Review clearance-pending athletes with your athletic trainer. Walk through any athletes who have completed their physical but are flagged for follow-up — incomplete forms, missing signatures, or clearance conditions that require review.

First day of practice

• Confirm each coach has accessed their portal. Before practice starts, verify that each head coach has logged in and can see their roster's clearance status on their phone.
• Enforce the cleared list — no exceptions without documentation. An athlete who is not cleared in the system should not practice, even if a parent verbally assures you forms are coming. Document any exception in writing with a specific clearance deadline.
• Set a close-out deadline for the campaign. A week after the first practice, close the campaign to new submissions and follow up individually with any remaining athletes. At this point, every un-cleared athlete should have a specific status and a named follow-up action.

After the season

• Archive all clearance records for FERPA retention requirements. Confirm that every athlete's physical, consent form, and clearance documentation is stored in a tamper-proof archive. Records must be retained for the period required by your state and district policy.
• Note what didn't work. Before the season fades in memory, document one or two friction points you want to solve before next year — late physician signatures, a sport with consistently low early completion rates, an exception workflow that was clunky. Fixing one thing per season compounds over time.

FormVault is built around this timeline. The 60-day free trial is designed so you can complete a full pre-season campaign and evaluate the results before committing — no credit card required and no data migration required to start. If you're using this checklist to plan your next season, it's the most direct way to run the playbook in a live environment.