So You Want To Coach?
As an assistant, I always watched my head coaches effortlessly float through the day. I had an idea of how much time was put into the job, but from the outside you can only assume. You don’t want to walk up to someone and ask how they spend their personal time. So I did what everyone does; I assumed the job was pretty easy. If anything, it's always fun. You get to coach for a career.
In 2019, I was 26 years old and was selected to be the head coach at a mid-sized high school in Walworth, Wisconsin. I spent the summer jotting down all of my ideas for how the year would go. All of those things included Hollywood movie-esque thoughts of what a coach should do - win games and inspire greatness. Merely a week later, I learned that was nothing a head coach would actually spend time doing. I was answering parent emails, scheduling youth basketball camps, figuring out budget, responding to all sorts of “here’s what you should do” emails from back seat driver community members, going through new teacher training (yes you still have another job), and in-short, any other thing other than raising my fists in the air like they do in the movies after a great victory.
That could sound like a negative, whiny story. It isn’t, I promise. Every pain-staking part of the process can be enjoyable. It was and is just every bit as exhausting as it sounds. Sometimes hard things can equally be a joy to do. After doing all of the monotonous tasks of coaching, the opinions from the outside don’t change. It’s rare for the average fan to recognize all of the work you are putting in. Unfortunately, wrong assumptions and being misperceived by fangoers is part of the job. Their emotional brains naturally can cloud their rational brains, especially when they’re a parent of a player. It would eliminate some frustrations if I could explain the reasoning behind what went into each decision during a game. What is often overlooked is when someone runs a wrong play or forgets their role. The smallest missed opportunities can impact the outcome of a game, but people will always look to the coach for where to place blame. When two teams play, one team wins and one team loses, every time. If every failure is an indictment on your record, then we’re all flawed and undeserving. Knowing what lows you’ll likely experience as a coach will help prepare you and ground you when those times come. It’s important that you have a strategy for how to receive and process criticism, overcome adversity, and be free to focus on coaching the sport you love.
We’ll call this paragraph the “Get To’s”. As a coach you get to impact kids every single day and watch them grow into awesome humans. As a coach, you get to spend your time working in a sport which is ultimately a game you’ve loved since you were a kid. As a coach, you get to engage yourself mentally in ways you never thought you would. As a coach, you get to meet all kinds of amazing people who share the same passions and struggles with you. Lastly, as a coach you get to compete which is surely in your blood and always has been. When your perspective changes to a “get to” mindset, you can become an even greater coach.
There are many ways to tell whether someone is an average coach or a great coach pretty quickly. Average coaches care more about the sport than the athlete. Great coaches care more about the athlete than the sport. Average coaches pass over the details for the sake of getting it over with. Great coaches focus on every detail and refuse to accept anything less than perfect. Average coaches are ones that have everyone else do the undesirable jobs. Great coaches are servant leaders. Average coaches focus solely on the on-court/field product. Great coaches focus on building the culture. Average coaches are too busy to come in extra. Great coaches wake up early and go home late so the athletes can get extra work in. Think about coaches you have had that fall under either category. You can easily trace that person back to these attributes.
I’ve been lucky enough to work with some amazing coaches. Here are a couple of traits I’ve seen firsthand that showed me exactly what it takes to be great.
They attended every lower level freshman or JV game. They didn’t just show up 30 minutes prior to their game starting.
They didn’t pawn off the undesirable duties. It is easy to make your assistant coaches run the open gyms and workouts throughout the year.
They are always prepared. There is never a practice where they scribble a plan together real quick or ask the athletes what they want to do that day.
They invest in their assistants. They check in to see how everyone is doing. They help the other coaches achieve their goals.
They invest in the youth program by running camps and showing up to a few youth games.
I’ve also been unlucky enough to work for a couple coaches who, let’s just say, didn’t command the respect of anyone in the room. Here are some examples of what they did or didn’t do to create a bad culture.
They never wanted to come in beyond the bare minimum expectation of a coach. They’d tell their athletes to go find somewhere else to work out or ask another coach or parent to open the gym for them.
They always harped on the negatives. Nothing ever went well. Even the good moments were followed up by criticisms.
They didn’t invest any time into the youth program.
They pawned off the undesirable work to their assistant coaches.
They didn’t give any room for their assistants to grow. Whether it was lack of interest or unwillingness to put in more effort, they didn’t go out of their way to build into their staff and create future leaders.
Be open to feedback from others so that you can catch any of these negative attributes before they snowball into bigger issues. If you catch yourself doing any of these things immediately have a deep conversation with yourself and check your intentions. Here’s the thing: all of these leadership qualities don’t take any skill, it’s all effort. I often used the saying “Control the controllables.” in games. The same concept applies to coaches. It is your responsibility to take care of the little things that simply require effort. Every single person reading this is capable of achieving these positive qualities it takes to be a great head coach.
These are the things you have to accept if you choose to be a head coach. You will miss major holiday festivities. You’re a basketball coach, it’s December 23rd: Your whole family is together to celebrate a meaningful holiday with traditions you grew up with. You now have to make a decision. Do you miss valuable practice time with your team or do you miss valuable time with your family? Spring sport coaches experience the same thing around Spring Break. You are more than likely going to miss out on some significant events. You’ll also miss a lot of family time. Coaching puts a burden on your spouse. It leaves them alone with your home and kids frequently. Here’s something that prospective coaches don’t often think about; You will lose A LOT of sleep. It’s a combination of getting home late, waking up early, and trying to stop your brain from wondering why you lost a game in the middle of the night. There will be days when you get randomly texted asking you to open the gym or weight room at 6:00 AM before school. You do it happily because you’re thrilled that they want to work harder, but that doesn’t change how tired you are. You don’t do this for the money or lifestyle, you do it because you’re a competitor and love the game and care about the athletes.
