I admire you desire to be a coach. It's so much fun and so rewarding. Hey, just the other night, my team that finished 11th last year (and won only 1 match) beat the team that finished 7th. It was our FOURTH win of the season. The team's goal is to win SEVEN!!! Wow. How gratifying! There's nothing like coaching. It's awesome. However, it didn't always used to be this way for me. I bumbled and stumbled, said things I shouldn't have said, tried strategies that backfired, and ignored a cancer that eventually killed one of my teams. So before you take your first coaching job, here are a few things that I've learned.
Please try to make sure it's a position with as LITTLE STRESS as possible, if there's such a thing. Regardless of where you are and what sport your coach, you're probably going to have to deal with most of these issues:
- family vacations;
- lights that won't turn on;
- players hurting each other's feeling;
- kids who quit;
- not enough uniforms;
- an administrator or unforeseen activities that force you to cancel a critical practice;
- conflicts with AAU-like programs;
- planning practices & finding drills;
- playing time issues;
- bus break-downs;
- determining your starters and your subs;
- kids losing their eligibility because of grades;
- your team captain breaking a team rule;
- a kid who just broke up with her boyfriend;
- bad weather forcing cancellation of a match 2 hours before you're to play.
All these will take up more time that you can imagine. But if you take the WRONG entry level coaching job, your problems can be so much worse and become so overwhelming that you'll never want to coach again. I once had a former High School player of mine that was considering taking the head varsity coaching job at an inner-city school where I had worked for one year. I told her PLEASE DON'T!! Many of the kids have no self-discipline, there's not enough parental support, not enough administrative support, too much passing the buck and not enough taking responsibility, the program is in a shambles, your practice will be constantly interrupted by stragglers walking through the gym, you will have neither control of the stragglers nor of your own players, on and on and on.
