Why coaches quit

When a college coach comes to evaluate a recruit, they certainly notice the parents who contribute off-color comments and aggressive displays. Granted, the data captured by Syracuse. Enquist points out that the first step to correcting inappropriate behavior is to identify it, which may be more difficult than it sounds. We need to be really clear about what it looks like in its infancy.

If you are the parent walking with your youth coach to the parking lot or calling them up to talk about playing time, you are a helicopter parent. She explains a few key ways for parents to exhibit the type of positive behavior that college coaches are looking for when evaluating recruits and their families:. At the end of the day, the coach, the player and the athlete should all be on the same team. Coaches are doing their best to create the conditions for athletes to be successful, while parents are working hard to ensure their athlete has the best athletic experience possible.

Enquist concludes that if parents, coaches and athletes observe the boundaries of their youth sports, we will get a resurgence in the amateur sport experience. People, who get to remain anonymous on the Internet, get to post about how this coach doesn't know X's and O's, or that coach doesn't know how to get the most out of his players. These anonymous posters aren't at practice every day. What they don't know is that the coach is spending a good portion of his day checking grades, making sure kids get fed, keeping kids out of trouble, giving kids rides home after practice, talking with them about problems they have in their lives.

They are not college coaches. They do not have lavish offices with the latest technology where they can break down tendencies of the other players. If they're lucky, they have Hudl. If they're really lucky, they have Krossover. That's about as advanced as it gets in high school. We continually ask more and more of our coaches. Every year new rules and guidelines come out. More paperwork gets put on their desk. We make them take more educational classes. Yes, the smarter our coaches are and the safer our kids are, the better it is for high school sports.

But when new requirements are put on coaches, they usually are not relieved of previous requirements. It adds to their workload. And keep in mind they still have to do their teaching duties during the day — most of them with a full class load. And the work is now year-round. For example, basketball season doesn't run November-early March.

As soon as the state championships are over, basketball coaches are in the gym working on skill development for the next year. They're doing conditioning and weightlifting. They're keeping up with their players and their grades. In the summer, they spend days and days with them at summer leagues — often times traveling for many days at a time, especially during the month of June.

Then once September rolls around, they're right back to the skill development and conditioning before tryouts happen at the end of October or early November. It's not just limited to basketball either. It goes for all sports. Essentially every single sport is now a year-round commitment. Compensation for high school coaches is criminal at worst and embarrassing at best.

If you were to break down the number of hours a coach spends on his sport, they would not come close to the minimum wage. In Wake County, which is one of the premier counties to coach and teach in, coaches went more than a quarter-century before they saw an across-the-board raise. Now, the district is in year two of a five-year plan to gradually increase coaching supplements and other extra-duty positions to a more modern amount.

But the way the plan was implemented, many of the veteran coaches have seen little or no increase in pay yet. The five-year plan has to be approved year after year by the Board of Education, and as we know, nothing is guaranteed in politics. No high school coach gets into coaching for the money. If they do, they don't know what real money is. But compensating people for their hard work and dedication is a very nice way to show appreciation. It shows that you understand the important role that they play.

For the last few years, Wake County has made a very big deal about graduation rates. We can talk about the way graduation rates have been manipulated to make them go up — a point grading scale, requiring retests and make-up work for late assignments, etc.

But there is one undeniable fact about graduation rates that many don't admit to or understand — there is not a single graduation initiative that is more effective than athletics. The graduation rate of high school athletes is near percent. For real. Because they have to maintain minimal eligibility in order to participate in athletics. So, when driving home from practice or a game, if you are thinking more about the parents than you are the kids it could be time to ask, do I want to continue in this environment?

How many hours do you spend coaching your youth sports team in comparison to the hours you spend at home? Finding the right balance between your home life and coaching a sports team is, as some would argue… impossible. While some do balance the two extremely well, as you may have for years and years, it might come a point where something has to give.

Changes need to be made to preserve and honor your position within your home life. If you let your job as a youth sports coach take over, it will. But will you allow it to continue? How are you sleeping? Can you remember the last time you cooked a meal at home with actual vegetables and drunk water instead of something stronger?

While your life is more than just coaching sports and this stress could be coming from other places, coaching can be a big contributor to the downward spiral in your health. We are not wired as human beings to be angry, stressed and frustrated all the time. Our heart hates this constant state of tension and fear leading to high blood pressure, weight gain and… you can fill in the blanks. It is good to have dreams and aspirations, particularly in your youth. But not for long. But it seems it takes the kids or should I say their parents, much longer these days to realize they are actually never going to be the next LeBron James.

You can continue to try and mentor these kids, showing them the true meaning of playing sports. Or, you pass on this team to the next eager, passionate coach and watch what happens.

There is only so much you can do for these kids in the time you have available. If you find you are bored and unmotivated even before a game, ask yourself why.

Can you regain the love for the sport by reading books, watching videos, taking a course or observing other coaches? Who is that horribly loud person continually yelling at the year-old kid umpiring your 7-year-old softball team?

Who is that coach arguing with the score bench about forgetting to add on a score when you are already losing by 55 points and there is 3 minutes to go? Is it the lack of sleep because of stress?