Going into my 10th year as a high school head coach I’ve got three simple pieces of advice for coaches that will make life much easier and the coaching experience a more rewarding one.

1 Find a mentor
Being a head coach is basically being the boss. It’s like being the team CEO or the pastor of a church. Sure you have people to answer to, but you can put yourself on a bit of an island.

The amazing thing about finding a great coach to mentor you is that if they’re a “great coach” than they’re going to make an incredible mentor.

I’ve been blessed with several great coach mentors and to my surprise have done mentoring of my own along the way.

2 Write it down
You’ll never say, “I wish I hadn’t written that down.” But guaranteed you’ll have things you’ll kick yourself for not having put on paper.

Keep a notebook with you for the entire season.

What you should have in the notebook:
• Contact info
– Having all the phone numbers and e-mail addresses that pertain to your players, their parents, your administration and other coaches makes life much simpler.
• Schedule
– The easiest way to answer a scheduling question is to have a schedule on you.
• Team rules
– Having these available saves you the hassle and embarrassment of seeming like you are making it up as you go along. It’s much easier to say, “That’s not how it works on this team… see it’s written right here.”
• Document incidents
– If something goes wrong, right it down. Do your “due diligence” and document that. This will save you a lot of grief.

3 Communicate
Coaching is communicating.

Here’s who you need to communicate with:
• Players
– If you can’t communicate with your players… you can’t coach. It’s that simple.
• Parents
– The better you communicate with the parents in your program, the easier your life will be.
• Your athletic department
– The number one thing your athletic department is going to want from you is to know what is going on. If you don’t tell them, they can’t know and that makes them look bad, which in turn is not good for you. Your Athletic Director and Athletic secretary are valuable resources and you should consider them as your closes allies you want to keep in the loop.
• Your administration
– Your administration shares something huge with you… they want your kids to succeed. So let them know when your players have succeeded. They also want to keep those kids on the right path. So let them know when you have an athlete who might be getting off of that path.
• Fellow coaches
- Coaches of your sport at other schools. Having other coaches numbers on your cell phone sure makes life easier. You’ll find that this group can really become your closest community because you share the same interest.
- Coaches of other sports at your school. This group is not your competition. You are working with the same kids and the better you can communicate with them, the better it is for the kids. The goal should be to have “multi-sport” athletes, who don’t feel like they have to pick just one sport to play.
• The media
– OK, this isn’t the Pros, you probably aren’t going to be having press conferences, but you are going to be communicating with the media. Keep this in mind, the better you communicate with them, the better they can communicate about your team. When parents are upset that little Bobby’s school-record setting performance wasn’t in the local newspaper, it’s not the newspapers fault if you didn’t make sure they knew the details.

At the moment there are two middle school and five high school coaching jobs posted for Bend.
Check out theBend La Pine school district link here for all the info.

Among the jobs available are: Summit JV softball, Bend High assistant girl’s tennis, Summit assistant track, Bend High freshman baseball and Summit assistant boy’s tennis.

I had the good pleasure of hearing Bruce Brown (of Proactive Coaching) speak recently at Summit High School in Bend. If you are a coach, you need to know who Bruce Brown is. He is a traveling speaker and author on the subject of coaching sports… and he knows what he is talking about.

A friend of mine played for him and assures me that he is the real deal and what he presents is backed up by his years of coaching and shaping countless young people’s lives. I was really impressed with what I heard him say.

This wasn’t Brown’s first time speaking in Central Oregon, and I’m sure it won’t be his last. You really should catch him next time he does.

In sports there are three relationships that are vital to your growth as an athlete and as a person. They can be broken down in the following directions. I’ll use tennis as my example sport.

UP – This is your mentor/coach relationship. As a tennis player this relationship may be your parent (if they are a knowledgeable tennis player), your private coach or an adult who has taken an interest in your growth. This is a vital relationship. It is the person who teaches you how to play the game, pushes you to work hard and makes sure that you are getting the opportunities you need to get better. A good “Up” is not only working on your game, but your attitude and watching out for your best interests.
• Makes sure that you are getting match play.
• Makes sure that you have the proper equipment you need to succeed.
• Helps facilitate your tennis relationships; setting you up with people to play, coordinating your tennis schedule, clinics, lessons, hitting sessions, matches tournaments.
• Holds you accountable for your attitude and work ethic.

OVER – This is your peer/teammate/competition relationship. If you are a 16 year-old boy for example, this is another tennis player who is in the 14 to 18 year-old range ideally, who is close to you in skill. He is someone who you play against competitively. As the old proverb goes, “Iron sharpens iron.” Having someone close to your age that you can battle against helps you to grow and gives you a competitive outlet. A great fictional example of this is Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow from the “G.I. Joe” comic series, they pushed each other as young ninjas (I’m a nerd, I’ll admit it). A real life example of this is would be Andy Roddick and Mardy Fish.
• Your over can be a teammate, a sibling or a competitor from another team.
• This is the person you hit with regularly.
• This is often your doubles partner.
• You can have more than one “Over” but it is vital that you have at least one.
• Having “Overs” is what makes sports fun and the more “Overs” you have, the more likely you are to stick with a sport.

DOWN – This is your relationship to a mentee and this is the most overlooked relationship of them all. Many young tennis players only have “Up” relationships. Some have “Up and Over” but very few have added the “Down” relationship to the list. The Down accomplishes many things for a young tennis player:
• It teaches them to give rather than take.
• Adds some accountably to a young athlete. A young person may not care about disappointing their “Over” but perhaps having a “Down” will help them to stay on the straight and narrow.
• It helps you understand how your “Up” views you.
• Teaching/mentoring someone often teaches you just as much as it does them.
• The opportunity to be a hero can be very rewarding
• “Circle of life,” “Balance to the force,” “Centergy” … however you want to put it, this relationship makes it all work. If there were no “Downs” there could be no “Ups” and then where would we be?