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The Archive
My husband was coaching a very successful girls’ soccer team when his assistant coach decided he wanted to become the head coach. From that point forward, the assistant coach and his wife began positioning themselves to take over the team. I later learned this was not the first t…
I coached swimming at the same high school I attended for almost 10 years. I learned a few years in that the girls succeeded significantly more when we upped team bonding, added more opportunities for small group discussions, let our captains have more control, had more fun, lear…
Three years ago, I walked away from a school rowing program that I believed I would help build for many years to come. I have never coached again. When I accepted the role, it was my first head coaching position. I had only ever coached individual age groups before that, and wit…
I was the head coach of a program for 4 years. Each year I gradually made changes to make our program more competitive (ie: putting younger, more talented athletes on varsity; exposing all athletes to competition). I had a parent who would constantly threaten to go to administra…
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Ask a Question“Sooooo…. Assistant high school coach right here…. Was the interim head until someone else was hired… and demoted me….. but this is my situation…. He does not respect me or value me and my connections with the local Community. He feels I am stepping on his toes and over stepping my role. I need advice before the season begins. He has been blowing off a meeting with our AD and him and I all summer to set boundaries. Any advice would be helpful!!!”
This sounds like a really frustrating position to be in, especially after serving as interim head coach and building relationships within the program and community. My biggest advice going into the season is to shift the focus away from whether he values or respects what you bring to the program and toward getting very clear expectations about your role as an assistant coach. A new head coach is going to have their own vision for the program, and ultimately they do have the authority to decide how responsibilities are divided. At the same time, you deserve an opportunity to have your voice and history with the team heard and to know what is expected of you so that you aren't constantly trying to guess whether you're "overstepping." I would continue requesting the meeting with the AD and head coach, but go into it looking for clarity rather than trying to resolve the entire relationship. Some questions I would want answered are: What responsibilities does the head coach want you to own? What decisions need to go through the head coach first? How should your existing community relationships be used within the program? How should the two of you communicate when you disagree? What does the head coach consider "overstepping"? And as difficult as it may be, I would give the new head coach some room to lead. You have knowledge, relationships, and experience that can be incredibly valuable to the program, but you may need to intentionally step back in some areas that you handled while you were interim head coach. That doesn't diminish what you bring to the team. It establishes a clearer chain of command and even if it doesn't seem like it right now, it will make your environment healthier. You don't necessarily need the two of you to agree on everything before the season starts. You do need to know: What is my role, what authority do I have, and how are we going to communicate when there's a problem? Those are very reasonable things to ask for.
I started sharing my experiences navigating difficult parent and leadership dynamics in youth sports. What I discovered was that coaches from every sport had stories of their own. This site was created so those stories could be shared, and so no coach feels like they're facing these challenges alone.
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