Taking over a new program

Most youth coaches coach their sons for a couple of seasons and are done with it. They move on into other things; take the promotion at work, change to a different job, whatever. A rare few, however, can't find an antidote for the coaching bug. There are meetings where you can confess alcoholism, but so far I've yet to find a gathering of people in sweats and ball caps where you can stand up and say, "My name is Derek and I love teaching young people to tackle each other." For those coaches, taking over a program is inevitable at some point in their careers. They'll either move from youth to a school program, (possibly vice versa), start a new organization from scratch, or otherwise find a way to bring decades of experience and study to a program that desperately needs it. Sadly, a large number of those programs will be bad ones at the start. They'll have seemingly intractable problems. Remember, unless he's moving to a better job somewhere, most coaches don't leave willingly. If he's enjoying even modest success, the average coach would rather hang out where he is than go on a job search and move his family around. Which means you're going to be walking into a difficult situation, and there's no easy way to untangle the Gordian Knot you're facing. The previous coach might have been beloved, especially if he left behind a good program, and you have to fill some large shoes. You can expect to hear someone use the phrase, "That's not how we did it last year," at least once per week for the first season. This blog is specifically written with an eye towards taking over a school program that has not been more than moderately successful in recent years. You already know that you need to win the trust and respect of your players. Remember that anything you tell them they are accountable for, you have to hold them accountable for, or you'll lose their trust. There's a saying from the Armed Forces: "The enlisted man will forgive his officers any indiscretion save two: cowardice and inconsistency." It applies to football, too. To begin with, I would look up the students that played football last season as sophomores and juniors, and I would also put some focus on the junior highs that feed into your program (or on the youth programs that feed into your junior high program). One situation that drives me insane is youth programs and junior highs competing for the same players. I don't think that many football players have the physical ability to play for two teams at once, and most school coaches seem to have it in for the youth programs. I've been told twice by high school programs that they aren't interested in letting me coach any of their freshmen. Personally, I think this is a little dumb. At large high schools, some of those freshmen that could start for the youth program (or at least be guaranteed a certain number of plays because of the Minimum Play Rules) spend entire seasons sitting on the bench. Many of them quit after that one year, and never really get better at football. (It may or may not be relevant, but both school programs had losing traditions.)If you're the school coach, consider what is best for the player, not your program. More often than not, if you encourage a younger player to play for his youth program, he's going to have more success, stay in football longer, and may even turn into a good player for you down the stretch. If you've taken the time to respectfully work with the local youth programs as I mentioned in a previous blog, you should have no problem with the idea of letting another coach develop your younger talent.When it comes to the lower levels, junior highs if you're a high school coach and youth programs if you're a middle school coach, I would be campaigning harder than Hillary to make sure that every player who even walks past a football at Wal-Mart comes out for the new team. (In fact, that's a good recruiting tool, especially for youth football. Ask the manager of the local sporting goods and department stores if you can hang a flier on their rack of footballs advertising your program. Also put up fliers in the local gyms, on bulletin boards at grocery stores and coffee shops, and the like. You can also make sandwich boards like real estate agents use for open houses quite cheaply. Get permission to put them up in front of community events, like town meetings, high school plays, farmer's markets, and things like that. Be creative. Radio stations and cable access channels are required to offer Public Service Announcement time-- go to the stations and ask if you can put together a thirty second commercial for your program. Make sure there is a sign for your program on each of the main roads into your town. Stuff post office boxes with mailers. There are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do, most quite cheaply or even free with a little work.)