Getting Started in Coaching Youth Sports
This page covers the administrative aspects of coaching youth sports.
It really doesn't matter if it is baseball, basketball, football or soccer; there are certain
management or administrative functions for the coach or manager.
If these simple generic responsibilities are not addressed, it can result in a very unpleasant
experience for the coach, players and/or the parents
The main theme in these guidelines is communication.
- Support your Club or Organization
- Attend all meetings with your sponsoring organization or send a designate.
- Support your local program by:
- supporting all of their events
- promoting their programs to your players plarents
- recruiting other volunteers like yourself
- Obtain the required coaching training.
- Connect with the Parents
- Contact the parents of your team as soon as the roster is available to you.
- Discuss your philospohy and approach with the parents.
- Find out any specail needs your players have.
- Establish your assistants and other team roles.
- Communicate a rough schedule early on and let the families know when more detail
schedule will be available.
- Have a Team Meeting
- Communiate your rules for the players and parents and what your expectations of them are.
- Hand out as much information as available, so families can plan
- game rules
- roster
- schedule
- club calendar and information
- Identify all your team assistants, team mothers, etc. and communicate their responsibilities.
- Prepare for Practice
- Pass out a practice plan of objectives in advance. (even if just a guess, change it as required.)
- Announce the plan and goals of each practice at the beginning
- Set a reward for accomplishing all of the practice objectives (like a fun game or treat at the end)
- Involve as many assistants (parents) as possible.
- Divide the players into as many different stations as your assistants to handle, so that the players are idle for a minmum amount of time.