Coaching High School

It is the off season for high school soccer here in Ohio. There are a few job openings in the area and I have been approched about some of them either to judge my interest, make a recomendation or called upon as a reference for someone else.

Coaching high school athletics is difficult. Long hours, little pay and politics make this an endeavor of love for the game and the athletes you work with.  It is not for every coach.  And as I have learned there are distinctive differences between coaching boys and coaching girls.



A coaching colleague recently asked for my input regarding a potential personnel decision he will be facing next fall. In short, he will have a junior goalkeeper who stepped up to play the position when no one else was interested. There will also be an in-coming freshman GK who is already light years ahead of where the returning player is.

My response was this;  "If it were boys I would recommend going with the best player, period." However, he coaches a girls team and experience has taught me with girls it's all about relationships. 

Some time ago I had a high school team with a good senior class, an extremely talented freshman class with a very talented sophomore in between. The overall talent was good enough I believed we could compete for a state title... if we played the best 11 players.  The goalkeeper position in particular was a sticking point. There was a senior who was "one of the gang" but never really embraced the position. There was also a junior who was passionate about the position but not in good enough physical condition to meet the expectations for the position consistently.  And then there was a freshman who was far more athletic and instinctively better than either upperclassman.

The senior who wanted to play on the field realized she was not good enough to start at her favored position and so decided she would remain the goalkeeper.  She was the third best we had at the GK position, but as a senior returning starter felt entitled to keep it. Her senior classmates wanted her to be the GK even though they knew she was not the best option and so she was.  I knew she would cost the team a chance to compete for the state title and she eventually did.

It was a strange situation for me as I remain convinced to this day that had I been allowed to play the best players, we might have won state that year. We were that talented and especially the freshman class.   The seniors cared more about sharing the on-field experience with their classmates than they did about the teams ultimate potential.  It was a very successful year, resulting in the programs first ever winning record, a league championship and Sectional and District crowns, but it could have been so much more. Had I been able to start the five freshmen who earned the right and deserved to start based on merit we might have played for a state title.

Guys tend to take a more pragmatic approach to situations like the one described above.  The best players start and play the most.  This is not only accepted but expected.  Sure, there are times when subjective opinions concerning who is the best player for a position are debated, but generally amongst teammates and even on the individual level, they know.

I know I am a good coach.  I know the players that year were talented.  Overall that senior class and I were not a good match for one another. That happens and probably more often than we recognize it occurring.  So when talk of open positions and candidates to fill them comes around to me I try to take into account whether a potential coach, me or someone else, is a good match for the program and community.

Of equal importance is the relationship between coach and athletic director.  A coach must know he has the support of the athletic director.  Elsewhere on this site is an article titled Imagine if you will concerning specific roles of coach, player, referee and spectators at a soccer match and how the quality of the experience is diminished for all when lines between each role become blurrred.  The same is true for the relationship between coach and athletic director.  So this also becomes a factor in finding the right coach for a given program and community.

I encourage anyone contemplating coaching high school athletics to go in with an open mind. Explore opportunities and find one most suited to you instead of jumping at the first chance that presents itself.  That first opportunity might be a great one, or not. You owe it to yourself to do everything you can to make sure it is a good fit for you.