What makes an athletic program successful

If you only speak to direct supervisors, you are only going to get the perspective of how the candidate communicates with their boss. Once they get to campus, they are going to have to establish great working relationships with multiple stakeholders in the program, and this can help you identify someone who is great across the board, prepare you to help them address a weakness, or deter you from hiring them. Either way, you will have a clearer picture of this individual. Who they are as a person and their communication skills are important, but it is also critical to ensure they are competent as a coach.

Talk through their programming and ask for samples for different phases for the year, how they modify workouts, etc. One month into my role here, our head football strength coach took a new job. This was going to be my first big hire, and I started to do some research and make calls to find candidates who would be a good fit for the position.

At the time, the assistant for football was a young coach named GC Yerry. I had watched GC coach for a month and was really impressed with his interpersonal skills, positive energy, relationship with players, and attention to detail…but to be honest, it never crossed my mind to promote him.

One afternoon shortly after the position opened, I walked into our storage closet to grab something, and the door shut behind me. That same day, I went to the head football coach and said I wanted to consider GC for the job and give him the opportunity to be the interim in order to watch him coach.

After seeing him in that position for a few months, I knew he was the right person for the job. Three years later, he moved on to take a position on the Army football staff, was quickly promoted to the top assistant, and this year joined the staff at Illinois as their top assistant for football.

Once you have great coaches who are also great people and have established your core principles, you can begin to create meaningful roles for your staff.

What is your unique skill set? For us, I break down administrative oversight into a few different categories of expertise:. The staff who oversee these areas have complete ownership of the development of these sub-departments. The goal with this is to evaluate your staff as time progresses. Over time, you will see talent in people shine through, but then it is your job as the leader to let them take it and run with it.

Letting people have the autonomy to shape these sub-departments gives everyone skin in the game and allows for leadership opportunities. When I was hired, one of the major topics that the AD and I discussed was making significant enhancements to our nutrition offerings. The four key areas we wanted to address were:. During this time, we also hired Joel Lynch to come on as a graduate assistant. He was initially responsible for assisting with football and overseeing the programming for track and field.

Over time, he started to take on more and more responsibility as it related to nutrition, including presenting to teams, enhancing our fueling station offerings, creating relationships with nutrition faculty through his course work, etc.

Essentially, Joel grew as a coach and leader while we grew our nutrition department. Your resource for building powerful sports programs. By Kevin Hoffman. You Might Also Like. Log in to Reply. Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Read more ». If not, check it out online! See More See Less. Contact Us Copyright All rights reserved. Box Sparta, MI, The application of risk management in sport. Sports Medicine, 34 6 , Goldstein, E. International society of sports nutrition position stand: caffeine and performance.

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Goal setting and task performance: Psychological Bulletin, 90, Mahoe, S. Five ways to improve communication with your players. Mensch, J. Crews, C. Competing perspectives during organizational socialization on the role of certified athletic trainers in high school settings. Journal of Athletic Training, 40 4 , Miller, M. Emergency Response Management for Athletic Trainers. Mueller, F. National Council of Youth Sports. Report on trends and participation in organized youth sports.

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Introduction to motor behavior: A neurophysiological approach 2nd ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Silva III, J. Psychological foundations of sport. Smith, A. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 6, 5. Sullivan, P. Communication skills training for interactive sports.

The Sport Psychologist, 7, Torre, J. New York, NY: Hyperion. Department of Agriculture. Department of Health and Human Services. Johnson, Ed. All contributing authors are residential faculty members at the United States Sports Academy. Previous Next. Scott R. Johnson, Pamela J. Wojnar, William J. Price, Timothy J. Foley, Jordan R. Moon, Enrico N. Esposito, and Fred J. Share this:. Go to Top. The most basic is school size; does the school have a large number of students to draw to its athletic programs?

A small school system is unlikely to be a dominant player. York has over 2, students and Long Beach Poly has almost twice this amount. School size is evident in the team size. York, for instance has over athletes. The school size allows more students to compete for the athletics program, increasing the possibility of striking it rich and finding athletes that will soon become future stars.

In addition to having a large number of students, the school needs to have competition from neighboring schools. In , the WSC sent four schools to the state cross country meet, a meet where only 25 schools in the state compete. The idea that good competition breeds success makes it hard for small isolated rural schools to mount dominant programs, with most of the leading programs coming from urban and suburban regions.

Economics plays into the location aspect as well. At York High School, there is no predisposition to one sport or another. The students are open to try out different sports, even those that do not have potential for professional economics such as football at basketball.

Another important ingredient in a successful high school athletics program is the coach. While this may seem obvious at first, there are three different ways a coach can create and maintain a successful program.

First and perhaps most importantly is the stability or consistency of a coach. This means retaining the same coach in the same program for a long time. The coach is responsible for creating expectations for his athletes. The coach creates these expectations, which soon become instilled in the program forever.