Advice in Looking Coaching Jobs

bump, interesting question.

Stick with your successful high school program. It's way more fun, enjoyable, and rewarding. And if you teach, it's probably more lucrative.

Talking about your training philosophy (not personal, i.e., are you hands-on or hands-off?) is a risk unless you know that you're compatible with the coach you are applying to. If he's a Coe-style philosophy and you say you're Lydiard, there goes your application in the circular file. If the coach wants to know your training methods, he'll ask you.

What you do talk about:

Win-loss records and your role in that.

Coaching certifications (USATF or USTFCCCA).

Athletes recruited, running in college, titles like NTN, Footlocker

Athletes in key invitationals like Arcadia or Mt. Sac.

Number of athletes you've coached.

Years of coaching experience.

Academic training (some colleges want psychology course work)

Were you an NCAA/NAIA/JC athlete in the division you are applying to? D1 programs like mine want people with D1 competition experience as an athlete in many cases

You might mention names of some key successes and your involvement.

@ Coach D

Thanks for the input. Honestly, I know my attempts are a bit of a longshot. My experience with running is almost of an autodidact. No coaching in high school. I picked my college for academics and not for the ability to walk-on a team. I just stayed enthusiastic with it. The success I had coaching is modest and more on the regional/local level. Track/XC is not viewed as a serious sport in the local community; almost more of something to get in shape for other sports. The best athletes who could develop into a high level runner will be playing basketball, soccer or lacrosse. Part of the struggle was just actually convincing a core of runners to run year round through winter and spring track. That said, we developed a solid team with some runners that have the potential to run D1 or D3 after next year.

This might sound naive, but I would assume the cover letter is addressed to the athletic director?

@ stay home

Honestly, it is more about making a career change. I am currently a white-collar professional who hates his career choice. I am not a teacher and don't have the certifications to become a teacher. It is probably just as much of a longshot to get a job coaching as it would be getting a job as a teacher.

Also, as I said, the community does not value the sport. School won't allow a middle school program to develop interest at the high school level. The school is also likely to cut winter track for next year. Without a year-round program, whatever chance of sustained success is extremely limited.

slopenguinrunner wrote:

@ stay home

Without a year-round program, whatever chance of sustained success is extremely limited.

Uhhhh. Not true. Don't know where you got this idea. Plenty of schools don't do winter track and do an excellent job with their athletes in the spring.

Well, yes and no. Brianna Gess of Haddonfield can still rip off a 4:48 1600m as a freshmen just coming off of basketball. However, given that she was sub 5:00 as an 8th grader, I'd say genetics, as opposed to training, was more on her side. Same could be said of Brett Johnson over at Oregon. He spent some of his winters playing basketball for Ocean City in high school. But I think he was already sub 4:30 as a freshmen.

However, if you are trying to turn 24:00 5k runners into 17:30 guys (not great, but decent depth at the 6th 7th spot), they need to run year round.

As I said previously, we don't have a community that supports track and xc. The best athletes either got a ball or a stick in their hands and are committed to it once they are in high school.

They don't need to be involved with a team year round. That is different from running year round but even that can be minimal for a couple months. It sounds like what you mean is that with the support and interest you are working with, if they don't run in the winter, for many, that will be it and they will never run again.