I "retired" from coaching in 2021 after 20 years at my alma mater. XC only. The first 12 years I also coached the XC Ski team. I came into coaching after a 13 year career in accounting. Had left accounting in late 2000, just needed a break and sort if fell into coaching. At the time coaching was very part time at that school as were most of the head coach jobs - in addition to coaching I started working for a race production company plus I did subcontract work for the company I had been doing accounting for. Over the years the school converted more coaching positions into full time but not XC or XC Skiing until a few years before I left. Over the years the race production company got busier, created new races, went from 1 big race to 3-4 medium/big races and a bunch of smaller races. In around 2012 I went FT with them, stopped coaching skiers but it worked out ok to keep coaching XC.
2020-2021 was of course a really weird year for college athletics (and the rest of the world). I worked hard to put together a meaningful XC program for the team members and I think we did ok, all things considered. Going into fall 2021 I was psyched to get back to real XC, but that summer a few things happened at the school I was at that I felt were incredibly disrespectful to the PT staff and I decided that was enough. Had 7 seniors that year, a really mature group, which was one of the reasons why I felt like it was an alright time to retire. Those guys didn't need a coach as much as they needed a van driver coming out of covid because of the tools we had worked on during 2020-2021.
A couple months later the director at the race production company retired and I was lucky enough to move into his job summer 2022. We're now producing about 15 races a year plus a kids program. I miss coaching every day, especially those perfect fall days for XC, but there's no way I could be doing this job and still coaching too.
Happily, the college's running and ski programs are in great hands. When I had my exit meeting with our AD, who is a friend of mine going back to our undergrad days 40 years ago, I strongly recommended they offer my job to our Women's XC coach, who had also moved into the XC Ski head coach role when I left that job in 2012. They did, and she's doing great and the programs are really doing well.