Thinking about leaving coaching

I’ve looked it up and it’s untrue. He also lists times he’s run that are verifiably untrue based on his real racing results online. He said that he’s run 1:52 in the 800 this year with no result to back that up. He says that he’s run 4:18 in the road mile this year — Barett Dahl has two mile race results listed for last indoor season: 4:59 and 5:18. He deceitfully blurs out the finishing banner on a YouTube video of his “American road championship 12k” so that he can lie and say that his 36:59 was for a 12k and not a 10k. He ran 26:08 for 82nd out of 88 finishers at a 7k in September of this year. And he claims that he’s broken 32 in the 10k despite no result? Malarkey.

I’m supposed to believe he’s a coach with that track record of lying? You know he’s a pathological liar and yet you choose to defend him. Absolutely bizarre.

This is a tough one. My gut reaction is to encourage you to make coaching work - find a better balance and give less to your job while giving more to your personal life / family so you can keep doing what you love.

If you are from Virginia, and you are a boy and not an adult man, why in the world do care so much about his job and personal life? Hes not going to stop posting here or doing what he's doing, and the only reason you say he's not a coach and make up stupid crap lying about his times and career is because you haven't reached maturity yet and you are still young enough to not understand that life time is precious and our days on earth are numbered. Older people don't act the way you do, and they also dont invest 100 percent of their energy and belief system on "hyper googling" a stranger on the internet who you should nothing about. Whats saddest about all of this is that idiots your age believe everything that artificial intelligence tells them about others. The sole fact that youbincest so much effort in Dahl and not on yourself and your improvement is the without a doubt a reason why you will never be as a fast as him.

But, OP, if you cannot land this gig, I second the advice about going to be a HS teacher and coach. Yes, the pay isn’t great starting out and the job is more or less glorified babysitting, but your fulfillment will come from the 20% of students or athletes that you can reach every year and change their lives for the better. Not the 80% who don’t want to be there at all.

Teachers get a lot of time off. Yes, I know many teachers who would protest that statement or claim that it’s a reasonable trade off with the low pay, but they get more time off than anyone I know. I have a neighbor who’s a teacher in a “hard to hire” subject (just basic math) who is home ten weeks every summer. Not 12-13, but 10 is still solid. Home every Christmas break. Takes his family to all inclusive trips to the Bahamas or Mexico every Fall and Spring break. Full week off for Thanksgiving.

He used to coach, actually won a state title, but he got burned out on it and decided he wanted to leave school by 2:30 every day (he has his last two periods free for grading, office hours) to pick up his young son and spend time with him. He doesn’t enjoy his job anymore, but he’s sticking around because the hours and pension are so good. Plus, when he retires in a few years, he can still teach and “double dip.”

It’s not for everyone but it’s not a bad life. Maybe you’ll take your cross country team to state and coach a couple sub-4:00, sub-9:00 guys…

Sounds like she has her support lined up in case there is a divorce.

If I could do it over, I'd choose my family over coaching.

I coached for two years, but gave it up when we had our first of four children. I never regretted that decision. One of my colleagues was a wrestling coach and his wife and kids were involved all along the way and it worked for him. It would not have worked out for me. My son was competitive at the state level and I got to influence him and all his friends.

Yes, I would like to have coached all these years, but everything else worked out - four kids, all independent with good educations, still married, etc. My only regret now is that my teaching job took too much time away from family time when my kids were young. That would have been a bigger regret had I coached as well.

The previous coach took a juco job and you don't have a facility. You get paid less than the HS coaches in the area, but more pressure and stress. You coach at a place committed to football, and they are cutting xctf to fund it. Whatever you decide, don't stay in the current situation much longer. It's a dead-end college coaching job.

Also one thing to ask yourself is:

How realistic is it that I will get a better job in coaching?

with where the NCAA is headed, programs being cut/ defunded, NIL, transfer portal, recruiting services etc. do you think you’ll succeed enough to get one of those high paying jobs?

When I coached we won conference, qualified kids to nationals, broke school records but I didn’t sniff a big paying job that I wanted. They don’t open that often. I did have some opportunities to go to P4 schools but with 0 scholarship and emphasis from the head coach. Places where they turn over the XC coach every three years. Even then they pay below the corporate world.

Also it was discouraging to see people i really respected NEVER get an opportunity at a big job. People that were way better than I was.

Lastly, look around at the coaches over 40. Most are divorced and half have a drinking problem. It’s a hard industry

I like how you can state something as obvious as "coaching track at a private HS is a good job" and people will downvote that statement. WTF?

I know. And your advice was good. Frankly, teaching and coaching at a private high school is probably the best gig of all…

Plus, from a coaching standpoint, kids are more impressionable and have more upside in high school. I think I’d rather try to win state in high school cross and develop a handful of sub-9:00-9:15 guys than coach college guys, many of who will plateau or lose interest.

But, personally, the only way I would teach is if I could teach AP math or science exclusively, classes where at least 50% of the kids actually wanted to be there…

When's this retard getting banned? Ruins every single thread here.

You got downvoted for this bigtime.

But you are certainly correct with your second comment.. Doing something you don't enjoy for years and years can exact a huge toll on you.

He has already shown the self awareness that he isn't cut out for a lot of things.

It is really tough to find something where the compromise is acceptable.

There is a trade off no matter what you do.

Family is more important than a job; if you can't do both pick the family. With that said you can have a family and coach. Just find more balance.

I am a mid major coach with three kids at home. They are school age and have activities of their own. I am not working a ton over winter break, nor am I that busy in June/July (or the back half of May if no one makes first rounds).

I try to recruit during the day, limit the evening phone calls and the overall number of visits that take place during the weekend. I do not schedule Saturday races and make sure Sunday practice is wrapped up by Church. Admittedly, I don't go to every track race. If a meet only has the bottom half of the roster entered, I am staying home and watching the better athletes workout (this is going to be unpopular with some people). The coaches who don't travel in the fall and want to compete every weekend in track are going anyway, and I can get splits from results.

In the fall I can do early practice and beat my kids home from school. Only on double T days do I get home after them. In the Spring I check out when the workout is done and I don't shoot the breeze, or stay for cooldown. So even if I don't beat my kids home I can be home in time for dinner/coach little league/drive to piano practice etc.

I use to work longer hours, spend more time with the athletes, and generally frustrate my wife when my older kids were infants, and guess what...my team was not consistently any better.

Since I have gotten established and been at a school long term I have found coaching to be a relatively flexible job. Hours can be long for travel, but dead when school is out. No one really cares if I am in the office or not, they just care about where we finished at Conference. Honestly, I am not home right now, only because the kids are in school and my wife needs some time to get her job done without me distracting her (work from home).

You can find balance, just keep in mind coaching is a job (a fun, but not a particularly profitable one) not a life style. So treat it as such. When you count the work portion of the day I spend running myself, I probably work a lot less than the normal people I associate with.

The short point being this...coaching is not a hard gig, if you don't allow it to be.

It’s really only a decision that you can make and if you do want advice, it should be from someone that knows both you and your wife.

Get a little counseling and see if you can reach a healthy mutually beneficial equilibrium. Maybe she has some underlying issues that need attention and it could be that you do too... You could always do the online coaching thing although perhaps that market is oversaturated. Alternatively, you could coach MS or HS or even a community running group. Athing Mu is in the market--perhaps you could reach out...

Maybe doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

you could teach for a while then find a d2 or d3 school where there is more work/ life balance and you are supported and if you are in charge you can also set boundaries with work for yourself.

at those levels the whole staff is also less likely to be let go because it’s more about recruiting for job retention than anything- and maybe you just remove the option of “moving up” and enjoy doing what you love at a slightly lower level.