Thinking about leaving coaching

It's what these beta males on this website do. They can't handle when someone tries to be realistic with them. And the reality of it is that over 50% of marriages fail. The wife complaining about the husband's job is a huge red flag. She shouldn't have married him and had a kid with him if she didn't like his career choice.

Unpopular opinion: people who are married or have young kids shouldn’t get into coaching or leave after you start a family. Coaching is basically a job for single or older people: late afternoons, weekends, and low pay. It goes against everything family life is

Can we band together to get this troll banned. Seriously just a horrible person and compulsive lier.

Probably should, but having a schizo on the threads is kinda fun

I left an NAIA coaching job after 6 years. I miss it. I love coaching. But I am doing a job tangentially related and it involves both running and some coaching advice along the way. I do not regret leaving the coaching job, but I had something nice to fall back on. I don't know what I would have done if I felt like I had no alternative. I hope you are able find peace in your job AND family. It can be really tough.

But this is my first thought: Family comes first. If you can't make peace within the family, I think you have an answer, right?

This. I gave up coaching in my late 20s, once I started a family. I won’t go back till my mid 50s when all my kids are grown. Rate now I’m in my mid 40s. I miss it and was very good it at. However I figure I could still coach for 20 years.

You’ve successfully announced insights from your coaching career. You probably should look into some extra counseling, but it’s getting time for some actionable steps.

Write down 20 or so “I Wish That___.” statements. Be real, what do you want to be different.

Follow that up with a list of “It would be helpful if ____.”

You are posting here looking for permission to leave coaching, encouragement to stay, or delaying some real work on changing your situation. This does not need to be an all or nothing decision. You can ask for help creating alternative solutions and you surely have someone who will listen to your dilemma. But when they ask, “How can I help?” What will you say?

Don’t you dare keep talking through this with Chat GPT. You are thinking about creating a better life for yourself and your family. It’s tremendously difficult. So put in the work.

Keep one thing in mind: while teaching high school does not pay the same as many jobs (often requiring a JD, MBA, MD, etc.) almost all school districts enable teachers to retire with a pension, usually at least 50% of their highest salary, if not higher. Other than civil service, such as policemen, firemen and the like, almost no businesses have such a thing any more. It can make a huge difference when you retire. It is also almost impossible to lose your hob, unless you commit a felony or do something outrageous. Plus, teachers have summers off, as well as all of the school vacations. You can always go back to coaching, granted at the high school level, when your kids are older, if you want to spend the time given your love of the sport.

You're a father and husband so error on the side what is best for your family. Thinking like a single person is the quickest route to divorce which you'll regret more than keeping any job. You can always find ways to coach.

Bro just grow up and start being a husband to your wife and a father to your child. The sacrifices you're making are worth it if you're single or if you're making a decent living. Otherwise get a haircut and get a real job.

I used to be an assistant coach at a D2 college in the Midwest and now my official title is Associate Athletic Director of Marketing and Fan Experience at a mid major in the south.

College athletics is rapidly changing as you know. I wouldn't be surprised if cross country and track is eliminated from most D1 programs in 5-10 years. Revenue sharing is changing priorities among most athletic directors.

With that said, I think you can always have a discussion with your sport supervisor and let him know your thoughts. If you like working with student athletes there are multiple positions in a athletic department you might be able to slid into with little to no experience. Student athlete support services don't exactly work weekends you know and they get paid more than most assistant coaches do.

The nights and weekends that I work are mostly on game days but I don't have to work every sport. In the fall I have most of my weekends to myself. My wife and I get to do things around town. She knows when basketball season hits, I have to work 15-17 home games. If the game is at 7pm on a Saturday I get into the office at 4 and I leave a 9. If we had kids they could come to the game.

I don't know how coaches that coach Olympic sports do it. You start having kids, personally, I'd say coaching is not worth it. Your wife needs to be 100% all in.

Leave your wife not your job.

No brainer.

Coaching is rewarding and very, very fun for a track/XC fanatic. But it's hard work with poor pay and inflexible hours. I think it's much better suited to being a second career or semi-retirement hobby once kids are out of the house.

Bingo. And in a lot of locales, it’s more like 80% of highest salary. If someone retires at 60 and lives to be 90, that’s like retiring from teaching with 3 or 4 million $$ in the bank.

I’m not saying teaching is easy; I’d never want to do it (though I used to “teach” at work), but I can see how the stability, retirement, and flexibility for family is attractive, particularly if there’s another bread winner in the house. And, by the way, the person who had the greatest impact on my life was my high school coach.

Left coaching this year. Thought I would regret it but I don’t. May work a lame 9-5 and not have a month off in December or July, but I am home on weekends and can attend all family events without guilt.

You say you aren't really prepared to do anything else. What's your wife's background and what did she do for work? What about you quit your coaching job and stay home with the kid while she works instead?

My college XC team (Swarthmore 20 years ago) had one full time coach and two assistants, and one of the assistants had a day job as a biomedical engineer. Would something like that work for you? What about being a HS teacher who also coaches the school’s team?

In the scheme of things, teacher do ok. If you factor in the ability to get a summer job and the pension, it actually looks pretty good.

This post raises a lot of interesting questions, and provokes strange feelings of empathy.

Questions:

1) Can you expand on why you love coaching so much? In what ways does it give you a sense of purpose? What about it makes you so happy? Would any of these aspects of coaching be transferrable to another profession or coaching situation? Why is a poorly paid assistant coaching position at a mid-major preferable to a better-paid position coaching high school? What do you get from coaching at a mid-major that you couldn't get coaching/teaching at a high school?

2) Does your wife plan to work? If so, when? If not, why? Does your father-in-law provide financial support? Does he and/or your mother-in-law provide significant childcare support? If not, he should STF up, and you can tell him I said so. What HER friends think is wholly irrelevant, unless one of them is prepared to hook you up with well-paid employment.

Observations:

Some other people have said it already, but coaching as an assistant is a single-person's game. My next-door neighbor is a fairly young head football coach at a small high school. For the job, he's pretty well-paid. During football season, he's gone in the morning when I go out to run (before 6AM), and he's often not home when I take the dogs out for the last walk of the night (~10PM). He has a wife (she works) and two kids. Their existence looks pretty miserable to me from the standpoint of the amount of time sucked up by coaching. I have often thought to myself that there is no way I'd coach after I got married, and DEFINITELY not after I had kids. But those are my priorities, not yours.

It's fine to have a 'fun' poorly-paid job when you're just out of college, and single. But when you get married and have a child (and where there's one child there often another on the way), and have to start providing not only for the immediate needs of a growing family, but also for your and your wife's future (think savings, retirement, investments), then you have to stop thinking in terms of 'fun' and start thinking in terms of long-term security.

Good luck, son.