I'm coming back to this thread to do something I wanted to do last year, but ultimately decided against. Long story short, I took the advice of a poster on this thread and volunteered as a distance coach during the 2025 outdoor track season. I experienced many things during this time, some of them good, some of them humorous, and some of them so idiotic and infuriating that I compiled a memorandum of all the ridiculous things that our "worst high school track coach ever" did during my volunteer coaching stint.
Firstly I want to say I am beyond grateful for the athletes that I worked with. It was a joy to aide them in their growth on and off the track, and I still have regular contact with most of them. Second, I don't mean any ill-will towards this particular coach (who I think is no longer coaching), and I'm thankful for the opportunity he gave me despite all the difficulties and stress. I see this as a terrific learning experience and maybe some readers out there will enjoy hearing about this adventure.
I'm basically copying and pasting these straight from my document and most events are in chronological order:
First practice 500,400,300,200,100. No timing just kids running all out. No differentiation between sprints and distance. Basically, time trialing.
Asked me to have distance run 3-4 x 300 before we did our run. That did not happen.
Cancelled practice for wind. Didn’t text me to let me know.
Had a 400m time trial for everyone (not the biggest deal but no one was in good enough shape for it to mean anything or be productive). Only 1 lap + drills warmup. He wanted to have distance run an 800m time trial the next day. I asked to push it to 2 days later so my athletes have a chance at recovery and said “that’s it?” when I said we were going to do
a 20-minute run the next day (these kids had no aerobic base whatsoever).
Didn’t show up the day of the 800-time trial and didn’t let me know. I had no clue what to tell sprinters. The girls coach gave them a workout. I was going to tell him we were not going to do one since no one was in good enough shape and it was quite pointless after doing a 400. It was obvious to me that these kids need training, not racing. Instead, we did 10 min run, 5x20s hills w/ 2m active recovery, 5 min CD.
His “right hand man” the head basketball coach and throws/jumps coach got into a fight at Buffalo Wild Wings with the bouncer and a former student/athlete a few weeks prior to the track season starting and didn’t get fired. Head track coach allegedly can’t pass his test to get his actual teaching license (been on a provisional license for 3 years) so he’s leaving after this year.
Next practice he actually bothered to show up, and while he, I and the girls coach were talking, he was busy watching a basketball game on his phone, commentating to himself. Before the team split up after team warm-up, he asked me if we were going to be here (the track) or over there (a loop we use for all of our runs). I started by saying, “we are going to start over there” and before I could even finish explaining the training he took my fastest runner away from me by saying “(athletes name), you’re with me for 10-15 minutes then you’ll go over there.” This athlete wasn’t at the previous days practice, so I was going to have him do a different workout than everyone else, but I never got a chance to explain that. He then had this athlete run 5x400, no real warm-up, no paces prescribed, and he only timed two of them. One of them was a 57. This tells me he had my runner run five 400s basically all out, with very little rest as he was done 10 minutes later. After practice, one
of my athletes stayed and talked to me for about 45 minutes. He talked to me about numerous things but I was especially pleased to hear that he is so glad to finally have good coaching. He said he has learned more from me in just a few practices than he ever did with the head coach. He said whenever he asked him simple questions, the response was usually, “YouTube,” and when he asked him how to run the 800, the head coach told him, “stride.” He also said that he is really starting to love running and wants to get better and do the work (that felt good). But one thing that confirmed my suspicion was when he told me that before I got there a few practices ago, the head coached asked the distance runners, “what do you rate (my name)’s workout on a scale of 1-10.” Note, this was the day after an easy day, so my athletes didn’t really know how to answer this. One athlete told him they rate it a 5, and the head coach said “I’m worried he’s not working y’all hard enough.” These kids could barely run a mile without stopping at this point. A 20-minute run is hard enough and will make them so much better than some asinine sprint session. They can’t even handle a traditional track session yet. This is exactly why his runners in the past were so bad. He never had them actually run, just do sprint training and say “stride.” I am the only coach there not getting paid, and I do the most work for my athletes. I run or bike alongside them, demonstrate drills, exercises, etc., and bring my own equipment for additional strength work. I never see any of this from the head coach. And the fact he will
talk behind my back to my athletes about his concerns, cut me off mid-sentence to pull my athletes away from me without addressing me directly about training concerns, is a serious issue that cannot continue
Did not consult me about who to put in which races for the first meet. He is completely absent from their training.
Cancels practice for a drop of rain.
4x800 at the first meet starts at 10 AM. He organized the bus to leave school at 9:15 AM, and it takes 20 minutes to drive there.
Told an athlete the night before the first meet (9 PM) that he had not done his concussion testing and couldn’t go. Why wasn't this brought up earlier?
At our first track meet, he told one of my athletes after splitting one second off of his PR in the 4x800, “you look like you need speedwork.” It was this “speedwork” that overworked, injured, and stagnated the distance runners the last 3 seasons. While I’m on the infield running from start line to 200m mark repeatedly, he’s up in the stands doing eff all even when HIS sprinters are on the track. If he was on the infield when his sprinters were running, he wouldn’t coach at all and wouldn’t even go talk to them after their race. At the end of the meet he said to me “they got some work to do,” I don’t know if he was talking about my athletes or everyone, but I said, “I think today was a great step forward,” everyone was either within 1-4 seconds of their PR or set new PRs off of just 3 weeks of proper training (none of these kids trained on the off season), but it's not like he was watching or checking results so he didn't know that. Then, when he left, he said bye to one of my athletes next to me, but did not tell me bye, so I said, “see you Monday,” but got nothing in response. I think this bit of passive aggressiveness is due to the fact that because I show my athletes I care about them and their progress, it inherently makes him look like a bad coach. I simply care about my athletes and will do what it takes to make great things happen; he will not even watch their race. He doesn’t even know what time his athletes run until they come tell him.
For the rest of the season he kind of just stayed out of the way and seemed like he cared less and less each day about the season. His sprinting crew slowly dwindled to the point only a couple were showing up for practice. Somehow the athletes who refused to attend practice regularly were still allowed to compete at the meets.
If he did give input, it was mainly made-up stuff like “yeah if he just had that second wind on the last lap” or the typical bad coach jargon like “stride the backstretch” (I actually heard him tell one of his sprinters this as they came around the first turn of a 400).
I think a great example of the total lack of cohesion, commitment and culture he has imbued on this team showed at our district championship meet. Of course, all of my runners were there and were excited to compete and had high expectations of themselves, while only TWO of his sprinters bothered to show up. My guys and girls ended up having a fantastic meet with PRs nearly from every runner, and one guy PRd in the 800 by 11 seconds. I left as soon as my runners were done because I had work the next morning despite the meet not being over, and when I went to our team camp to get my stuff he was sitting on the bleachers with his head in his phone, not paying a bit of attention to what was happening.
I had an athlete qualify for state and I was the only coach that showed up. Since I’m a volunteer, I don’t get any of the credentials or any of the info on packet pickup, so when it comes time for my athlete to race, she tells me the officials said she needs a bib to race. I immediately start running around asking officials where the packets for each school are and
explaining my situation, but each one looks at me with indifference and offers no useful information. After talking to an official who told me “yeah I’m not sure what you’re gonna do,” I went into a small building that was, unbeknownst to me, the officials HQ. An official asked me what I was doing and I explained my situation for the umpteenth time to which he walked me back over to the official I was just talking to and had him pull out a random bib from a box sitting right in front of him. I delivered the bib with literally less than a minute to spare and she ended up earning all-state honors.
And there it is. Once again, I do not harbor any hatred or bear any grudge against this coach. After all, this was a year ago at this point. It's humorous looking back at it. If anyone is curious, I unfortunately did not get to coach my brother at his high school because he suffered a detrimental injury that was unavoidable and still bothers him to this day. Thanks to all those who had input on the first post. That brief high school coaching stint feels like a "canon event." Glad I did it.
