3-Season Coaches --- How do you have a family?

Well said. I am guilty of "not" doing this. We are not even in season due to Covid. Teams around me were running as teams and I would see them on weekends. I felt internal pressure to do the same. I see teams out starting summer training the day after track ends and I feel like I need to do the same thing. Could not agree more...just need to learn to act.

This is a great topic and one I've thought a lot about. I coached for 10 years from 29 to 39. When you are 29 and totally obsessed about running, it's easy to coach. When I first started, my big sacrifice was I realized I didn't watch a college football any more. No biggie. Near the end when I was about to get married, I started to think "this would be a horrible job for anyone with kids" , working 40 weekends a year. Time to take a break. But the post above shows how one can do it. Excellent post.

Coaching would be so MUCH easier if it was only 1 or 2 seasons. A football coach goes all in for 4 months etc. But I would say that I've learned that both coaching and parenthood have both taught me that sometimes the hand holding doesn't help the kid. It might be good for the kid if you aren't at every single game. It's good for a kid to learn that sometimes a parent has something to do at work that life is about choices. You have a limited amount of time.

But I'd argue with all jobs that the super successful have a hard time balancing it with family time as there is always someone that will outwork you.

Here's my homework assignment to everyone. Go back and look at the NCAA xc team winners for the last 20 years. How many of them have been won by a coach with a kid under the age of 10? I don't think any except maybe Oregon and Maurica Powell. Are there any others?

And the one thing about Oregon is they have a ton of resources and indoors isn't very big.

I think many of the coaches that succeed with it are in marriages where the spouse likes their independence.

How old were Schumacher's kids when he won at Wisconsin? I feel like one of them just graduated HS so they had to be really little in the 05 range right?

Love the home work assignment.

I am a head collegiate track coach. My wife is an assistant D1 track coach. I have enough support and flexibility where I make things work for us. I take my kid to meets, my mother in law shows up to conference track so that I can move from carrying my kid around to coaching. We also have a live in nanny so that we can come and go as we please without having to worry about picking up and dropping off at a day care. I can't even imagine how that would change my life.

If we were both assistants I think it would be beyond hard. We are also pretty laid back. We have friends that are stay at home mom's and dad's that don't agree with or understand with how we do things.

I used to coach three seasons as a head coach. It was too hard on my family, work, etc... I could not even go on vacation ever.

Now I am a head coach of a XC team and I discovered the greatest gig ever in being a volunteer coach in charge of certain disciplines in the other two seasons.

As a volunteer coach I have no paperwork, I don't have to wait for everyone to get rides. No bus duties, and no responsibilities other then to my athletes at meet. For example, I come to practice and work as a hurdle coach which is one of my specialties and leave when we are done.

You really should consider bringing them to practice. Your kids will love being around other kids and the runners always like hanging out and talking to the kids. The sprint coach at our school used to bring her kids and their bikes and they would just hang out and were really nice. All the runners on our team really liked them.

Each particular coaching situation is different, the travel and demands can vary quite a bit. I've had trouble getting assistants because they are worried about the travel and their families, which is fair , its an odd job. But the more I think about it, I think it averages out to your "normal" 9-5 as far as overall time. If anything, I think I have more flexibility and time when looking at the big picture. Also, I don't have indoor track, which is a perk for family time.

When I'm "on," I'm really on. Seasons are intense and I have to manage my time perfectly or else my family or the team suffers, no time for BS. But there are 5+ months a year students aren't in school and my family time goes through the roof during those times.

My kids love having the team over, coming to meets and staying in a hotel, and overall don't seem to notice this job compared to other kids parents jobs. When they get into more formal events later it will probably get trickier, but at 6 & 8 this seems to be working well. I feel fortunate that I get to do something meaningful and something I'm passionate about and have quite a bit of flexibility when not on the road. I do almost all the parent/teacher conferences, dr. appointments, and at least half the shuttling.

My Tips:

- Don't waste time

- Be fully present at home

- Call on the road, bring gifts from the road

- Let your kids see your passion

- Integrate the family with the team.

I'm not perfect at this and this thread was a great reminder to stay engaged and not waste time. I don't think any gig is perfect, every job has tradeoffs for time/money/engagement.

This is difficult. I started coaching at age 25 with a 9 month old daughter. Now she is 21, her sister is 19, and her brother is 12. Luckily my wife is also a competitive runner and very understanding.

I have always tried to spend as much time as possible with my children when ever I was home. For the past 12 years both my wife and I coach together.

My oldest daughter ran track and XC and is now a senior running in college. My middle daughter sprinted and jumped and is now a sophomore in college. And my son is in his first season of XC in seventh grade. So we have spent some time with them as coaches and parents.

Don’t think any of this is probably helpful, but one word of advice is: if you really want to do something you have to do the things to make it happen. You want to be a good coach and a good dad...you got to make it happen. It is possible.

This is an amazing topic that hits home with me. I was a division 1 runner and and went through the typical progression of runner to grad assistant to landing a couple of jobs at smaller schools and then got a job a smaller D1 school. The moves and the crazy schedule were tough on my relationships. I then decided enough was enough and got a teaching and coaching job at a high school. Guess what the hours and time restrictions were even greater. I missed way too many of my own kids events and I remember sitting at the school angry waiting for kids rides to come pick them up after a friday night indoor track meet that got over at 9pm. my own Kids were asleep and didn't get to see them all day. I quit and coaching high school and a couple of years ago started coaching jr high kids. It has been the most rewarding coaching experience. The hours and length of season is so short. The kids absolutely love the sport at that age and i don't miss my kids who are in high schools events.

Great subject. D3 and D1 head coach, club coach and now community coach HS.

It can be done successfully. Took my kids to work every chance I had. There’s more time than you think. Your not recruiting or practicing weekday mornings. Took my kids to breakfast and school. My practices were short and sweet. 1 hour and 45 minutes tops. No wasted time. This is not football where you run the same drill over and over.

And I retired at 65 when I still had the get up and go. Now a community HS coach having more fun than I ever imagined. We’re not digging ditches people- done properly, it’s a great life.

After reading the usual lineup of responders brag about how much they work, I am just not getting it. I really don't understand why a part-time job like high school coach is considered demanding and tragically impact on life outside of work. One of you mentioned a 2-hour practice then 2-hour training. I wonder how many of the kids actually leave school for home at 7 PM. I'm thinking it's actually just 2 hours total. I made the mistake of running HSXC my sophomore year (waste of time; I was already into running and raced on the roads so I learned nothing) and I'm not sure anything ever lasted until 5. So here's a job in which you NEVER work one minute before 2;30 PM. Even if EVERY Saturday is a go (which is rounding up quite a bit; the guy coaching my school's team had like 5 Saturdays, so let's call that 50 for the sake of argument) there is never a Sunday. The standard for a white-collar job was traditionally 2000 hours a year. Seem like even with 3 seasons you can get away with well under half that.

OK, NCAA is going to be a little more time-consuming that high school. I've read RWTB more than once. It's really my only insight into the collegiate scene (having no involvement with it personally) and it seems to me Wetmore works a 15-hour week. I'm rounding up, really, go read it and tally it up. Perhaps I'm not including the hour each semester spent meeting with administrative people who wear suits. I suspect cashing or depositing the checks (that very well may be literally done at the time the story takes place) took quite a bit longer than battling CU bureaucracy. Oh, and Goucher races 5 times during the book. So there are another 15 hours during the 3 months in question.

Look, working until 7 in the evening may be tragic if you started at 7 in the morning. Then the question posed by the OP would make sense. But everybody knows (or so I thought befor checking out this thread) that coaching is pretty casual part-time job. In fact, ther are coaches with a full-time day job who also manage to coach. True, Joan Hunter has nothing to do before school is out, but her husband goes to work, probably early in the morning, then coaches. Someone asking how some stock trader or whatever makes time work. And that job alone may be all-consuming. None with another 40 or 50 hours a week at another job probably would find it overwhelming. The fact that so many coaches are pulling off just that - working what they consider a 'real' job and coaching on the side, after work - proves it is very non-time-consuming and non-demanding. It it really consumed 60 hours a week, nobody would be doing it in addition to a full time day job.

Do you think anyone who coaches high school only coaches? The majority are full time teachers. I go to work at 630am and return home by 530pm. That’s a normal practice day. Throw in 12 hour Saturday track meets and it becomes a grind. You’re not seeing the full picture.

I coached for 19 years, and that was enough. My last year I was occupied about half the weekends; mostly meets, but also recruiting.

You have to have a spouse that understands how important it is to you and is willing to pick up the slack. I also missed out on a few things with my kids. It was nice when my son was older and I was able to coach him.

That is exactly my point. Coaching takes so little time that even with another full-time job it is manageable. Imagine you show up at 2:30 and are home 3 hours later. A few Saturdays and nothing at all to do on Sunday. Now, added to your main job ends up being a taller order. Being ONLY a 3-season coach would be, contrary to the implications of the OP, barely a part-time gig. It is so casual you can do it after work!

I've been doing it for almost 20 years and now have 13/16 year olds. I really cherish the 3 week breaks between seasons, but I've not had that much between Indoor and Out due to New England and Nationals. I've been fortunate to have flexible assistants that understand about family, so we all are flexible and I have rarely missed any of my kids events, maybe a JV soccer game or practice, but I've made most. Saturdays are the toughest. Have an understanding and supportive spouse is key. My wife knew coaching was a big part of my life going in as I was coaching at a local college before we got married. I make my schedules so if I know I have a family event I can try to schedule around it. I've had my share of burn out too, and took two seasons off a few years back and came back refreshed. As much as I want to do everything to the best of my ability you need to understand it still is high school and there is only so much you can do in 2-3 hrs. If you expect more than this from high school kids it's too much in my opinion.

Hold on now.... wrote:

That is exactly my point. Coaching takes so little time that even with another full-time job it is manageable.

Brilliant. Except it ALWAYS comes with another full time job (at the HS level), and it's not easily manageable to do it all well. (See above.)

Thanks for all the replies.

I was talking from a high school coach's perspective. I'm not saying all college jobs are great money, but it is often your main job. All high school coaches I know are either teachers or have a full-time job elsewhere.

So this weekend, we had a meet about 20 minutes from school, out of our district boundaries. COVID has changed some courses to keep away from reserved lodges and stuff, so I got the team there at 8:30 for a 10:30 race so we could walk a few sections of the course. There was not a single flag on the course when we arrived. That host school's coach makes the same amount of money as I do. When the race was over, all kids on the team went home with their parents (I support this), and I took a bus back to school by myself for a 25-minute drive home.

That park is 10 minutes from my house. Athletes don't have to take a bus to the park in our district (10 minutes from school), but can get a ride home from that park. I just felt like I lost more family time than I had to.

It's just stuff like that. It's how every weekend in New York City is a mega-meet invitational from December to March to pay the rent at Ocean Breeze and the Armory. It's deciding to have summer training and how much to charge so you appear legitimate because kids pay thousands of dollars to do "travel" or "AAU" basketball/soccer/lacrosse in front of 0 college coaches because they can't even make their high school team.

Ideal world:

-XC coach, and the track coach lets your write the training for distance runners in track seasons, and you can pop in when you can. If you have to be a paid assistant and go to most practices, fine. But not every Saturday meet.

A DIII Coaches perspective,

I have two kids, currently 5 - 8 years old. I totally agree giving up almost every Saturday during the school year is tough. I consider myself a highly dedicated coach, and I have been successful, winning conference titles when we hadn't before, national qualifiers, a few All Americans. I work a lot of hours 50+, far more when we are traveling overnight. It is a strain, and tough to find a balance. I am very lucky though, I live 10 minutes from my office/track. I often have early morning practices. I will come in for practice, then go home and spend time with my family. I'll have my laptop and keep moving work forward(entries, recruiting, emails), but also prepare meals, play with my kids, let my wife go run errands or go for a run. We have an indoor facility, so half of my indoor meets are at home and finish by 4pm. I get up early and go to the meet, and my wife usually will come and bring the kids. Pre-Covid I would frequently bring my kids to practices, or have my wife drop them off. Kids have great relationships with my athletes who are great role models. Plenty of space at an indoor track for kids to hang out and play, and usually injured athletes or athletes who are hanging around after practice who want to spend time with kids. At the DIII level, I don't have to be a total slave to recruiting. The longer I coach, the more I regret endless recruiting calls to kids who weren't a great fit for our school, or were not really that interested. I try to make as many contacts as I can, but I will focus my efforts on kids who have a good chance of coming to the school. I have multiple events groups practicing on a daily basis, so I can usually get in a workout or run with one of my groups. So I don't spend free time working out. I also have long run with distance runners almost every Sunday, but again its an early practice and then I home with my family the rest of the day.

Young single coaches put in endless time, but its not really sustainable. Some are very successful, but a lot burn out. I'm still pretty early in my career, but I have watched many coaches come and go, because it was a such a drain on them. I also know many successful coaches who have a great work life balance, those were my role models. I have a very supportive AD who has never questioned the hours I work, or time I spend in my office and he shouldn't . I work more hours than any other coaches in the athletic department. I also try to make the most of the time when my team is away. During the summer I spend as much time with my family as possible. Winter Break I got to the office when I need to, but not more, or I take the kids to the office.

If you want to be successful and have balance you need many things. A supportive spouse who understands that you are doing a job you love. A coaching staff the trusts and supports each other, when the coaches you work with can cover a practice or adjust their schedule to help you it makes things far easier. A short commute, coaches spend enough time traveling, its really hard if you can't get to and from home quickly. The perspective to know when its time to go home.