College coaches with families… was it worth it?

I coached for almost my entire teaching career. I really have mixed feelings. I know I really helped out a lot of student-athletes & changed a lot of lives. That's pretty amazing! I don't think many people can say that about their lives.

But, I gave up many nights & weekends with my family...and a lot of free time for my own hobbies & interests. No family vacations. Missed going to concerts. Lots of stopping at fast food restaurants after practice/meets versus eating with my family.

Was it all worth it? I don't know. While coaching, I really enjoyed it & knew the good I was doing (for my athletes beyond the wins & loses). But, as I am now removed from coaching & I reflect on life (as a whole), I really wish I had more work/coaching/life balance.

My two cents. Sorry I'm not much help.

Nah I quit to make more money and have more time.

2.5x the pay for 1/2 the effort.

It’s easier on the other side. I feel foolish sometimes that I tried so hard with coaching. Felt like an uphill battle everyday. The university/ admin didn’t care and cut support every year. Athletes were barely into it and I felt like I was walking on egg shells. Students were always looking for something to complain about

I posted this in the college coaching thread. Read through that thread, it's more about coaching than just job openings.

College coaching is a young man's game (and more recently very much a woman's game.)
All the things you pointed out are great... when you are in your twenties. What is very difficult:
-getting married, is she OK with you being gone every weekend? Is she OK moving every few years to the next gig, the next move up? Is she OK living in some of these small college towns? Does she have career aspirations and can she achieve them living in Richmond KY (as an example)?
-when your friends and peers are starting to make six figures, earning bonuses, and buying homes, new cars, taking nice vacations and you are... making $40k and renting and moving every few years.. can you deal with that?
-can you deal with being swept out when they want to "go in a new direction"? The new AD has a friend, is enamored with someone former Olympian with no coaching experience but they got that OLY thing by their name, maybe it's a change for a more diverse coaching staff...
Being able to go running with the team is great and all, but it won't pay the bills. If you can get somewhere and stay, I agree that it's a great gig, but doing that is not easy.

Every job has it's pros and cons. The sports world, music and entertainment don't fit into M-F, 9-5 boxes though which can be hard on relationships and families.

The vocations mentioned come with upsides and downsides, mainly how uncertain that they are and the margins between success and failure are thin and often out of your control. Resources, support, co-workers, opportunities, etc. can make or break you and money can't be a motivator. You really have to have a purpose beyond the stats, results and accolades because those come and go like dust in the wind.

I coached for over 30 years at all levels and believe if you want to be a successful college coach you better have a very understanding spouse. I couldn't do the college coaching and maintain a solid relationship. High school is great, you can get your spouse involved in meets and fundraising and being the team mom. I just was not cut out for college coaching - weekends are for meets and recruiting in the evening plus administrative work- I personally was not cut out for it. Also, no real job security.

I coached 19 years at the college level. The hardest, and best decision I made was getting out at age 45. I had an understanding wife, but living in different towns, the travel. I was gone half the weekends a year. Looking back I don’t know how I did it.

College coaching is a lifestyle decision. Definitely a conversation your must have before getting married and starting a family. True there are many negatives - long hours, time away, weekends. The flip side is that if it is what you want to do. You're not wearing a tie just to stare at a computer 8 hours a day. (Yeah, I know. Who does that now?) When you find a good situation - even if it is not "big-time", you can make a good lifestyle out of it. Many private colleges offer family tuition benefits - thus your kids finish college debt free. Raising a family in a college town has a high quality to it. You can make the schedule. You don't have to travel far away each weekend - go to meets where you are back home on Saturday night. A competent staff can share the workload regarding travel. In days of old track & swim coaches used to be college instructors as well. Those are the ones who stayed at the same school for 30 years. At the upper level, it is getting harder. Attitudes are different. Athletes who don't make conference qualifying standards expect compensation. Parents are unrealistic or are helicopter parents. In the old days it was the 'one-time' transfer and that was manageable. Now the openness of the transfer portal has gotten out of control.

9-5 is a myth.

Just my thoughts as a small college coach. I started as an assistant on a bigger level (D1). The time requirement (even as a not very good program) especially during track seasons was tough. Gone every single weekend, typically leaving Thursday and not back until very late on Saturdays. I wasn't married or didn't have kids at the time so it wasn't much of an issue but even for me someone that loves the sport - it was very tiring and not something I would want to do with kids (miss too much).

Fast forward to now, nearly 20 years later. I'm married and have kids. I now coach on a lower collegiate level and have a distance only program and I miss very few of the big events or moments with family - my oldest runs middle school xc and I was at 6 of her 8 meets. With the distance only program we can have our cross country success (which we have) and still have the individual success on the track (which we do) but all without the need to be at a collegiate cross country or track meet every single weekend.

I'm sure most distance runners and distance coaches will agree - running the NCAA minimum amount of meets is enough. So instead of being on the road 16 or more weekends for meets January through May - I'm typically only gone half of that.

Another added benefit is having a committed group that gets in their mileage on the easy days. Instead of having to be there for every single run to send them off - I'm able to have the flexibility of only meeting with the group for "practice" 4-5 times a week with some weight room times included. Sometime I feel like I'm running a pro group, being at the quality days and weight room times and trusting them on the easy and long days. But it helps that my team and I have a great relationship and communication and of course some great team leaders (captains)!

Of course I'm able to do the daily meetings and talks with the team during the day as that is the more important role of a distance coach in my opinion.

So most of my "full time" work is actually sitting at home recruiting or doing the day to day things of balancing a program (budgets, expense reports, etc).

My advice if you want to find the best coaching situation (since I'm sure most on this board are the distance focused types) is settle into a decent paying smaller college program and turn it entirely distance focused if you can have the support of the college to do that and meet your number requirements. It's not as easy as you would think (recruiting a top program and keeping high enough distance numbers) but well worth the benefits once you pull it off.

Also of note, I don't make what is considered a huge salary but I make more than what my degree was in (teaching). So to me it is a win even on the salary side.

Ok that was my 2 cents....

well technically there is no way a college coach having sex with his college athlete would make them a pedophile.

I didnt interpret any of this as whiny, and you brought up the pedo stuff all on your own. There wasnt a hint of it here until your comment. You might wanna think about that.

Yes youre totally right, a bunch of men dedicated their lives to coaching for the off chance they hook up with a young adult. (Most replies have been college coaches)That's what all pedos do!

Why did you bother to show up and post such a moronic comment? Are you a child? Troll? Idiot? All of them?

So far it's completely worth it but I truly love the sport.

I think HS coaches have a better set up than college coaches. HS coaching on top of teaching makes more sense in the long run, in terms of being married and raising kids. They have teacher salaries, retirement, job stability and local travel only. There’s no recruiting or international travel. Summers are really off.

Maybe most importantly, HS coaches can decide how many seasons to coach, or when to take a season or entire year off coaching.

But missing your own kids’s competitions because you’re coaching other people’s kids sucks for any coach at any level.

Curious as to what you transitioned to post coaching career? Besides teaching, are there any vocations where the skill set acquired while coaching is easily transferrable? Thanks!

Was it worth it? I would do it again. I coached collegiately for over 3 decades and was at the top level in success. Yes, I was gone a lot, and I mean a lot. But my wife was a former athlete and commpletely understood. One of things that hasn't been mentioned is that coaching made me a better person, husband, and father. Therefore, my family benifited from my happiness in coaching collegiately. I get all the challenges but I have three well adjusted kids, and my wife is happy with my choice. The money is tough to take but my wife works and we make it as a family as best as we can. The real issue is what makes you happy. If coaching is what you want to do then ignore the naysayers. Positively affecting young people is an amazing exprience.

I coached for a small college with an emphasis on winning. In my third season, my best athlete went down with an injury playing pickup basketball... And yes it was against team rules. It took us out of contention for the league title. The athletic director told me that if I didn't win the league title the next year I was out, and he knew I was graduating most of my team. I hated that kind of pressure on something that wasn't completely under my control. I quit and coached low pressure high school and club for years and loved it. Still had plenty of time for family. In fact we turned weekend competitions into small family vacations. It was great. Never once had a regret leaving college when I did.

It has recently made me sad to see a HS teammate who stumbled into coaching. He’s now married, three kids, living on the east coast (were from the west coast). He ran in college and I think didn’t have many professional interests/ambitions and just kind of got a coaching gig and now has been doing it, and doing pretty well, for 15 years. I imagine he feels kind of stuck doing it. Was probably exactly what he wanted as a single 25 year old, but now as a married 40 year old, it seems less than ideal to me.
Could be wrong here, idk, it just seems like such a difficult and unrewarding career to me.