Coaching HS Athletes Privately

How many days per week do they have to train as a team? Writing a training plan for the athlete would give him/her more direction.

Use the search function. This topic was just extensively covered on these forums a little over a week ago.

Ok, I ended up just searching for you. There are lots in the search function, but this was the recent thread on this topic, giving opinions from both sides:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=6592597&page=0

It's incredibly rare for a HS coach to be OK with an athlete having outside guidance. The motivation for them to bar you is a combination of several factors: ego; fear that the athlete will do well and the rest of the team comes to you; disharmony within the team; liability; the genuine belief that she is a better coach than you; and the humiliation of losing her #1 runner. I have dealt with this on the private side (I do it on a volunteer basis) several times. You have essentially two real options.

1. Have the parents go to the Athletic Director and explain that their kid will still go to all the practices and still be part of the team, but will be receiving direction emailed and texted from you. If you are lucky, the AD will not care about XC and will not want to rock the boat with the parents. The kid then has to endure awkwardness with the coach, but will get 100% training from you. You two can meet after practice on workout days for in-person workouts.

2. Have the parents drop the subject, and you then just tweak the athlete's training for them. So the kid still does the HS workouts, but you can add and subtract post-practice work as you see fit.

Option #1 works very, very well. Option #1 has led to Foot Locker appearances. Option #2 does not work as well, but it is an improvement over nothing.

You seem to be a nice person wandering into something you don't recognize is a very dangerous jungle. You will not get the HS coach's "full approval." She now already thinks badly of you because this topic was brought up. You will be branded an outlaw if you coach this kid during HS season. The HS coach will burn you AND THE KID to every other HS coach in the area and all the parents on the team. Best case scenario is that the kid runs very well and you two are hated by everyone. You have to be a very hard person to successfully negotiate all of this. I suggest you drop the matter entirely.

How did this kid find you and think that you would be a good coach for him?

If you want to coach him, then you should become an assistant coach at the school where he runs. If your schedule or work situation doesn't allow for that, then just move on. It wasn't meant to be.

I met the athlete and the parent randomly and just started talking. They were aware of some of my experience as a coach. I wasn't searching for athletes. I don't coach any other HS'ers in town or have the desire to. And they weren't searching for a private coach. They expressed to me how he wanted to run in college and how his HS coach, although a nice person, didn't really challenge the athletes in any way.

My job and schedule don't allow for me to coach at the school. Funny enough though, when I reached out to the HS coach to introduce myself, during one conversation she said that she didn't want her athlete having a private coach but then proceeded to ask me if I wanted to coach the entire team.

Most likely what will happen is that I don't work with the athlete during the season. Once cross country is done, I will begin working with him as the HS coach only coaches cross country.

Also, to Totally Evil Private Coach, thanks for the advice. I am aware of the situation, which is why I would require full approval. I don't want to coach behind another coach's back. I let the parents know that if the coach is not on board with the situation, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. This is not my career; it's a hobby. I'm not in it to get personal glory or money, just to help a kid out. Even if the coach did talk bad about me, I probably have a better reputation in the running community.

Coach the kid. Don't tell the HS coach and instruct the kid to tell no one or face getting kicked off. Let him run with his team at practice and you write a program that fits into this schedule...prescribe additional workouts considering what the team has already done.

Lenny Leonard wrote:

How did this kid find you and think that you would be a good coach for him?

If you want to coach him, then you should become an assistant coach at the school where he runs. If your schedule or work situation doesn't allow for that, then just move on. It wasn't meant to be.

This ^^^^

While this might not work for OP specifically it is another viable option. If the coach is well meaning but either only semi-engaged or not challenging the team, you can become a volunteer assistant. From personal experience, this works to a degree, but it takes patience, time and the HS coach needs to be a flexible person. One rationale for doing this is the HS coaching staff may be inadequate to pull off customized or group based workouts. Adding another body enables the head coach to not be spread so thin. This is especially useful on quality training days.

Beyond helping in the form of another coach body at practice, you are really trying to influence the culture and expectations of the team from the inside. If you have/earn the respect of the kids and the coach this can work. Totally hinges on the personality of the current head HS coach though and it takes time

I could understand if the athletics director or coach isn't too happy about it - not because they might disagree with your training principles (although that would be a perfectly good reason), nor because they feel like you're stepping on their turf (bad reason), but because they are concerned about team unity, and the impression that one kid getting special treatment could have on the rest of the team. If the athlete who approached you is really a stand-out athlete, perhaps with a chance of an athletics scholarship, that shouldn't really be a problem.

You already said that you're going to talk to the coach, which I think is a good plan. I'd try to make it clear that you're aware of the potential problem that the appearance of "preferred treatment" might have on team cohesion, and come up with a way to avoid or mitigate it.

Get used to it.. wrote:

Coach the kid. Don't tell the HS coach and instruct the kid to tell no one or face getting kicked off. Let him run with his team at practice and you write a program that fits into this schedule...prescribe additional workouts considering what the team has already done.

Agree this is an option that also works. This approach works well if the HS coach actually publishes a schedule and has predictable training. Sadly, this is not often the case. Outside coach needs to be totally on the down low so the kid can be labeled as a 'motivated', 'hard worker' that puts in extra work outside of practice.

This has been said before but needs to be repeated. If the majority of HS coaches were good coaches, this whole private coach thing wouldn't be such a big deal.

Saw the other thread and another one here, who has actually been on both sides.

Had athlete, who'd been thrown to the scrap heap after early success, approach me for coaching. We worked under the radar for a year without telling anyone outside the family. It actually worked and the athlete had a good comeback, with top finishes at state and some regionally significant post-season results. For one season, we kind of collaborated with the coach who was open to the idea.

Then I started coaching a group of up and comers who took over the varsity for a couple of seasons. Somehow I became sort of an assistant to the program, and that was a mixed bag. Had more day to day contact, but had to compromise training, including summer schedule. That was frustrating. Meanwhile, another club with some other athletes kind of walked over the team (and other local HS teams), by setting their own agenda and not working well with the XC and track teams. Kids would show up 1 or 2X a week and then race. It was actually worse at the other schools.