Does anyone have experiences coaching both high school and college and can describe the main differences they have noticed?
Does anyone have experiences coaching both high school and college and can describe the main differences they have noticed?
Recruiting is #1 most important at the college level. You can't be successful without talent.
Recruit in Recruiting wrote:
Recruiting is #1 most important at the college level. You can't be successful without talent.
End of thread....
That is not true at all.
So many great talents out of high are awful in college.
To the OP,
The differences are college:
You work with self motivated individuals or have large goals.
You have much more pressure than high school by the athletes, families and departments.
You have to raise money and do an incredible amount of paperwork.
Your budget is incredibly larger.
You get to mentor at a much more opportune time in an athletes life.
Way less drama and BS.
Many more resources and support.
Parents leave you alone.
Yeah, the recruiting thing nails it. Sorry. Half your time as a college coach is spent recruiting. Obviously you need a plan for when they get there. But if you get outrecruited, your job becomes TREMENDOUSLY harder. If one coach recruits four kids who've run 46 in the 400m in high school, and another coach recruits four kids who've run 49 in the 400m in high school, guess which one will have a better 4x400m team? 99.9% of the time, it's the first coach.
College coaches, get out there and recruit. Sell your school. Keep them happy when they're there. That's how you win.
I spend my first 10-15 minutes every day in high school doing triage. I coach 25 kids in distance for track and 45 in XC. Between shin splints, leg soreness, and colds.flu, I have 4-6 kids every day that can't train and find out about their issues when practice starts. High school kids have a sense of urgency that every workout is critical to be run and missing a race is disgraceful. Thank you parents and youth sports for placing winning above development. My trainer in high school is good for ice and providing sticks to roll. I coached 15-20 kids in college and had a training staff that handled injury and recovery, every athlete was on board immediately with long term development. I miss having kids redshirt in order to recover from injury, develop, and get stronger. I don't miss the stress of recruiting and the long hours. I enjoy getting HS kids hooked on distance running and challenging them to get better beyond what they believe they are capable.
College and HS Coach wrote:
That is not true at all.
So many great talents out of high are awful in college.
To the OP,
The differences are college:
You work with self motivated individuals or have large goals.
You have much more pressure than high school by the athletes, families and departments.
You have to raise money and do an incredible amount of paperwork.
Your budget is incredibly larger.
You get to mentor at a much more opportune time in an athletes life.
Way less drama and BS.
Many more resources and support.
Parents leave you alone.
I'd have disagree with a lot of what you stated. While I agree that there are many who "overachieve" in college due to good coaching, circumstances, etc and many who "underachieve" in college, recruiting is still king.
Also, I've coached many college athletes and been around some as an athlete who's motivation is very much lacking. Conversely, some of my high school athletes are majorly motivated to achieve their goals.
And sure, the budget is larger, but so are the expenses. If high school teams just need to take a bus 90mn to the meet but the college team needs to go 6 hours, stay in a hotel for 2 days, and pay for all their food, it gets expensive quickly.
Not sure where you coached, but you should have kept that job...
College and HS Coach wrote:
That is not true at all.
So many great talents out of high are awful in college.
To the OP,
The differences are college:
You work with self motivated individuals or have large goals.
You have much more pressure than high school by the athletes, families and departments.
You have to raise money and do an incredible amount of paperwork.
Your budget is incredibly larger.
You get to mentor at a much more opportune time in an athletes life.
Way less drama and BS.
Many more resources and support.
Parents leave you alone.
You clearly have no experience at a decent college running program. It doesn't matter how good of coach you are, if you can't recruit talent you won't be successful.
Don't have to deal with drama or parents? Clearly never been around a college girls team. And while athletes are generally more motivated in college find me a college coach who has never had complaints about athletes not wanting to work hard enough and I'll show you a liar.
The money thing is big when you're in college. How well your program is funded and how many scholarships you have make a big difference.
Another big difference is for a college coach this is your livelihood. Most high school coaches this is just a side job, not how they make their living. When this is how you put food on the table it's much higher stakes.
1. Parents, don't have to deal with parents in college
2. Recruiting, have to recurit to have a team
3. Talent, depending on the HS and college talent will be much greater at the college level as long as you recruit
4. Budget, budget is much greater depending on the hs and college
Anyone who thinks that recruiting is not the single most important aspect of a college team, regardless of level, has never coached in college. At a public high school, you coach who comes through the door. When I coached in college, the vast majority of my energy went into recruiting, and it was miserable. I was making 20 plus phone calls each night, sending numerous emails, checking on emails from potential recruits, scouring a number of recruiting sites. You can't win without talent and you're not going to get talent at the collegiate level without recruiting.
High school for me is a much more rewarding coaching experience. It's more like pure coaching; I have girls running sub 5:10 and girls who are trying to break 9 in the mile. They are eager to learn for the most part and willing to work hard if you create a good culture.
Overall, college coaching was much more time consuming and less rewarding for me. Indoor track was particularly soul crushing for me. I would go to a meet on Friday from about 2-11 at night, get home, then come back the next day and do it all over again, fairly regularly. I also think the potential of high school kids is pretty special. You never know how a kid is going to turn out, whereas by the time you get to college there are less surprises. Which is not to say that college runners don't ever make big jumps, just that it's less likely than a high school kid going from being a 5:00 miler his freshmen year to a state champion Cross Country Runner his senior year.
I coach at a Power 5 Conference university that finishes in the top half of that conference every year.
We recruit less than 5% of time. Athletes comes to us.
We don't take anyone that doesn't want to work hard and when they act that way, they are cut or work themselves off the team.
Our women's team has no drama. My men had a little last year. Again, when there is an ounce of drama we squash it.
Coaching is what we spend our time doing and it does matter how good of a coach you are.
College and HS Coach wrote:
I coach at a Power 5 Conference university that finishes in the top half of that conference every year.
We recruit less than 5% of time. Athletes comes to us.
We don't take anyone that doesn't want to work hard and when they act that way, they are cut or work themselves off the team.
Our women's team has no drama. My men had a little last year. Again, when there is an ounce of drama we squash it.
Coaching is what we spend our time doing and it does matter how good of a coach you are.
That's great, but it appears that is not the norm. Imagine if you were at an FCS school with no national reputation and the only talent that came to you was from high schools within 100 miles.
Then your goals should not be recruiting talent, they should be developing the average to become above average.
Schools with no or minimal resources should not heavily recruit talent, it is not in the best interest of the athlete.
You can f#ck your runners w/o going to jail.
I've never coached in college, but honestly I can't see how recruiting can be seen as such a chore. YOU have what THEY want?
So unless you are coaching at the highest level where you really are picking form the elite of the elite, I fail to see how finding talent is a problem.
Coach H wrote:
1. Parents, don't have to deal with parents in college
2. Recruiting, have to recurit to have a team
3. Talent, depending on the HS and college talent will be much greater at the college level as long as you recruit
4. Budget, budget is much greater depending on the hs and college
All of you saying you don't have to deal with parents in college are flat out wrong. Maybe less than high school but its still an important part of the job.
When recruiting you are trying to convince 17 or 18 year old kids to come to your school. You better believe a lot of parents are going to have a big say in which school their kid chooses. Convincing the parents that your program is right for their kid is important.
Also there will be parents that call the coach with concerns when things aren't perfect for their kid. Just because your kid is in college doesn't mean helicopter parenting ends, come on this is America. From a friend on the Oregon team a few years back there were several girls on the team where their moms were basically living with them up in Oregon. To me that would be a hugely frustrating situation to deal with.
Overall parents are going to be much less involved on the men's side since parents tend to be more protective of daughters.
I coached at all levels. From High school, to college, to members of the Olympic team.
The feeling is different at each level. Especially with athletes who have aspirations.
In high school you are trying to develop the talent, finding ways for them to improve, learn, and not get injured. Taking advantage of their natural improvement as they physically mature, being cafeful to not mistake that for your programming genius. You'll never see their best performance, unless 1. you visit their future events. 2. You crush their talent.
At college you are managing their performance mainly based around your scholarship expectations, and how they are developing according to where you thought they shoud fit. You are considering whether yo made a good choice, and how the kid is going to help your job results.
At the highest level you are dancing on the edge of physical abuse, trying to get them to the very edge, making them stronger, faster, and able to jump higher.
And of course, if your athlete doesn't have the same high expectations, it won't matter how you feel at all.
VerminMeat wrote:
I've never coached in college, but honestly I can't see how recruiting can be seen as such a chore. YOU have what THEY want?
So unless you are coaching at the highest level where you really are picking form the elite of the elite, I fail to see how finding talent is a problem.
It is a chore because to be successful (win conference or qualify teams or athletes to nats) you are recruiting the same 1% of high school athletes that other DI schools are after. Even if you have it made at a well set up school if you don't recruit talent will go somewhere else.
When you say that schools have what the athletes want, but it is the other way around. Scholarships abound...especially for women. But talent does not. At the DI level there are alot of great athletes who were latent high school talents, but the best programs are often bring in great athletes as well.
And to the Power 5 coach who lets athletes "come to them" it is not admirable to aspire to "middle of the conference". It is one thing to be middling when you are underfunded and undersupported and another to be average becasue you don't recruit.
Assistant at college (D2) now working as head coach at a high school.
Pros:
114% Pay Raise
Don't have to recruit (I go recruit from basketball now)
No long road trips
Practices are more laid back and fun
Cons:
A lot more paper work and not as many support staff to help
You get turds.
The self entitlement of athletes is so unbelievable.
You're not their club track coach.
Managing 80 kids
You have to know every event as you are probably going to have to train your staff on events - mostly managing practices and go over the very basics. You become more of a manager than a coach - less office time.
I loved my current job and the challenge of it. I inherited some decent talent and have a good young group of freshmen. Glad I coach girls and not boys so I don't have to fight football.
In general coaches of women's college teams do not work at recruiting.
It has nothing to do with the speed or talent of the athletes recruited. It appears that college coaches of women's teams are only there because they ran or performed well in college. A certain amount of talent shows up at major universities. It true, you do not have to recruit.
Usually men's coaches must recruit because it's more competitive.