Getting OUT of Coaching Thread

Also interested. Here for the comments

I coached at the college level for nineteen years. At the time it was a tough decision to leave coaching, something that I loved, but as my children got older I wanted my weekends back. Twenty-six weekends a year with cross country, indoor and outdoor, plus recruiting. I moved to where I wanted to live, had several backup plans, but was hired by Dean Witter abour five weeks after I moved. It was a good fit because of necessary people skills, plus my undergraduate degree was Business Administration. I am still working in the same profession with the same company (morphed into Morgan Stanley) twenty-three years later. Still, it was one of the hardest things I ever did.

I coached in college for 20+ years. I left when I realized that my teams had stopped improving--had regressed some, actually.

My children were five and three when I left, and my teams had stagnated for about four years (maybe not such a coincidence) before I finally looked in a mirror and saw who was responsible.

I temped for a couple years, mostly as a proofreader, and then went to law and business school for a JD/MBA. I now temp as a litigation assistant, looking through emails and documents (in various languages) to see whether they bear on a particular case or not.

I like it fine. I already had some language skills that I brushed up a little, and because I'd been a coach my family and I were used to my working long hours, weekends, etc. (Actually I put in considerably less time now: I've never even billed 80 hours in a week, and often just 40, whereas 80-100hr weeks were not uncommon whilst coaching.) Plus I'd been an assistant coach at various places and knew what working for a boss was like.

However, I have recently returned to coaching after ~20 years away: just a part-time assistant's job in town. I still do some of the law stuff, though, just for a decent income.

Got out after 20 years of high school coaching that included state titles, NXN, stuff like that. Do not miss the idiot battles with the idiotic AD, the incessant fundraising, the endless texts and emails, the pressure (self-induced) to have to win as often as possible, or more.

Do miss the kids, the parents, the relationships with other coaches, sometimes the travel, the winning—but not enough ever to want to do it again.

Now i just teach, and I have a lot more free time,

Got out of college coaching after 10 years. Still work in sports.

I miss the flexibility of the job, wearing shorts to work, running my own program, being a part of a team, being on a college campus everyday, helping young people, prestige of being a head coach.

I don’t actually miss coaching itself, recruiting, long bus trips, going to average meets, when you spent a lot of time and money for the team to run poorly, 7 day work weeks, internal pressure to be great, forcing kids to invest more than they want to, talking families into paying a ton of money for school.