How to tell your hs “track coach” you are training with a real track coach

Quit and do AAU

Save the real high school coach a headache and have your son not show up.

Zante wrote:

Quit and do AAU

This. Families with this mindset often divide and cripple what could be a good program.

Don't say anything. You're not obligated to tell the coach your business. If the HS coach really is such an abysmal coach, s/he should be thanking you for getting the athletes remedial help.

Find out what the workout and racing schedule is. Have her attend practice on the recovery days and notify the school coach that she has an appointment, tutoring session, family obligation, etc. on the quality days.

She shows up on race day and runs well. Coach is thrilled because he gets the points and thinks that he is doing something right. When he tells her, "You could be even more awesome if you attended more practices!", she blushes and says, "Thanks! I'm super busy but I'll try to be here more often.".

This works. I've coached kids to championships without their school coach suspecting a thing. At the end of the day, you are developing a young talent, getting them noticed by college coaches, and giving them an opportunity to succeed in the sport. IMHO, this is preferable to letting them try to survive the bureaucracy and mediocrity of a poor scholastic program.

In high school there were quite a few people I knew from other schools that did this, worked with some 'fantastic' coach. Most of them ended up being head-cases and had bad endings to their high school years and never did anything good after high school. The basics are all the same, run good mileage and run hard sometimes. In high school you have a ton of meets, those meets alone are good workouts.

The only way a coach is really that bad is if they don't have you do any mileage. If this is the case, just run more after practice. Other scenario is the workouts are something dumb like 16 x 100 meter sprints. If this is the case then just do these as strides, and do a real workout on your own after practice.

Completely doing your own thing is the worst scenario, don't do it. You could also just have the coach be aware of this suggested training plan and structure his own coaching around it.

This is coming from someone who had a coach that didn't know much and I ended up being a state champion and had a successful college career at a P5 school.

Leave the team and don't come back. I am sure the HS coach won't miss you and the drama.

Couldn't agree more. This is the best advice OP is going to get.

sustainable earth wrote:

Don't say anything. You're not obligated to tell the coach your business. If the HS coach really is such an abysmal coach, s/he should be thanking you for getting the athletes remedial help.

this is a horrible idea. this is where you get kids doing the workouts of the private coach and team coach at the same time. how does this help anybody?

Lying is not the right answer. It's a bad example to your kid, and there is a high likelihood of getting caught.

Be honest. Tell the coach what you are doing. Show him written plans of what you've been doing the last month plus. Let him know you would like to keep up with the same kind of volume, schedule, etc. If coach isn't willing to play ball, at least you were willing to try to play nice. Go the deceptive route at this point.

If this coach really is having every kid doing the same thing, then he doesn't take any pride in his job and not gonna be too worried about being the genius behind a kid's performance.

But give everybody a chance to be an adult first.

Good idea. I think he’d be receptive. He’s a nice guy, but lacks in the track department.

speaking as a coach myself, i would say to introduce the idea through email. the reaction might come off bad in person if the coach is unprepared and doesn't know how to respond immediately. this might need a few minutes to sink in, which email gives the luxury of.

high school xc coach wrote:

Lying is not the right answer. It's a bad example to your kid, and there is a high likelihood of getting caught.

Be honest. Tell the coach what you are doing. Show him written plans of what you've been doing the last month plus. Let him know you would like to keep up with the same kind of volume, schedule, etc. If coach isn't willing to play ball, at least you were willing to try to play nice. Go the deceptive route at this point.

If this coach really is having every kid doing the same thing, then he doesn't take any pride in his job and not gonna be too worried about being the genius behind a kid's performance.

But give everybody a chance to be an adult first.

Fully agree. I would add that if you’re a personal coach, don’t coach HS kids unless you talk with the HS coach. That is the standard I abide too. If the HS coach doesn’t go for it, the athlete can either decide to stick with the HS team/coach or run independently... But lying or ‘secretly training’ with another coach is ridiculous.

If you’re a parent, I would also question if you really want to work with a ‘personal coach’ who is willing to disrespect other coaches (no matter how bad they are) by secretly training their athletes.

I’m assuming your daughter is a sprinter or you would have dealt with this during XC. If so, once the season starts the workouts aren’t going to be a huge deal. High school coaches schedule so many meets these days that most sprinters don’t get many opportunities to train anyway. But if you’re concerned, and you know for sure that this coach has a poor coaching history, then you could try to be constructive about working something out....if the private coach is any good he should have good relationships with the HS coaches. Have him call and fill the coach in in what’s been working for your daughter, see if the Hs coach wants help writing workouts for that group. There’s a good chance this backfires as most Hs coaches think they are good coaches. Your best bet is to back off for a season and see how it goes.

Lastly, as a personal coach (and team coach), I encourage the athlete (not the parents) to talk with his/her HS Coach first. Then, and only then, will I talk to the HS coach about the possibility of me coaching the athlete. The athlete should have a good relationship with the coach based on mutual trust. This isn’t always the case, but it’s always good to teach high school students how to navigate relationships and have tough, uncomfortable conversations -even when the other person (the coach) may be difficult to deal with. The conversation may go terrible- and that’s fine- then the parents or I can have a conversation with the coach. But usually it goes best when the athlete initiates the conversation in a respectful way.

I coach high school. Our team expectations include being at practice every day during the official season. We have a 3 strike policy. 3 unexcused absences results in removal from the team. Reasons for an absence to be excused and not count in those 3 include: family emergency, school sponsored internship (if limited in number). Examples of unexcused absenses: soccer practice, long term tutoring, studying, doctors appointments, etc. This teaches them to balance their time and only take on realistic responsibilities. If a kid needs extra time to study and misses track every week, they need to spend their time on school, track is clearly too much.

Kids can do whatever they want on the off season. If a kid wants to workout with a club coach off season, I'm not offended. I've only had 3 kids make that choice across all event groups over the past 8 years, the majority workout with the team during the off season, which was good enough for multiple state champions over the years (I'm in California).

Of course, we have multiple quality coaches on our staff to make that happen. I'd remind the OP that their kid's school sport is about more than just success at the sport. It's about teamwork, sportsmanship, etc., qualities that lying about skipping practice arent compatible with. If you really want your kid to do their own thing, there is nothing wrong with that, but be up front about it. Hopefully if the coach is bad at the coaching and just filling in, he will be willing to let your kid do their own workouts. If not, I'd encourage your kid to simply do club track, that's why it exists.

jacks21 wrote:

We have a personal track coach that is extremely good. They know their stuff. This is the first year for our kid to do hs track. The hs coach knows very little about how to really train for each distance. Every athlete he “coaches” does the same thing. How does my kid tactfully tell him she has been training with a real coach in the off season?

Don't create a problem that probably doesn't exist. I have had several kids tell me they were working with a personal coach. I was pleased they were so ambitious and honest! I invited the coach to call me or come visit, see if I could pick up some tips or just meet him or her.

Same as when I was teaching band or orchestra. Kid says they've been taking private lessons,cId be thrilled. But also be pleased to meet them. Grab coffee sometime, visit our school.

Portland Hobby Jogger wrote:

Find out what the workout and racing schedule is. Have her attend practice on the recovery days and notify the school coach that she has an appointment, tutoring session, family obligation, etc. on the quality days.

She shows up on race day and runs well. Coach is thrilled because he gets the points and thinks that he is doing something right. When he tells her, "You could be even more awesome if you attended more practices!", she blushes and says, "Thanks! I'm super busy but I'll try to be here more often."..

Spoken like a true private coach: teach your kid to lie so I can keep making money.