Creating a Vision: How the Coach, A.D. Team Up

In creating an environment within the school athletics program that enhances student achievement, coaching staff members likely will assess, strategize and map a plan to develop their respective sport program. Developing such a plan to continually improve the opportunities for the students and school community impacted by the sport program cannot be done, however, in a vacuum.

Informed school personnel (coaches and administrators) realize that for successful, winning teams and athletic programs to flourish, a true “team” effort is needed. Beyond just the win/loss record or achieving hardware for the trophy case, great interscholastic programs model successful techniques and management styles long before any championship seasons are recorded or won on the field of play. In other words, success that is sustainable and meaningful doesn’t happen by accident.

In my coaching career, I always believed that a significant role to perform well was in creating a vision for my students, my program and, in some cases, my school and community. I often found myself in school athletic cultures where we were rebuilding or attempting to stabilize the sport success factors (in my instance, the sport was in boys basketball).

I realized early on that regardless of any ideas I had about where the program should be going, or how we might achieve greater growth/success, achieving those goals would be in direct accord with similar visions on the part of my school administrators. Specifically, my athletic director and I needed to be “singing from the same hymnal.”

When I made my professional shift into athletic administration, I committed to creating the same atmosphere of collaboration between myself and our coaching staff members. Although I never professed to knowing all of the critical elements of program building in each sport discipline, I did realize that communicating and assisting our coaches with “road-mapping” the direction of their respective programs direction would be a critical skill set to develop.

Over the years as an athletic director, we formulated a process that tied together multiple aspects of the Coach-A.D. relationship. For me to assess the progress that a coach was making in his/her development as a professional, I couldn't rely primarily on the scoreboard or other win-oriented benchmarks as barometers of coach and program sustainability.

One ingredient to our approach was applying the philosophy of Stephen Covey and his “7 Habits of Highly Successful People”. The simple concept of “Begin with the end in mind” was not only a cornerstone to Covey’s beliefs, but it truly became the mantra of our athletic program in terms of how we entered into the process of building an appropriate athletic culture.

The following are critical, yet straight-forward steps we attempted to establish with each of our head coaches. These elements were building blocks for how we were to establish a collaborative vision between the coaches and our athletic stakeholders:

1. The relationship between the A.D. and coach needs to be based upon constant communication. As the “coach of coaches,” the athletic director is the linchpin to assist the coach with assessing needs, suggesting pathways and offering guidance to the coach’s vision of their sport growth.

2. Assessment of the coach, of the program, and of the sport program objectives is ONGOING. I once heard someone ask, “How successful would your programs be if you only assessed progress ONE time each year?” As astonishing as it sounds, we have all heard of or seen coaches who literally get an evaluation at the end of the season, and often times, only when they’ve had a losing season! In today’s world, continual feedback, assessment, re-routing (as necessary) and support is a 12-month activity.

3. Coaches initiate a “Three Year Plan” with specific areas as part of their design.

4. What is the Mission Statement of the sport program?

5. Description of the program (who is served, what has been the recent history of success and outcomes, levels of performance offered, etc.).

6. Provide a student profile (what have been the post-graduation results of your students, GPAs of the students in the program, description of the various “feeder” levels of the program, etc.).

7. What are the current sport program assets and challenges? Are there facility issues? Are there adequate numbers of participants? What is the overall perception of the sport program within the school and student community?

8. What type of academic checks and balances exist for participants in this sport program? Is there an active check-up on grades in season AND out of season? Is tutorial help or monitoring offered? What types of messages are provided to students and parents about the sport and the extension of the school’s academic mission through this sport?

9. What will be a realistic timeline for completing projects and objectives over a three-year period? Who will be the “owner” of each task assigned: The school district? The coach? The A.D.?

Having the vision to lead people is a skill set required of anyone who manages any successful organization. The joint effort of the athletic coach and the athletic director to help create a feasible and appropriate vision is a strong partnership. The message such an effort sends to all stakeholders will likely create the level of synergy necessary to grow the sport program and, ultimately, provide greater benefit for the student participants.