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Nonfaculty Coaches
June 18, 2012
Since the so-called heyday of school sports in the 1950s, when you could count on more talk in a community about its few high school teams than about all the college and professional sports teams in the country combined, some things have improved – diversity and safety, for example; but some things have not met the high ideals hoped for in educational athletics.
During the explosive growth period of school sports in the 1970s and 1980s, when girls programs were introduced or reintroduced to schools and well-established community programs were added to the school sports curriculum, schools in almost every state had to backpedal from the ideal that only trained educators – certified teachers – could coach interscholastic athletic teams. (In Michigan, except for two years in the mid 1950s when certified teachers were required, the rules only urge that coaches be certified teachers.)
While the number of sports and levels of teams have greatly expanded these past five or six decades, the coaching pool within the faculty of a school district has not. Furthermore, teachers’ salaries improved so much that coaching stipends became less necessary to supplement teachers’ incomes, so teachers “volunteered” less readily to serve as coaches for a second and third sport.
Moreover, the coaching demands for one sport increased out of season, interfering with a person’s availability to help coach second and third sports during the school year. This was commonplace in the sports that moved from the community into schools, but the out of season demands have increased significantly for traditional school sports as well.
There is irony that community youth sports programs not only have provided school districts with a pool of informed and interested people to serve as coaches, but they have also increased the demands on coaches so much out of season that coaches must specialize in a single sport and therefore are less available to assist with the many different sports and levels of teams that school districts struggle to provide students.
It is estimated now that more than half of all high school coaches do not work in the school building where they coach, which can create communications challenges for schools. A smaller but growing number of high school coaches do not work at all in the field of education, which can create philosophical problems as well. Not always, of course; in fact, many nonfaculty coaches are a rich and increasingly indispensible blessing for school sports.
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Don’t Mention It
October 27, 2017
It has taken every ounce of personal and professional discipline during the past month to keep me from writing what I’ve been thinking since the world became aware of arrests and suspensions in and around major college athletic programs.
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I won’t repeat that we have been outspokenly suspicious of the influence of apparel companies on amateur athletics in America.
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I won’t repeat that we have been continuously critical of the travel team environment infecting sports for youth and adolescents.
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I won’t repeat for the umpteenth time that the “arms race” in major college basketball and football is ultimately unsustainable, or at least indefensible under the banner of higher education.
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I won’t repeat that, in an era of ubiquitous high-definition video, it is ridiculous to think college coaches must be onsite for the cesspool of spring and summer tournaments funded by apparel companies, and that it would save colleges huge sums of money if NCAA rules did not permit onsite evaluations at such times and places.
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I won’t repeat that nationwide travel and national tournaments are bad for student-centered, school-sponsored sports.
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I won’t repeat that the Michigan High School Athletic Association limitation on travel and prohibition of payments to high school coaches from any source but the school are good for school sports.
I won’t mention any of this.