Expanding Your Pool of High School Coaching Candidates

For some sports, it may be difficult or next to impossible to attract candidates for your vacant coaching position. The reasons for this dilemma will vary with respect to the sport, perhaps the location and size of your school, and other factors specific to your area of the country. In addition, there is also a national trend that fewer teachers enter or remain in the profession. All of this adds to the problem.

If you are affected by the difficulty of filling some coaching positions, it may be necessary to expand your efforts. The longtime, traditional approach of simply posting vacancies within your school district may no longer be enough. The following steps and tips may help.

• Post your vacancy within your school district. Even though it was just mentioned that this may not be as successful as it has been, this is the logical first step. And in many districts, this does represent the expected protocol and is actually a requirement.

• Check with your state athletic association, state athletic directors’ association, and state coaches’ association to see if they have provisions for posting coaching vacancies. Many do, and this is a great way to increase your pool of candidates.

• Reach out to head college coaches in your area of the specific sport in need, and ask if they have any players who have exhausted their eligibility and are still finishing up their academic requirements for graduation. Even though these individuals may not represent long-term solutions, they could serve as an assistant or junior varsity coach in an emergency.

• Also ask head college coaches if there are any former athletes who might be interested in your coaching position. They may know of graduates who work in the area, would be available, and also obviously have a background in the sport.

• Contact colleagues at neighboring high schools in your area. They may have a teacher who is not currently coaching within their program because all of the positions are filled, but they have an interest in coaching. Of course, you would want to reciprocate if the situation is reversed.

• Get in touch with retired coaches who had formerly worked within your program. They probably still have a number of contacts including their players, assistants and colleagues at other schools. You might get a few leads, or at the very least, these former coaches can help spread the word about your vacancy and ask them to do just that.

• Check to see if former head coaches would be willing to return as an assistant or junior varsity coach. In this manner, this individual could still be involved with young people and the sport that they love, but with a more limited time commitment, and much less associated scrutiny and pressure.

• Post notices on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. In addition, ask local newspapers – daily and weekly, and they do still exist – if you could post a vacancy notice. Even if you have to pay for a small advertisement, it is a good way to help spread the word of your opening.

The more avenues that you can employ, the more successful you should be. The key is to get the word out to as many individuals and segments of your community as possible which should expand your pool considerably. In addition, it also helps to think outside the box and be creative. Creative? Exactly!

Even though many forms associated with your athletic program may have moved into the digital world, there may be some forms related to student-athletes for all your teams still in hardcopy formats and on file. Some of these documents could include permission forms, physical examination forms, inherent risk notifications, sportsmanship expectations, student-athlete codes of conduct, and others.

For a vacancy related to one of those sports in which there is a scarcity of candidates, go to your files – in a box or file cabinet in your storeroom – and go back five or six years. Get the United States Postal System addresses of the seniors of that year, who would now be college graduates and over the age of 21. Even though these athletes may no longer be living with their parents, mail a letter detailing your coaching vacancy to their mother and ask her to forward it to their child.

Will some of the addresses have changed? Sure. And will every mother forward this letter to their son or daughter? Absolutely not. But many will, and you will be reaching individuals who love their sport, have a deep connection to your school and program, and, therefore, represent ideal candidates (Hoch 2022).

There will always be some sports which are more difficult than most to fill coaching positions. But there are ways to expand your pool, if you put in the time, effort, and if you can think creatively.

Reference
Hoch, David. 2022. Leading an Education-Based Athletic Program.

Dr. David Hoch is a former athletic director at two high schools in Baltimore County (Maryland) for 16 years. He has 24 years of experience coaching basketball, including 14 years on the collegiate level. Hoch, who has a doctorate in sports management from Temple (Pennsylvania) University, is past president of the Maryland State Athletic Directors Association, and he formerly was executive director of the Maryland State Coaches Association. He has had more than 800 articles published in professional magazines, as well as four textbook chapters. Dr. Hoch is the author of five books: Coaching within the Education-Based Athletics Concept; The Parents’ Guide to Education-Based Athletics; Leading an Education-Based Athletic Program; A Lifetime of Memories from Education-Based Athletics: Humorous, Inspirational and Occasionally Sad; and Refocusing on Education-Based Athletics – A Call to Action. Hoch is a member of the NFHS High School Today Publications Committee. He can be reached at davidhochretad@gmail.com.