Picking a Coach - Part 3 (and Final)

In the earlier two posts, we talked about how important it was to (1) pick a coach who really understood the sport and (2) could communicate effectively with your son or daughter. What we want to cover in this third and final post on this subject is picking a coach who can communicate effectively with you, the parents!

Rule #3: Pick a Coach Who Can Communicate with YOU!!

While at first blush this might appear to be the lesser of the three rules, I've found as a check-writing parent that this is #1 with me. It is very frustrating to have your children get emotionally committed to a coach, only to find out that that coach is not able to leverage you as an extension of your child's training program. Missed appointments, confusion regarding charges, and double-booking lessons fall more on the administrative side of things. While being a PITA (Pain In The Ass), they really don't substantially impact your child all that much.

I'm actually more concerned with a coach who can not (or will not) communicate effectively with the parents the skills and drills they are teaching, and not effectively leverage the parent as an extension of the training program. Let's face it, while your child might spend 1 to 2 hours a week with a particular coach (and even that's quite a bit), they are going to spend 1 to 2 hours a day with you on the topic.

Kids won't improve dramatically by spending more time with the coach learning new skills. Kids will make dramatic progress if they can spend 30 to 60 minutes a day working on their own to perfect the skills that they have been taught. And as a parent, that means knowing enough about the skills and drills to help re-enforce what the coach has been teaching -- becoming an extension of their training and development program.

So let's review some questions that you should ask about the coach:

• Is the coach receptive to questions from the parents? The coach should not only be receptive, but should encourage questions. In fact, I've seen coaches actually get the parents involved directly in the drills. There's no better way for the parents to learn the drills then to do them with the child (physical abilities not withstanding).
  
• Does the coach share any documents or guides with the kids and parents about drills and skills? The more that the coach has documented, the better. And it does not need to be high-quality material. Photocopies of well-worn documents work just fine. You, as a parent, just need enough material so that you can remind your child how to do the drill.
• Does the coach take videos and make them available to the parents? This is very helpful when you want to review specific skills and drills with your child. In fact, I'd argue that no modern coach should be without a video system. How they use it? Well, that's a topic for a separate posting...

Smart coaches understand how to leverage parents as an extension of their programs, and that creates a win-win-win with everyone: the coach gets his point across, the kid learns more, and the parent gets to continue to be a parent. Doesn't get much better than that!!

By the way, if you have any ideas or suggestions for this list, please feel free to reply to this post. That benefits everyone!

Best of luck as parents coaching youth!!