Coaches' Conundrum

The old joke goes something like this. "What's the perfect coaching job? Coaching an orphanage team."

After a recent game, Coach Scott Celli said, "you read my mind." Maybe so, because as an observer, I try to understand what the fans, coaches, and players see.

Sports coaches face innumerable hurdles, with different challenges at different levels. But the coaches overarching, first responsibility is communication, explaining to different groups (ownership/school committee/athletic director/parents/players/media) why they do what they do.

Here are just a few of the coaches' other responsibilities and obligations.

• Do what is best for the overall interest of the team. This unifying theme inevitably creates conflicts with what is in the best interest of individuals.
• Maximize productivity. Getting the most out of what you have.
  
• Win now. Everyone loves a winner.
• Win later. Develop a sustainable program. Although the current team has a very mature group of seniors, the team will still return experienced youth.
  
• Motivating the team consistently.
  
• Creating roles. Player roles are dynamic.
• Establishing team rules. Rules are not dynamic.
  
• Player development. This includes identifying present (and future) players and recruiting them to your program. Developing strengths and camouflaging/minimizing weaknesses
• Encouraging different ways to win. In most athletic endeavors, successful teams win via knowledge of game conditions, superior skill, and improving athleticism ("the race is not always to the swiftest or the battle to the strongest but it pays to bet that way")
  
• Organizational skills to develop consistent philosophies (e.g. approaches to practice and games) within the team hierarchy (minor league/junior varsity system)
• In game coaching (exploiting the changing landscape of play during the game)
  
• Overseeing player eligibility
• Assessing player progress
• Recognizing player health and fatigue
• Imposing discipline when necessary.
  

Even within the most successful organizations, ups and downs occur...and as we head to the post-season, facing better competition, elements of health, luck, variable team performance (around a higher mean level) and even officiating come into play.

I believe it was the legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight who said, "if you listen to the fans in the stands, then pretty soon you'll be sitting up there with them."
It's not so simple as show up and win. You never know who your next contributor will be.