Coaching Staff Transitions and the USMC (and military in general)

There are similarities with regular jobs and the military. In the case of coaching, especially college coaching, quite a few run in close parallel. One example would be recruiting–college coaches have certain numbers they need to bring in and they know the specific qualities that successful recruits will have. The military does likewise–they have targets, they have standards.

You get it.

Anyways, this isn’t about recruiting. It’s also not about Alice. Remember Alice?

No, this is about something else coaches deal with–retention.

Retention is an issue in terms of athletes. Basically, they are gone in four years (or five with college athletes–but I’m trying to make this relevant to HS coaches as well). It’s fixed in stone, so that coaches are always aware of who is graduating and who is coming in–either because they were recruited or from knowing current 8th graders.

The other retention issue is within coaching staffs. Assistants are nomadic, always looking for the next step up the coaching food chain, so that rarely will coaches stay more than four years with a single program. –see why that’s similar?

Within the military, officers and enlisted personnel are going to switch duty stations every three or four years. This, too, normally works like clockwork.

So–the point of the post….it’s coming…I promise!

Coaches are constantly wasting time retraining new coaches/bringing them up to speed. Athletic departments are constantly dealing with new head coaches–same thing bringing them up to speed. It’s chaos in many instances, either because the departing coach is taking recruit information along with her OR the separation isn’t a friendly one and the leaving coach is unwilling to cooperate in a transition (or the entering coach doesn’t want the input).

The military has the same transitions–yet everything continues to work smoothly.

I think there’s room for study there–because if you can smooth transitions out within a school, I think you are more likely to retain students (yay), do better with recruiting (yay), and with overall confidence in relationships–that people are doing things ‘by the book’ (admin-coach, coach-player, or admin-player if a coaching staff leaves).

Is this practical? Is it possible? I don’t know.

I think leadership skills come into this–not just from the admin or head coach who is remaining, but from the person departing as well. Even though you leave, (my opinion here) you have a responsibility to leave things better than you found them.

When I stepped down from college coaching 2+ years ago, there was still an assistant in place with a volunteer just starting that week. I continued to help with stats and with some recruiting–basically “Hey, I’m in the process of leaving, so you’ll hear from _____ soon” since it was going to take I.T. time to change all the contact stuff on the forms. I made sure the schedule was squared away…and I worked to help a couple of the athletes find homes at four-year schools. When the coaching change became permanent, I made sure my contact info was available if desired (it wasn’t…which is fine–once you’re out the door, you’re out).

I don’t know if that smoothed things with the transition. For me, it was more about the effort to help. –Maybe that’s the secret sauce of the military. When there are transfers, everyone involved *cares* and wants the next person to be successful. It won’t be perfect, there will be frustrations–but everyone wants success for everyone involved–the person moving on, the person coming in, and the people who are still there in the middle of their own 3-4 year cycles.