Recruiting Youth Sports Coaches

Over the past few years, I’ve been writing about how youth sports leagues need to help their coaches become better coaches by ensuring that they trained, or least given some guidance when they start coaching, to make sure that our children are getting the best experience while participating in a youth sport.  The Positive Coaching Alliance (PCA) has produced a list that I think is helpful and that youth sports leagues should incorporate into their recruitment of coaches for their league.

According to PCA, sports, when led by a supportive coach, have the potential to greatly impact athletes and help them develop a variety of life skills while having fun! This impact cannot happen without coaches. So, how does an organization effectively recruit coaches to ensure every child who wants to play in a positive sports environment has the opportunity? Here are some elements to consider in your coach recruitment: 

·      Dedicate Staff Time

·      Develop Your Message  

·      Advertise  

·      Be Intentional & Equitable in your Recruitment Strategy  

·      Enlist Current Coaches as Recruiters   

·      Target High-Potential Areas  

·      Host Information Sessions  

·      Start Early  

·      Follow-Up  

·      Evaluate  

Like with other lists that I post these ideas are pretty self-explanatory and I am just going to discuss the ones that I feel would be most beneficial to youth sports leagues to develop great coaches for their leagues.

Dedicate Staff Time

·      If resources allow, assign someone within the organization to focus on recruiting and managing coaches. Provide them with clear expectations, ample training, equitable resources, and community connections to help them in their pursuit of prospective coaches. Having someone dedicated to finding and supporting coaches demonstrates the value the organization places in coaches and can help with retention rates. 

Now, I realize that volunteers run most leagues, and they probably do not have the resources available to “assign someone within the organization to focus on recruiting and managing coaches.” I’ve always felt that it is incumbent on leagues to ensure that coaches are properly recruited and have clear expectations as to what the league wants in a coach so that everyone involved, parents, coaches and children have an enjoyable experience.

Develop Your Message  

·      Using ideas from the organization’s mission statement, develop the message that you want to use in your recruitment campaign. For example: “We are a sports organization that is developing young people on the field and off. We’re looking for people that care about kids, love this sport, and want to be part of an exciting organization that strives to provide positive, impactful sports experiences.” Emphasize the benefits your organization provides for coaches (e.g., coaching clinics and support, the opportunity to make a difference, the community, and relationships that they will build…) 

When I was coaching and a board member of my local youth soccer league we had tremendous issues with getting coaches for our league and one major issue was that we did not have a “mission statement” that we could point to that would help us to recruit coaches so when we approached someone asking them if they wanted to coach we the board, could not articulate what we were even looking for in a new coach so my advice would be for organizations to develop a mission statement that would assist them in recruiting coaches.

Enlist Current Coaches as Recruiters  

·      Encourage your current coaches to bring a friend or family member into the organization to  coach. Many coaches got started because a friend asked them. They then go on to coach their own team. You might even experiment with a reward system in which a current coach would receive a benefit (i.e., a T-shirt or gift card) if they successfully recruit additional  coaches. 

This piece of advice could be tricky depending on which coach you are looking to use as a recruiter.  When I was a on the board of the soccer association we had quite a few disgruntled coaches who were also coaching in our league and the last thing that I would have suggested was to have them work as recruiters for our league, that being said, I think using coaches to help recruit new coaches is a good idea; however, again as stated above, you need to ensure that the organization has a mission statement to ensure that everyone is on the same page while doing the recruiting.

Start Early  

·      Get the word out well before you need coaches. You will want to begin recruitment at least two  months prior to allow time for onboarding, background checks, and training. 

This point is key.  Again, when I was on the board one of our biggest mistakes was waiting until the last minute to recruit coaches which led to issues for us because we were begging people to coach and not giving them any training or support needed to ensure that 1) the children were learning the game and 2) having fun while doing so.  My advice would be for an organization to have their coaches in place as early as possible so you can ensure that everything is well set prior to the season starting.

Evaluate

·      At the end of the season, pull together a focus group of coaches and ask them how the season went, what they appreciated about the organization, what could be improved, and what ideas they have for getting more coaches. Also solicit testimonials from coaches that can be used in the next season’s marketing materials.

This is also an important point as the league/organization needs to evaluate what happened during the season, both the good and bad, so they can build on the season and make things better moving forward.  Again, the board that I was part of did a good job of ensuring that we had an end of season coaches meeting to discuss how the previous season was; however, I cannot say that we ever took any of the feedback and used it to improve our league for the next season and part of that could have been as simple that we were all volunteers and once the season ended we were done and just wanted to relax, but it did lead to issues as I always felt that we were not growing as a league.

Now, as I stated earlier, while all of the bullet points above are important, I just wanted to highlight the ones that, in my opinion, I felt to be most important when trying to recruit coaches to your league.  If an organization does not spend the time working on a plan to recruit the right people to coach in your league, the respective board of directors could have problems keeping the league running and growing because a few disgruntled coaches can ruin an organization.  Finally, by reviewing this list, I truly wish that we would have had a list like this available to us when I was on the board in order to help guide us and give us some ideas on how to improve how we recruit coaches into our league.