A coach plays many more roles than just being a coach. At any time a coach may be filling the role of teacher, a motivational speaker, a friend or a team leader. While this may make the job more rewarding, it also makes coaching a bigger job.

Hold a meeting with your assistant coaches and set up a parent and player meeting before the first practice. The meetings should focus on introducing yourself, discussing your coaching philosophy, communication plan through the season and goals for yourself and the team. “Outlining your expectations and coaching methods before the season paints a clear picture to parents about how you plan to handle the season,” said Greg Bach, Vice President of Communications at the National Alliance for Youth Sports.

Well before the season starts, it is important to create a master plan, set goals for yourself and the team and also create rules and consequences for yourself, assistants, parents and players. As a coach, you must know the rules of the game and any specific rules the league has that your team will play in.

Create a Master Plan

• Season plan including practice dates and times, games and tournaments, team parties
• Monthly plan detailing skills to work on for both the team and individuals
• Create a list of team goals
• Estimated financial budget for the season

Set the Rules and Consequences

• Parents conduct and involvement
• Players missing practice or coming late
• Communication standards for both players, parents and coaches
• Being out of shape for season (set your standards and consequences early as to allow players to prepare)

Build Goal Statements

• List your personal goals as a coach
• List your goals for the team
• List your goals for each individual player
• Create goals as a team

To be an effective coach and to get the most out of your time with your players, a game plan needs to be established well before the team meets.

A general plan including how time will be spent from warm up to warm down, on skills and drills and goals for the practice should be laid out. “It is helpful to have a few back-up drills listed as well. This way, if you discover that one of your drills isn’t working as well as you had thought it would, you can quickly replace it with another drill rather than wasting valuable practice time trying to figure out what to do,” said Bach.

Continue to reflect after each game and practice on what is working and what needs improving while revisiting the goals of both the team and yourself as a coach. By investing the time, coaching will be both rewarding and successful for you.