This article by Bruce E. Brown, from the Proactive Coaching Intentional Coaching collection, makes the case for intentional mentoring programs for athletic coaches. It explains how coaching has changed, why mentoring keeps young coaches in the profession and speeds their learning curve, what successful mentoring programs look like, the qualities good mentors possess, key questions districts must answer, and suggestions for building a program.
Benefits of Mentoring Program
Coaching has changed dramatically – One of the biggest changes to our profession is how few people are career coaches. Instead of lasting 30 years, many are out of the profession before they reach double digits. There are many reasons for the current revolving door of coaches but one of them comes from people being hired as head coaches too early. It used to be that you worked as an assistant for 8 – 10 years before your head coaching opportunity came. Now young people walk right out of college into head coaching positions. The pool available for our coaching positions is getting smaller, younger and less experienced. Recently in our state, one of the largest schools had one applicant for the head boys basketball job and he had never coached beyond the youth club level. This brings up another major change… the number of non-teacher, walk on coaches. Whether it is right or wrong, there is tremendous emphasis and importance placed on the high school athletic programs and the lack of preparation is often astounding.