Coaching keeps getting more complicated

What do you think of an honest – honest – ad who wants a high school coaching job in 2024?

“Come work long hours for pennies on the dollar, get criticized by parents with personal agendas and random vendettas, watch out for education boards that don’t know your worth and won’t hesitate to fire you without you having to explain why, and prepare to be vilified on social media and perhaps the local press.” “.

Oh, and you better win.

Two North Jersey softball coaches have stepped down this season, just before regular season play began, and Notre Dame State’s softball coach resigned last week. It’s the latest sign that being a high school coach is hard work, has become more complicated, more taxing and, for many, less valuable.

The coaches don’t want to talk about it. I reached out to a few veteran coaches to ask if their jobs have become more difficult and none of them wanted to comment on the record. However, the stories are laughable.

Parents want their children to play, improve and be successful. But in 2024, with social media and mobile phones, they are bolder than ever. It’s an “all about me” culture that is in chaos. How in the world is a high school coach supposed to handle it when one of the parents is also a reality TV show star? Where is this mentioned in the training manual?

Coaches have to deal with players who post highlights to get likes on social media even though their team is bombing. How do you sell a player on the team concept in this way?

One ad showed me a text message from a very angry parent insisting that the school, conference, and state athletic association do something after her child was exposed to violence at a recent game, even though every video showed her child was the instigator and, well, maybe it was coming.

I saw another case where parents at one school reportedly contacted the college where a player had committed to report what they felt was bad behavior at a recent game. Yes, college! Revenge much?

Wait, wait, it gets better. Another coach told me a story about a parent who sued the school for not creating the position on offense his son was best suited to play, and said they would drop all charges if the school paid the tuition at the school the child was transferring to.

Come on people, what are we doing here?

What we are doing is losing the “middle class” of coaches. We still have some legendary “old guard” in North Jersey: Sue Leddy coaches two sports at Holy Angels, Jeff Jasper at Pascack Valley, Kurt Hommen at Ridgewood, Steve Silver at IHA, and Evan Baumgarten at Ramapo. What these five individuals have are enough wins to make any rogue parent stare down and say “go fly a kite.”

But what if you are new? What if you were in your first, second or third year and your parents attacked you, even if you were a winner? A HIB (harassment, intimidation and bullying) charge can still stand, even if it is not valid and the coach is completely exonerated, and if a second trumped-up charge comes up again, you are in big trouble.

So why stick around? Your ad will probably have your back, but be careful, because there may be a new supervisor coming in, or worse, a temporary supervisor, and your ad may be on shaky ground, too.

Meanwhile, coaches are also expected to manage kids’ expectations, even when the Sports Rating Service just gave their third reserve player five stars and they sign up for another college offer where no colleges ever show up, but the organizer gets a briefcase full of money.

Maybe the coaches who left did the right thing. There are better cases. There are better jobs. There are parents who have realistic expectations and school districts that have the right perspective on how athletics fits in. It’s not easy to walk away from a job you love and players you truly care about, but you have to take care of yourself.

No one signs up to be a high school coach with the idea that everything will be sunshine and roses. It is a job designed to support young people in their maturation process as players and as young men and women. They are supposed to grow physically and mentally.

If we continue to lose high school coaches, we are losing a vital piece of the educational puzzle. It’s unfortunate that we can’t make a realistic presentation of that.