A Peek Inside (Part 15)

Hello loyal readers,

Despite saying that I was coming to the end of the Peek Inside series, I caught a fit of inspiration from a job posting on Row2K, and it's a topic that I am fairly passionate about.  

Assistant coaches, and specifically how you treat them, and how you view them.

Some background.  I have only been an assistant coach at three of the programs I've worked for.  While my title might have said, "Assistant coach," most of the time I was an independent operator lending a hand with logistics as necessary.  

Overall, I've had good experiences as an assistant whether it's specifically assisting a coach like at Pacific Rowing Club, or being a logistics person at others.  And I've only had one terrible experience.  But I've learned from all of them.

I've had two experiences with having an assistant.  The first time was accidental.  The assistant coach was technically supposed to work with my counterpart coaching the novice women.  However, and I cannot recall what the reason was, there wasn't much for them to do, so I offered for them to switch to my team and help me.  And the second was working last summer in Buffalo when I had five assistants, two for the competitive team, and three for the Learn to Row camps.

I believe that how you view assistant coaches, and then how you treat them depends entirely on how you view your role as a coach.  I believe the biggest mistake coaches make is that they view coaching and teaching as entirely opposite entities, which I believe is false.  Because of this, and because they view coaching as something that takes place while you're at the boathouse and nowhere else, they tend to run a "tight ship," where they make all the decisions, and either do not delegate, or delegate tasks that are things they do not want to do.  This usually means the assistant coach is tasked with something mundane or ordinary, a practice that continues throughout the year, and by the time the season ends, the assistant has either checked out, pulled the plug, or is no more useful after ten months than they were from Day One.  

To be fair, I believe that your view of assistant coaches and their roles largely stems from your experience as an assistant coach, and what you were allowed to do.  And then whether or not you continue that practice depends on whether or not you found the experience fair.  

There are also coaches who are micromanagers, sometimes to the extreme.  Their desire might be for the assistant coach or coaches to step up and take on tasks, but because they are micromanagers, the environment they create and foster does not lend itself to this.  It's difficult to find any traction when you're constantly having someone on your back over every single detail.  I have been in this situation, and I can tell you that I would not wish it on my worst enemy.  You can't sit and do nothing because that's not your job, nor what drives you, but you also cannot start anything because the micromanager will swing through and disrupt everything, either by changing it, or taking over.  It's a rough situation.  

My role as head coach or lead coach

I view my role as a coach whether I'm head coach or the lead coach for the squad is one of teaching.  It's my job to teach, and develop the athletes I am working with.  Likewise, it's my job to teach, and develop the coaches I am working with.  

This belief comes from my own experiences as an assistant.  I've had two excellent mentors in Ted Murphy at PRC, and Jamie Croly at OSU while I was interning through grad school.  Ted is a two time Olympian and silver medalist, and I was freshly out of college.  It would have been easy for him to take over, and for me to ride along.  I wasn't bringing much experience to the table, Ted had plenty of experience in college and racing internationally.  However, the opposite happened.  Ted made sure I was included in every discussion.  The most terrified I've been was the first time he asked me for my opinion on a practice early on in the fall season.  I can't recall what he asked, or what I said, but he seemed to like it, and it only got better from there.  By the time the season ended, I was helping evaluate lineups and test results, recording seat races, running practices or coaching a boat in my own launch.  

Jamie was similar.  While we were limited on launches - at the time - he made sure I was included in every decision from walkon training and cuts to running the 3V and 4V boats.  We talked shop nearly every single day, and he was more than happy to explain his methods of training.  Nothing was too mundane for him.  We'd discuss his view on building boats and seat racing, why he liked certain technical bits for the stroke, why you make cuts on athletes, and a myriad of other topics.  It was a great education.  

How I go about this

I view culture building and sustaining culture as relatively simple things.  I think a lot of people put too much time and effort into breaking down culture when it's fairly simple to establish.  What you want in your culture takes more time, and it won't happen overnight, but this idea that culture is incredibly difficult to build is false.  At least in my opinion.  Value the athletes.  Be consistent in what you do and say.  Be honest, and transparent.  Make sure that fun is included in all aspects of the training.  Be open to being wrong and to constructive criticism.  There are others, but I think that's a good base.

The same goes with training assistant coaches.  All of my assistants have been young.  My first assistant was just out of high school, taking a year before going to college.  My assistants in Buffalo were in college, and had never coached before, or had limited experience, mostly riding along.  

I want my assistants to be bought into the training and what we're doing.  And I've found the easiest way to do that is to establish their roles, and my expectations early, and then make it clear that they will have tasks and responsibilities and that I am placing my trust in them to get it done how I'd like it done, or parallel to what we're doing.  

I want them to coach the stroke that I am coaching so we don't have this interesting mix of styles.  I want certain specifics for it that match up with the overall stroke.  How they get there, that is up to them.  

Giving them responsibilities.  Some will be mundane and boring.  That can't be helped.  I don't love filling the trucks with gas or hooking up the trailer.  I don't love doing laundry.  But it's part of the job.  And if you can do those well or with enough enthusiasm, then other aspects of the job open up.

A great coach once told me, "Understand that coaching takes up only about eight to 10 percent of your job.  The other 90 percent is all the stuff supporting the practices."  

I love that.  What I did in Buffalo was assign tasks.  I'd come down each day with the workout or the training session, and while the athletes got the oars down, and did their warm up, the assistants and I would go over the practice.  Sometimes we'd go in a single launch if we were just doing some tech and they wanted to be able to ask questions, but mostly I'd tell them to take a launch, and one of the boats, or two of the boats and go.  Let me know where you're headed so I can find you, keep your phones on loud - no radios at the program - and we'll meet up at this location at this time and finish out with some pieces.  This is what I want, how you get there is up to you.  Just get there.  

With the Learn to Row camps, I delegated the task of running the camp to the most enthusiastic of the three coaches, but made sure they understood it was a collaborative effort of all three.  We'd meet before the beginning of each camp and talk about what they were going to do over the two weeks.  We'd talk about each days practice, and I'd offer advice or correction on what their plans were.  This usually meant slowing their roll.  They sometimes wanted to be going all eight on the feather Day Two.  And then we'd meet each Friday either in the office or right after camp ended, and have a quick talk about how the week was going.  I was always around the boathouse, and had them leave a launch set up for me so I could come out with them or in case they ran into trouble.  We established boundaries where they could and could not go, and we all  had our phones on.  

I ran the program this way to give them more experience.  I could have easily made all three ride along with me in the big wakeless launch, but they would have gotten little to nothing out of the experience other than listening to me talk, maybe asking a question or two.  By handing them responsibilities, it gave them a greater sense of ownership to what was happening.  I also made sure that they didn't have to worry about the little tasks.  I'd fill gas cans, set up launches, rig boats as needed, and generally lend a hand like I was their assistant rather than boss.  

My assistant out of high school had a bit more hand holding for the season.  First, it was my first time truly have an assistant so it was a learning experience for both of us.  Secondly, because they didn't have much rowing experience coming in - two years at the same program - and because they didn't have the necessary certifications - boat handling - we went together most days.  But when we transitioned to land workouts over winter, I gave them free run of at least two practices a week, and made sure they felt comfortable stepping in if the team or athletes were goofing off.  We talked out most of the decisions I made for the team, discussed why lineups were made the way they were, and by the end of the winter going into spring, I made sure they had say in building lineups.  

The perfect system?  Maybe...

Absolutely not.  Again, when it comes to assistant coaches, I go with what I believe the role of a coach, especially a head coach, should be:  Teaching.  And when it comes to my assistants, I go with my experiences, good and bad, in handling them.  

Sometimes you have to come down on them, and I have.  Safety violations are not ok, but we'll talk them out away from the athletes so they don't feel undermined.  Or if the practices are starting to drag and it doesn't seem like there's a plan.  But that's also part of the learning curve.  I ran Learn to Row my first year coaching, and I can tell you that I struggled through those.  There's only so much you can do when it comes to rowing especially when you're working with middle school kids.  Their attention spans are only so long.  

And one of the things you have to do as a head coach, and it can take some time getting this, is to ask for criticism back.  Are you being supported?  Do you feel that I am giving you too much or not enough responsibilities?  What do you expect from me?  It's a dialogue that needs to happen between coaches.  It would happen with highly experienced coaches, so it should most definitely happen with your younger coaches.  

Above all keep this in mind:

* If you had a great mentor or experience, translate that experience to your assistants.  

* If you had bad mentors or bad experiences, learn from it, and work to change the experience for your assistants.  

* Your assistants work for you, but you also work for them.  

* Remember your system or program values and apply them to your assistants and how you treat your assistants.  

* And remember when you were in their shoes.