AGC #025 - Help your club coach to help you

Club coaches provide invaluable help and support for an athlete navigating the college recruiting process.

But without clear boundaries and honesty on both sides, it’s a relationship that can quickly become strained.

Having been a club coach before I was a college coach, I’ve been on both sides of the fence.

Today, I’m going to share 4 strategies for athletes to manage expectations and make the most of their relationship with their club coach.

1 - Establish what support to expect

The best role a club coach can play as an athlete’s recruiting process unfolds is as an advisor, sounding board, and interpreter.

But for the sake of expectation management, athletes and their families should ask for clarity on how much help they are willing to provide.

Some clubs are skilled at using tiered pricing to help their members understand the levels of support they give.

For example, “one-to-many” help (general information, class meetings etc) might be included in your membership.

But “one-to-one” help (individual consultations etc) might cost extra.

However, many clubs don’t differentiate this, and offer help on an ad hoc basis, which can get messy for both parties.

Some will go to the ends of the earth to help out of the goodness of their hearts. Others will not assist at all.

There’s also everything in between: some mostly help the families they know the best, others only help their top prospects, and there are those who will help whoever asks for it.

It is in your interests to get clarity from your coach and club as to what level of help they’ll provide ahead of time.

This should help to avoid feeling lost, frustrated, or disappointed when you are deeper into the recruiting process and not getting the assistance you hoped for.

It will also allow the coach to keep appropriate boundaries to have the effort, energy, and enthusiasm to help each family.

2 - Understand the nature of coaching relationships

Long before you joined your club, your coaches cultivated valued relationships with college coaches.

And that will continue long after you have moved on.

So don’t expect them to jeopardize those on your behalf.

The trust in these relationships goes both ways:

College coaches appreciate club coaches who will give an honest, unbiased opinion when evaluating a player.

Club coaches appreciate a college coach who will tell them where players from their club stand with them.

In a majority of cases, a club coach with strong ties to college coaches will work in your favor as the process plays out.

Many will let a college know of your interest and indicate their willingness and enthusiasm to provide an evaluation - if asked.

But asking them to do a “hard sell”, cold-call approach puts them in an awkward position. It potentially compromises their integrity and relationships, so many coaches will refuse to do it.

If a college coach is interested in you, they’ll ask your club coach for an evaluation.

3 - Seek and value honest feedback

The best club coaches will tell you uncomfortable truths.

The worst club coaches will tell you convenient lies.

There are a few ways you can see what kind of coach you have.

The first is to ask them to curate your list.

Send them your list of schools you are considering, and ask them to label each as one of the following, based on their assessment of your athletic capabilities:

• Dream School: Programs that may be a stretch for you to be recruited to

• Realistic School: Programs that you have a realistic shot at getting recruited to

• Safety School: Programs that you would be likely to be recruited to

You might get some news you don’t want to hear.

This is a good thing, as it can help manage your expectations heading into the recruiting process.

You should be wary of an overly optimistic ranking.

This suggests they may be fearful of hurting your feelings, or maybe even worried you’ll leave the club. Perhaps they are more concerned with getting kids placed at higher-level programs so they can market based on that.

Another method to try is to ask what they would say to a college coach who asked for an evaluation of your strengths and weaknesses.

Again, a sunshine and rainbows response doesn’t do you any favors. Nobody is perfect, and your coach should be able to assess and articulate your current abilities, areas for growth, how you contribute to team culture, and so on.

They should be able to tell you the same things they’re telling college coaches, and it should be a balanced opinion.

Value the coaches who will tell you the uncomfortable truth.

In turn, they will value families who can handle constructive criticism.

4 - Don’t bury your head in the sand

Just as there is an onus on club coaches to tell you the truth, there is an onus on you and your family not to overreact if you don’t like everything they have to say.

Firstly, it’s just one person’s take.

You can always seek a second opinion from your high school coach, or a different coach in your club, to see if a consensus emerges.

Club coaches are humans, and talent development is not linear, so they may get things wrong.

Nobody can truly predict where a 15-year-old athlete will be in five years.

Most club coaches would be delighted to see you prove them wrong and achieve bigger things than they thought possible.

All they can do is give you their honest opinion, based on their experience and the information they have at a given moment in time.

Clubs are businesses, and families are consumers.

Which ultimately means you have the agency to move clubs if it isn’t the right fit for whatever set of reasons.

But think twice if you are contemplating switching solely because you rate yourself higher than your club coach does right now.

That lack of humility means you’ll run the risk of going down the wrong rabbit holes recruiting-wise - and it could be too late to revise your options by the time reality sets in.

There you have it! 4 tips to maximize your relationship with your club coach:

1 - Establish what support to expect
2 - Understand the nature of coaching relationships
3 - Seek and value honest feedback
4 - Don’t bury your head in the sand

I’ll be sharing more ideas on all things June 15 in forthcoming issues of A Good Coach.

If you know someone who would benefit from them, please send this their way and encourage them to subscribe 🙂