Anyone that has ever worked in college S&C has had to work with multiple teams at a given time. This reality of the job is something that rarely gets discussed as a challenge but needs to be appreciated. This is not the easiest thing to do as an S&C coach.
Seasonality is the biggest challenge. As one team is wrapping their season, another one is beginning. As one off season is wrapping up, another off season begins. The evolution of a calendar year is filled with emotions and energy ebbs & flows. We are stuck in a state that can never really align 100% with these fluctuations of emotions and energies. In season is just different from off season. An S&C coach ramps up their contribution in the off season, whereas during in season, they are less involved.
This transition from off season to in season contribution isn’t completely a bad thing. It’s just natural order. The problem is that an S&C coach is now shifting gears to another team’s off season, and the team you just worked with is now in season. If you are good at what you do, the team you work with will want you around as much as possible. You are shifting your focus to another team, and this could run contrary to what your in season team desires, or in their mind requires.
There is an element of what your true ambition is tied to that influences this. If you want to work with a particular sport, you will focus on that team year round; it’s human nature. But as a whole, the true essence of S&C is developing teams in the off season. Even if you have a sport that you aspire to work with, you will still have to prioritize the off season team over an in season team.
The best way to handle this is to be as much as you can to everyone, but no more. What I mean by that is you have to prioritize off season teams over in season teams. This means that if it involves Monday-Friday travel, you may have to turn it down. It may mean that you cannot be at every practice because you need to be available for afternoon lifts with the off season team. It may mean that you cannot be at team meetings, staff meetings, team events because it limits your time for a team that is off season that you are more of priority for.
As a coach, you need to set clear expectations on what your priorities are. Telling the sports coach that you aspire to be at every practice and every road game is clearly not something you can do when working with multiple sports. Something will have to give; either you will let the team down that needs you in the off season or you will let the in season team down that has expectations of you being around. You may be reading this and thinking this is inaccurate and that you are in fact currently doing this at a high level.
You need to be conscious about burn out. A big problem with winter sports is that they play during the primary break periods during the school year. Thanksgiving, Winter, and Spring break are all in season for winter sports. If you work with a fall sport, you will report for pre pre-season in August. If you work with a spring sport, you will play in June. This leads to no time off if you work with multiple teams. If you have time off during May, you will more than likely use that for continuing education. The end result is burn out or becoming disenfranchised from the profession.
Working multiple teams is part of the job; there is no way around it. It will force you to become more efficient as a coach. You will learn how to say no and get more value from your time. It will force you to look at things differently than if you only worked with one sport. It will make you better at working with all athletes who might not blindly accept strength training as gospel. It will make you a better coach, but you need to understand the challenges that it presents.
Multi sport S&C coaches create a ton of opportunities to make you a better coach by refining why and how you do things. You, as a coach, need to appreciate the challenges and what you have to do to be successful. You may aspire to work with one team one day, which has its own set of problems (see next month). On the other hand, the constant off-season makes you appreciate the best aspect of our job: developing athletes year round. If you are good at developing people, you are a good S&C coach.