Courtesy NCSA Athletic Recruiting
Part 1 of 2
Nobody’s perfect, but if you’ve been around college coaching long enough you’ve probably seen your fair share of college coaching mistakes that have ended – or at least hampered – an otherwise bright future in collegiate athletics.
We’re not talking about strategy mistakes, or not knowing the X’s and O’s as well as their opponent. No, most “coaching” mistakes actually have very little to do with recruiting, and everything to do with the behind-the-scenes aspects of a college coaching career.
Over the years, our staff at NCSA Athletic Recruiting – comprised of 400+ former college athletes and coaches – have seen more than a few good men and women struggle to achieve coaching success. In a two part series designed to help you avoid the mistakes that have plagued so many others, we outline the four most damaging mistakes college coaches should avoid at all costs:
Bad time management. As a group, college coaches tend to me poor time managers. We complain about the lack of time we have to do our jobs as college coaches and recruiters, yet we waste time daily as a result of poor time management and not accessing free technology to that will speed up many of the non-coaching aspects of our daily lives. The result? The important stuff – like strategic recruiting communication and new prospect information gathering – gets pushed to the back-burner in favor of watching opponent video that you didn’t get to the day before, or another urgent duty that wasn’t scheduled. If that’s happening to you, make a plan to change it.
Leading on a prospect. One of the coaching cancers that can fester and grow over time is leading a prospect to believe that you are interested them, when in reality you aren’t. We realize, of course, that sometimes you need to recruit more athletes than you likely need. But there is no better way to earn a bad reputation as a recruiter among parents, club and high school coaches, and your recruits than coming on too strong and then dropping them later without explanation. It happens more than you think, and if you’re guilty of doing that, change your ways quickly. There are better ways to recruit effectively, and save your reputation at the same time. This is a long term attitude commitment that can pay big dividends over a career.
Back to time management and smarter recruiting, Coach: Want a more seamless way to recruit online and gather prospect information more efficiently? We’ve got a free technology tool that thousands of college coaches use daily to scout, track and communicate with their recruits. Click here to view the latest prospects just added to the database.