because I am sleeping in my own house instead of a hotel somewhere. They allow me to be a better coach to my own student-athletes because I can be in a gym with them versus out on the road recruiting, and they keep the prospective student-athlete from being overwhelmed with constant recruiting pressures."

Ah yes, the student-athletes.

When coaches can spend more time with their current student-athletes, the growth possible during their collegiate athletics opportunity is increased. When those same coaches lead a lifestyle that fosters excellence with a well-rounded priority list, they also send a powerful message encouraging their team to do the same when they encounter the pressures and responsibility of post-collegiate life.

Pat Henry, head track and field coach at Texas A&M University and winner of 22 NCAA team titles during his years at Lousiana State University, also was instrumental in the recent United States Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches Association proposal to create a recruiting calendar for the two connected sports. The same relentless year-round calendar that challenged me as a young mom has left even one of the sport’s most successful coaches looking for change. "We needed to take an active stance so that other groups didn’t define our calendar for us. Most importantly, we send a bad message to the student-athletes if we never have a time where other things are more important than track and field," he said.

Ouch. Do coaches who work hard really send the message that nothing is more important than their sport, or are they just demonstrating the nature of true commitment to a cause? Perhaps that is where the term "work-life balance" itself misses the mark.

Lotte Bailyn, co-director of MIT’s Workplace Center, coined the term "dual agenda" in her 1993 book "Breaking the Mold: Women, Men and Time in the new Corporate World." It is a concept that may very well prove useful here. Is it possible that collegiate administrators and head coaches can create work environments in which coaches don’t seek an elusive balance so easily upset one way or another? Can we have fewer years and entire careers not spent trying merely to manage our physical location, keep up with competitive pressures and just get through the day? Can we take a fresh look at our long-ingrained organizational and industry "givens" about work and find ways to foster an integration of team and personal lives that encourages and inspires us to be more often at our best for both? As many coaches know, being "home" is one thing. Being home and making hours of phone calls to recruits night after night is quite another.

Legislation sets some good limits but cannot create culture shifts on its own. Often, these measures just change the methods and means through which coaches seek to out-work each other to gain an advantage. In the end, they may further a process where well-intentioned recruiting and travel ideas are drowned out by the din of the abuses, inevitably followed by more rules and restrictions that veer off the mark.

Great role models do exist within the coaching ranks. In little pockets and in individual programs, head coaches and administrators have sent a message through their policies and own work patterns that professional success does not have to come at the cost of a well-balanced life that may include family. While these messages need to be received by young coaches as they embark on their own careers and families, they could be one of the most important passed along to the student-athletes themselves. Let’s listen to those who have been successful and have found ways to not only manage, but to thrive.

Joe Piane, head track and field coach at Notre Dame, has been twice named national men’s cross country coach of the year and finished his 31st cross country campaign last fall with a third-place finish at the NCAA meet. Parent of a school-aged son, he has obvious reasons to embrace the proposed ebbs in the flow of the recruiting calendar. However, for him, it is only one element in the role-modeling process coach Henry touched on.

"The new recruiting calendar will still allow plenty of time for coaches to let kids know what their program and their institution are all about," he said. "For me, if the sole reason they don’t choose Notre Dame is that I didn’t call them on that one week between Christmas and New Year’s, then they are probably not going to be a good fit for the type of atmosphere we are trying to build here once they arrive."

Coaches, like the student-athletes they work with, are a competitive group. When we couch the search for an appropriate integration of work and family life in terms of a balance, we provide a zero-sum goal so precarious it almost always eventually produces a simultaneous winning and losing situation, frustrating all concerned and blunting the belief it can be done.

What if we assume we can win at both, but are fearless enough to take a step back and reconsider how and what we are trying to win? Let’s take notes from those who have done it and plan on being successful. After all, the Fuchsia Flyers often do not really understand which goal is theirs, even if their coach just laid it out for them clearly. It is only when the scrum starts to move one direction that they really become focused on what direction makes sense, and then it is off to the races.

Today in many sports, we have legislation that encourages a moderate path. Here’s to the success of leaders who can truly move the cultural conversation from one about balance to lives with more than one successful category. We might not only help ourselves, but in doing so, keep the door open for more young athletes like the Flyers to one day give it a try.