Duke University basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski spoke for many coaches, amateur and professional, when he said, “The coaching, I love. The kids, I love. It’s the other stuff that you have to watch out for.”

Men and women who go into coaching are generally prepared to handle game strategies and fundamentals — the X’s and O’s of the sport. At least, they know what’s expected of them in that regard. What coaches don’t expect is “The Other Stuff.”

Few coaches, for example, are prepared to have a player walk up to them and say, “Coach, I’m pregnant. Should I get an abortion?” No amount of knowledge about athletic technique can address the medical, legal and ethical responsibilities such a question raises.

Likewise, nothing in most coaches’ training prepares them for the arrest of their star player after he has assaulted his girlfriend — again. What does a coach do if the news about the assault comes from a reporter, rather than the player himself? What are the coach’s responsibilities to the player? The team? The victim? The community?
How do coaches cope with parents who accuse them of not giving their child enough playing time and ruining their chances for a scholarship or pro contract?

How do they balance the demands of coaching with the responsibility they have to their spouse and kids?

Welcome to “The Other Stuff” and the new realities of coaching. They’re driving experienced coaches nuts and causing almost every other coach to wonder whether coaching is worth it.

Similar problems come to the forefront for all coaches, whether they lead a town hockey team, a workplace softball team, a high school football squad or a major university basketball program. In these days of traveling “B” teams for 8-year-olds, even volunteer coaches of “nonrevenue” sports must deal to some degree with the business of sports. As soon as tryouts take place, as soon as the fund-raising begins, as soon as the local paper writes about the team, “The Other Stuff” has started. Then, the coach is faced with a new set of pressures not directly connected with teaching kids how to play the game.

The hard truth is that coaches who ignore “The Other Stuff” often end up out of the game — either they are fired because they fail to accomplish some major objective of their program, or they quit because they are overwhelmed by off-the-field pressures.

We are authors of a book, “Why Good Coaches Quit: How to Deal With The Other Stuff,” in which we include personal insights into the profession — including this from John Anderson, who has been head baseball coach at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, since 1981:

“I started coaching at age 25 — not much older than my players — with no head coaching experience, and all of a sudden I was running a major university baseball program.

“I think I did pretty well with the field operations part of the job, teaching proper technique and managing the games, but I had no clue how to handle the financial, public relations and personal issues. I began to feel that maybe I wasn’t cut out for coaching.

“I had to learn or I had to leave. I’m still trying to learn about ‘The Other Stuff,’ but every year, there seem to be new hurdles. I think I’m doing OK, but I’m never sure.”

Dependency vs. independence

One of the most common fallacies in coaching is that the head coach believes he or she should have all the answers. There also is the common belief that the coach’s job as a leader is to fix or solve problems. This kind of thinking will get coaches into trouble more often than not.

Most coaches believe not knowing the answer implies a sense of weakness in their leadership ability. We suggest that pretending to know everything is not only foolish, but it damages your credibility as a leader. It is just not realistic.

Off the field, coaches often are expected to fulfill duties for which they are not only unqualified, but unprepared. Some of these include being a medical specialist, surrogate parent, finance director, cop, politician, equipment manager, travel director, lawyer and more. Unfortunately, most coaches take on those responsibilities themselves, when they should be looking outside for help. Not only are coaches typically unqualified in those areas, but it also takes away from what they were hired to do — coach.

On the field, a similar situation occurs when a player comes to the coach with a problem. What most coaches don’t realize is that they can inadvertently create a sense of dependency when giving advice.

As Rick Aberman writes in our book:

“When problems occur within your team, they look to you to solve it. While this may provide a temporary sense of self-importance, pretty soon you have no time to do anything else, except put out fires. And what happens when your advice or fixing goes wrong? You become the one who takes the blame.”

We believe that a coach’s job as a leader is to develop others. Avoid the tendency to teach dependency. Coaches need other people to be successful. They need them to think critically and creatively. Coaches cannot do it all by themselves. A coach who is getting tired and doing more firefighting than teaching may have bought into the “fix-it” myth.

The inescapable conclusion

After dealing with a significant amount of “The Other Stuff,” most coaches find themselves at a crossroads: Find a better way to deal with “The Other Stuff,” so they can get back to focusing on their coaching goals...or walk away from the game.
To survive and thrive in the modern world of sports, one of the most important things coaches can do is to develop a better understanding of themselves. They need to define themselves as people first and coaches second.

What really matters is not some title or label the coach has taken on, but who the coach is as a person. In other words, coaches should identify their values, their tendencies and their methods of operation as a coach. Self-knowledge is the foundation on which successful coaches build their careers. Without a strong sense of who they are, both as a person and as a coach, many coaches will walk away from the game.

This article is based on the book, “Why Good Coaches Quit: How to Deal With The Other Stuff,” written by John Anderson, head baseball coach at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, and Rick Aberman, Ph.D. in psychology and former staff psychologist for the University of Wisconsin, Madison, department of athletics. Excerpts from the book are available at www.lennickaberman.com/store/product_details.php?cid=19&pid=20.