Planning Ahead

When I first became a head coach, like most first-time coaches, I wanted to get everything done as quick as possible. I was anxious to establish a new culture and set the tone for our program. I took over the job at Rhode Island College in September, so school had already started.

The fall for Division III coaches isn’t a lot of fun. There are no off-season workouts. You can’t get in the gym with your guys. School starts and you are excited to get everything started, and then you have to wait until October 15th to do anything with your players. It isn’t easy.

I was going to get ahead of the game. I spent the fall planning out our practices up until our first game. I figured out the off days and started calculating what I wanted to have in by when, leading all the way up to our first game. I planned out every practice, a process that took a few weeks to finalize. We were going to be prepared and ready to go once October 15th rolled around.

That lasted about 30 minutes into my first practice. I realized quickly that so much of what we did every day in practice depended on the players, what they could grasp, their strengths and weaknesses, and my ability to teach. Right away it was obvious certain things (mostly defensive concepts) were going to take a lot longer than I thought. And other things were going to have to get cut. There was no way to say we were going to do 20 minutes of shell drill on day one and be done with it. For the most part, teaching and implementing took a lot longer than I expected and that impacted our ability to move on to other things.

Planning ahead was really a waste of my time. Obviously it makes sense to prepare and to plan your practices, but trying to lay out a schedule a month ahead of time is useless. Your team and their strengths and weaknesses will dictate what you need to do and how long you need to do it for. And there is no way to really know that until you start practicing.

One of the best things you can prepare for is the ability to adjust. A large part of coaching and building a team is adapting to what is happening every day. Some days your kids may be really sharp and focused, and you realize you can get a lot of stuff in. On other days they may have great energy and once you start playing you don’t want to stop and teach, because you don’t want to slow them down. Having a feel and understanding of your team will dictate when and how fast you can teach.

It always makes us feel better to plan ahead. We love to feel prepared. But when it comes to practice, you have to be ready for the unexpected. When you are trying to build a team, the best path will be dictated by what you see in front of you. It’s hard to plan that path in September, and when you do you’ll probably find you are wasting your time.