Stay Organized – Stay Sane
Ask a coach about any aspect of their game and they’ll tell you – they’ve got it covered.
They have a system.
Offense and defense, batting and pitching, blocking and tackling, even substitutions; coaches have a system for everything.
Denny Davidson has coached girls and boy’s basketball, baseball, and girl’s fastpitch softball for more than eighteen y
ears.
“Here’s my most important system.” he said, holding out a beat up, vinyl zippered folio. “I keep every shred of team-related paper right here in this folder and it goes everywhere I go. To every game, to every practice and to every meeting I attend. If somebody asks me for a birth certificate, a medical release, a schedule or a phone list, I know I have a copy right here.” he continued, patting the worn black pouch with the kind of affection most of us reserve for an old friend.
As usual with rookie coaches, Denny learned the hard way.
“I had to forfeit a baseball game my first season coaching because the other team thought one of my players was too old for the age bracket.” he explains. “I couldn’t produce his birth certificate or my league roster because I’d left them on my desk at work. I couldn’t even sit the kid and play the game because it was a league rule that the certified roster had to be present for review at the umpire’s discretion at every game. It was a bona fide coaching loss and I swore I would never do anything like that to the kids again.”
Denny’s story is pretty common.
First-time coaches are usually handed a list of names with phone numbers, a bag of equipment and a pat on the back. Organization and preparation are individual matters and your league administrator will rarely give you advice on managing these things.
Every league and every organization is a little different.
At the youngest ages kids won’t usually be required to provide birth certificates or social security numbers, but as soon as teams start to travel, verification of age and identity are mandatory.
As soon as you accept your coaching position, be sure to ask your league administrator what’s required for your team and specific age bracket or league. If the commissioner of your league operates out of a different organization or some other governing body, have this conversation with that person as soon as possible to give yourself time to pull together the information you need.
I can’t tell you how many coaches spend hours the evening before the registration deadline driving from house to house picking up photographs, social security numbers and signatures.
Here’s a list of the items Coach Davidson keeps in his pouch:
- Registration forms
- Roster
- Photo ID cards
- Phone list
- Medical release forms
- Birth certificates
- Scorebook
- Game schedule
- Practice schedule
- Game assignment/playing time matrix
“Once I came up with my system it was easy to maintain.” explains Denny. “Most of my players return from year to year so I already have their birth certificates and social security numbers on file. I created my own roster and schedule forms on the computer and they’re simple to update. It leaves me with a shorter list of stuff to chase down and takes a ton of stress out of my pre-season preparation.”
…and one more thing.
“I keep a complete set of duplicates in a file at home just in case I misplace my stuff or somebody accidentally leaves with it in the confusion that can sometimes follow a game.” warns Denny.
Both have happened.
Taking the time to come up with your own personalized system of organization will help to minimize your stress level, eliminate surprises and give you the freedom to focus on your other systems, and on the kids.
