The Cost of Bad Coaching

TeamSnap’s Jim Dahline shares a look at the financial cost of bad coaching and how this can negatively impact the experience of your members.

I’ve had the pleasure of working several roles inside multiple clubs as my kids have grown through their youth sports years. From fundraising coordinator to coach to level director, you name it, I’ve had pretty much every role except for President or Treasurer. I’ve learned a ton from each of those roles, and each has come with its own challenges and of course, amazing rewards. 

While my favorite role has been when I’ve coached, that role has also been the most time-consuming and required the most work than any of the others. No doubt, it’s incredibly rewarding to see young athletes get challenged, learn a new skill, get a big win, and also learn from their many mistakes. All of the work that has gone into that role, when also trying to keep up in a fast-paced tech career, can be challenging. You have to have a strong support system around you. That could mean your director of coaching, level coordinator, a great team manager, support from your governing body, or support from other trainers to help keep practices filled with activities. 

The Cost of Bad Coaching in Youth Sports

Inside a club, it becomes challenging because all of the other roles are also filled with busy staff and volunteers who are also juggling so many other responsibilities. No doubt, everyone wants to do a good job, but let’s face it, things can get missed, or need to be outsourced. 

This brings me back to coaching. What lessons learned from working as a coach (or level coordinator working with coaches) could be applied to build a great experience for all? Including players! How are the needs of competitive team coaches different from recreational coaches? What are the costs or impacts of not being strategic, and what does bad coaching mean to your club? All great questions that we want to tackle today. 

How Youth Coaches are Recruited 

It’ll be helpful to look in the context of two different, but similar roles. The first, as level coordinator for an in-house hockey program (8U), and the other as director of youth development in a very competitive club program with teams at 8U-18U. 

As an 8U level coordinator, you’re presented with several challenges. First, many of your players and parents may be generally unfamiliar with how youth sports programs operate. You don’t want to overlook the fact that, if not told specifically, parents may not understand even how to sign up for programs or players may show up with incorrect equipment. There’s grace and understanding, and communication is key. 

For many in-house programs, especially at the youngest age groups, their focus on fun for kids in a community means lower costs and a goal of introducing the most kids to the sport. To achieve that, more often than not, coaches are recruited and found through the parents of players who have registered, and who are willing to step up and volunteer to coach for the season.

This is a special illustration of community in sport, found especially at the recreational or house program level. And something that, in many ways, parents embrace. For others, those who are more “volun-told” they’ll be coaching, it’s a bit more daunting. 

No matter how those parents got to the point where they agreed to coach, their impact reaches far. Both on the players of their specific teams, but also on the long-term participation rates in your program. 

In short, the long-term financial success of your organization hinges on how well volunteer parents turned coaches perform through the season. Let that sink in.

Are you 100% confident they are going to do well?

Parent Expectations of Coaches

Before we look at the financial impact of bad coaching, let’s look at our other example. During my five years as director of youth development, the role was heavily focused on finding and recruiting coaches who would lead teams season after season. The club operated the teams as “coach-led,” meaning the coaches had a lot of leverage in how their seasons ran. They choose their practice schedules, which tournaments they are going to play in, recruit and build their teams. As a club that recently celebrated its 30th season, we found a lot of success hiring coaches who played in our programs as kids, or who had successful careers playing at the highest levels. They were the most passionate about our mission and wanted to see success for not only our programs but specifically for each player. 

What really sets the competitive program apart from the in-house program I worked in, was how the players and parents looked at development. They wanted to see a variety of skill work at practice, many wanted to get instructions on things to work on at home, and they are much more active and engaged in that development. No matter how realistic, many of them looked at development as a means to an end, with the “end” being a college scholarship and beyond. 

How to Provide Quality Coaching

Unlike parent coaches in the in-house program, these competitive coaches are fully on board with coaching before the season begins. They also bring with them prior coaching experience, and a “mental database” of drills they have used in the past to plan practice. Their one blind spot is that they still need to keep the kids having fun, and what was great in the past, may be out of favor now. Those coaches love finding a new drill, two or three to add to their practices. Plus, parents love getting some homework to give to their players to work on skills at home that don’t include a gaming joystick.  

And here’s where our two paths converge. While the challenges may be different, providing high-quality drills and practice plans, organized into week-by-week curriculums for coaches has been instrumental in tackling these challenges, and has created both consistency in how practices are run and that skill development is still fun.

TeamSnap+ Coaches Pack

In early 2024, we introduced coaching and developmental resources for coaches and at-home skill-building activities for families into TeamSnap and feedback has been incredible. While the concept of giving coaches drills and practice plans for their season isn’t new, we wanted to raise the bar on quality and have published drills that include instructional videos, illustrations, equipment lists, coaching tips, and more. These drills and practice plans are available right in the TeamSnap app and have been built in partnership and with the support of major leagues and clubs in their sports. This is a major upgrade over other platforms that rely on PDFs and emails to send to coaches. But, don’t take our word for it. 

“This is truly a game-changer for grassroots soccer.” — Vince G., United Soccer Coaches

“It’s so hard to find volunteers. This breaks down that wall. It’s making it so easy for coaches. I love what you guys are doing.” — Troy F., Antioch, CA

“Every coach needs to see this. The app is beautiful. The content is spot-on. And the videos are tremendous. This can really help coaches of all levels.” — Jim F., Springfield, MA

Simply put, giving these plans and drills to coaches, whether brand new to coaching recreational sports, or long-time seasoned competitive coaches, helps create fun and development-focused training sessions that lead to happy players and parents. The best part? It’s good for your business. Parents who see their kids actually developing want more, and will stay in your programs for longer.

The Costs of Bad Coaching: A Breakdown 

Let’s take a look at the math:

While most “practice plan/drill content subscriptions” out there charge anywhere from $50-$200/year per coach to have access to a robust content library, on TeamSnap, organizations will invest closer to $10-20/coach for the season to unlock the entire drill and practice plan library. 

While there are quite a few options to subscribe to get access to drills, none have partnered with professional leagues to use their deep bench of coaches, research, and players to build the highest-quality library in the industry. 

So higher quality comes at a big discount? How is that possible?

Working with organizations, and setting up all coaches in their programs, allows us to pass significant savings on to them.

Here’s an example of a summer coaching program:

The organization sets up TeamSnap+ Coaches Pack for their 200 coaches. Their cost comes out to $15/coach. The season runs for 10 weeks through the summer, and each team is on the field for two 60-minute practice sessions per week. All coaches are parent volunteers.

For their investment, the organization is spending $1.50 per coach/week for their drills and practice plans. Since coaches will spend 1-1.5 hours putting together practice plans each week, they will save coaches that practice prep time, which accounts for 10-15 hours per season (let’s be honest, it’s probably more than that). So with TeamSnap+ Coaches Pack, organizations will save their volunteer coaches up to 15 hours per season of planning, and it only costs $15 per coach. Or about $3 per athlete. 

Real-Life Example

I can tell you, that’ll be the best money you’ll spend this year. 

What if we looked at it as money you won’t be losing?

It’s quite common for in-house and recreational programs to be the feeder system for your competitive travel teams. They are also great leads for your offseason skills camps and clinics. Our data shows that full-season registration fees can vary by sport, but it’s common for competitive travel programs to be $1,500-$3,500 in fees. In fact, they are quite often 5-10x more expensive than recreational programs. 

As kids progress through rec, their parents start looking for “what’s next.” Is that going to be in your club? Have they loved seeing their kid play, but weren’t a fan of the coaching and want to look somewhere else for their next phase?

Remember when we said that “the long-term financial success of your organization hinges on how well volunteer parents turned coaches perform through the season”?

To this end, keeping 1 or 2 kids in your club instead of them moving to another organization in town, will more than pay for the fees to equip your entire group of coaches in the club. 

And if money matters to you… wait until you read our next post. 😉