What's the best way for me to find a good, non-parent coach for youth (12U) team?

Our girls are getting to an age where the parents that have previously coached have "peaked" and it's time to turn the reigns over to a "real coach" for the girls that want to get more competitive. We have a group of parents with an independent team formed, pending a good coach.

Where are some good places to turn to find a coach that we can pay a few grand to coach from Jan - July? Am I lucky enough to be in the presence of people with South Dakota connections that may know of a potential coach?

southdakotasoftball said:

Our girls are getting to an age where the parents that have previously coached have "peaked" and it's time to turn the reigns over to a "real coach" for the girls that want to get more competitive. We have a group of parents with an independent team formed, pending a good coach.

Where are some good places to turn to find a coach that we can pay a few grand to coach from Jan - July? Am I lucky enough to be in the presence of people with South Dakota connections that may know of a potential coach?

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I may know a guy......



Seriously, see if you can find some graduate players from a local college/university. Many of them will help out for some extra cash.

My husband head coached our team last year. He was kind of cornered into it and never really planned to do it long term, it was just to keep our team together. A few weeks before the end of the season he reached out to the head of our organization to see if he knew of anyone who might want to take over as head coach for this year. He knew a coach who'd coached his daughter through (she's committed to play in college next year) and was wanting to start over. If you're part of an organization maybe reach out to whoever runs it and see if they've had anyone contact them.

southdakotasoftball said:

Our girls are getting to an age where the parents that have previously coached have "peaked" and it's time to turn the reigns over to a "real coach" for the girls that want to get more competitive. We have a group of parents with an independent team formed, pending a good coach.

Where are some good places to turn to find a coach that we can pay a few grand to coach from Jan - July? Am I lucky enough to be in the presence of people with South Dakota connections that may know of a potential coach?

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Not going to be easy - many people think ex-player here and frankly many of them are ill-equipped to be a head coach due to lack of experience, youth and so forth. Most of our teams are jointly coached by a parent paired with a ex-player who wants to coach and can be given cover by the parent s they gain needed experience. Many of the younger ex-players get run over by older parents of their players. So the ex-player runs practices, makes lineups, make decisions, etc and the parent makes sure finances, logistics and runs cover for her from other parents. If it goes well, in their 3rd season we start to consider letting them be head coach.

Even finding an ex-player is hard.Here are some of the things you csn try.
1) Advertise obviously on local fast pitch boards
2) Cal all the local college head coaches and also any HS head coach who has a decent team.There is a good chance they know either players who might be interested or players returning to the area.
3) Talk to the 18U coaches locally who may have kids aging out.
4) Talk to some baseball people locally. It is a transition to softball, but if you can find an experienced COACH with an open mind, the transition can be done. And there are just more people involved in baseball.

Honestly though... if you have a parent who is willing to put in the time, effort and research they can easily coach the team and is a valid choice if the right person can't be found. It is a lot of commitment but it can be done. Use the money on skills training, bringing coaches in from out of the area or other things beneficial to the team.

Finding the wrong person is way more common than finding the right person and unless you are SURE, be very cautious. It is why we continue to use parents in the coaching staff - the maturity and life experience an also being a life-peer to the other parents on the team helps.

Added: Your team is full of 12 year olds. That makes the parents of most of your players probably between 30 and 50 yers old. If you are lets say 40, you are going to consider a 25 year still a kid. And you 'know better' than some kid especially when they make a decision that effects your daughter. It is not easy for a young head coach to handle this situation. It is why we provide them cover s they gain experience on how to handle it and also the opportunity to build respect and trust.

While everyone has a "daddy ball" story, the bottom line is most youth sports teams would not survive WITHOUT parent coaches. Coaching a travel ball team is a HUGE commitment and there are travel costs associated with TB that need to be considered.