Coaches: The Lifeblood of a Successful Club

By Chris Beerman

Another important aspect of a new club is who will comprise your coaching staff.  The personnel helps determine how big your club can be and what kind of programs you can offer.  Quality, caring coaches are the lifeblood of a successful club and Lexington is lucky in that it has many colleges and universities within a 20-30 mile radius with very solid volleyball programs; this creates a big group of potential coaches for LUV.  In my two previous years of coaching club in Lexington I was able to meet and observe some very talented, enthusiastic young coaches and watched them put their heart and soul into their teams, so I was confident I could construct a quality staff. 

The “United” idea of our club was in full effect and with other local clubs deciding to join with LUV, our pool of coaches was outstanding.  Knowing that I had 15 Elite teams, I knew I needed to first identify 15 coaches who would be running those teams.  I made contact with every coach in the area to gauge their interest in our club, what competitive level they wanted to coach, times they would be available, and what age group they were interested in working with.  I got very positive responses from about 30 coaches and I decided to have a coaches meeting to introduce my concepts and answer their questions.  At that meeting, I went over the basics of the club: Luv’s mission, structure, time lines, expectations and we had an awesome Q and A session at the end. 

Once I had a good indication of which coaches were in, I went to work on identifying my 1’s team coaches (top team in each age group) and securing their age-group commitment.  Next, I moved on to our 2’s coaches and regional coaches.  The process of matching strengths and skill-sets of coaches with the appropriate age groups is very interesting, and I found that all of the decisions I made on personnel were met by great enthusiasm.  Once I got full confirmation from the coaches, I posted their names and which age-groups they would be coaching on the LUV website.  I wanted to make sure the parents knew who their potential coaches would be and who would be evaluating their daughters at tryouts. 

I had a bit of trepidation about the response that parents would have once the list of coaches was revealed and I was prepared to hear complaints about this coach or that coach, but instead the response I received was nothing but positive!  The fact that our city was “united” into one club allowed all the best coaches to coach under one roof and that was a tremendous advantage for the parents.  With coaching positions and practice sites secured, it was now time to present our club vision to the community in the form of a public parent meeting.   Parents were eager to hear what we were all about and I knew first impressions would be critical.