This resource is from a case study in Jim Thompson’s (@JimThompson18) book, The Power of Double-Goal Coaching.

Using Assistant Coaches Effectively: At first you were glad to have a couple of parents help you coach this season. But now they seem more trouble than they are worth. You’re not really sure how to use them to help the team get better. As a Double-Goal Coach®, how can you integrate assistants so they add value to your players and team?

Forge your assistant coaches into a cohesive leadership team, and you will accomplish much more. And you will address a huge problem with youth sports practices – too many kids standing around.

The tradeoff is control versus reach. If you do all the coaching, you can do it to your standards. However, integrating assistants into your leadership team will extend your impact on your players. But that requires delegating, something many coaches either aren’t willing or don’t know how to do.

Here are three ways to delegate to assistant coaches:

1. See and Do: Assistant watches you teach a skill and replicates it with another group of players.
2. Plan and Preview: Assistant plans to teach a specific skill at an upcoming practice and previews it with you before trying it out on the players. Make assistants an important part of practice and game prep.
3. Do and Report: Assistant teaches a skill to part of the team and reports how well it went.

To read the full response, including more tips for effectively utilizing assistant coaches, download the book excerpt found below.

To purchase the entire book The Power of Double-Goal Coaching, and to learn more about other PCA books, click here.

These books are used in PCA’s live workshops. To learn more about our interactive coach workshops, click here.