SEASON Check List

About 2 to 4 weeks before the start of the season (reference your associations’ sign up times) call your parents and find out who is returning. Call EVERYONE, even little ‘Damien’ to find out if he/she is returning. There are times we have all experienced the ‘problem child’, but remember, you have no idea what impact you may have had on little ‘Damien’.

Attend the coaches meeting or training sessions if your league has them. Valuable insight can be gained not only from the information presented at the meeting, but also from the camaraderie that you can develop with other coaches.

Prepare a team roster of returning and new players, their jersey numbers, their parents’ names and home phone numbers for distribution to the players’ parents. Prepare a practice / game schedule, if not provided by your association.

Arrange a practice area at a local school, church or park if not provided by an association.

If you have a number of ‘new’ players it might be beneficial to conduct a ‘parent’s meeting’ to introduce the old and new players to each other. Use the meeting to let the parents’ know your expectations, philosophies, what you will teach, and your expectations of them.

At the ‘parents meeting’ or by phone, recruit an assistant coach and get some other volunteers if your sport requires them.

If you need an assistant to help with the phone calls, rosters, schedules, or whatever, you might consider ‘recruiting’ a team manager or team-mom.

Meet with your assistant coach and map out the exercises, skills and values you want to teach during the season. Make a practice plan for each practice. You can do this for all practices, or just do the first few so you can adjust to your players' abilities. This will help you to keep the players skill and value development on-track through the course of the season.

Be sure you are prepared for the games.

Make preliminary plans for the end of season awards event. You may want this to be immediately after your last game, or at a later date. You may plan this, or you may want to assign this to a team mom or manager.