Post by coachcb on Sept 16, 2010 6:41:03 GMT -6
Sept 15, 2010 16:47:59 GMT -6 @coacharnold said:
So what I've taken from the responses to Mariner's OP is that no matter where you go, you're doing to deal with politics.I always assumed that a bigger school district in a more metropolitan area would be less likely to play "inner circle/usual suspect" politics with coaches than a small town where they want someone they've known since he was a kid. But Mariner was looking at smaller schools in the first place.
For those of you who've done both, is that the case?
I'm from a small town and I don't like the way they do things there, so I don't want to work there if I can find a job elsewhere, but some of the others around here seem like great places to coach from the outside.
The issue I'm worried about is that just getting the job is so politicalicized: you've got to know the right people and be one of them to get hired in the first place. That's especially true if you want to be a HFC, but even the teaching jobs are like that.
The superintendent of a local system here has even told a couple of people in my program at school that "Unless your family goes back 3 generations here, you're just wasting your time if you apply."
That kind of stuff worries me.
I went from coaching at the largest school in the state to one of the smallest. There's going to be politics anywhere you go and I don't know that it will be any worse in a small town; it's just more confined. In a smaller down, you just have to more cognizant of your actions and words. If you say or do something that one person disagrees with, it'll be all over the town in a heart beat.
For example, I told my assistant that we were keeping everything very, very vanilla in terms of drills and practice because the kids were lacking in fundamentals in a big way. The next day, I had three people tell me that the previous two coaching staffs must have done a terrible job if the kids were so lost when it came to the basics. I never said ANYTHING about the previous coaches, at all. My assistant had mentioned something to one guy and it spread across campus like wildfire. We've got one guy left over from last year's staff on campus (he turned down an assistant job before any of this was said) so I had to put the rumors down in a hurry.
And, there are going to be times when you have to put your foot down on stuff in a hurry and set boundaries. Several things have popped up with respect to my personal life and I have flat out told people to mind their own business.