Ten Survival Tips For Coaches

I grew up in a coach’s house and witnessed the toll that coaching takes on a family. My father coached for 47 years and won 644 games as a high school and college basketball coach. By the time I was 15, my dad had coached at five schools and we had moved four times. By then, we were treading water financially. Our family car was a broken-down station wagon with a defective gas gauge and a dented driver’s side door that wouldn’t open. During an age when cool guys drove Trans Ams and Firebirds, I drove my parents’ Plymouth Custom Suburban. 

My mom was the glue that held it all together. Somehow, mom found ways to provide food, clothing, and shelter for six people with limited resources.

I wanted the life that my father had. I was certain at the age of 19 and that certainty has never left me. I wanted to wake up every day excited… excited about the players on my team, the next game, and the next season. I wanted the emotional connection that coaches have with their athletes. I wanted the winning and losing, and everything that went with it.

Most coaching careers end badly. Many are train wrecks. Marriages suffer. Families become dysfunctional. Every year, hundreds of coaches resign “to spend more time with their family.” If a coach is going to survive the long haul, he must take care of his family first. Nothing ends a coaching career faster than problems at home.

I write this with a proud but humble heart. This article is not an attempt to impress anyone. As I complete my 41st year of coaching, I believe I have something of value to share with others. My survival guide may not be your survival guide. Even though my ten tips are unique to my life, some of them are universal. I hope young coaches may benefit.

#1 GO HOME FOR LUNCH

I live four minutes from Plainfield North High School. For 38 of my 41 years in the game, I have lived within a mile of my workplace.

To my knowledge, I was the only teacher at Plainfield North who went home for lunch. Rain, sleet, or snow, I ate lunch at home. Stale air and fluorescent lighting can distort your senses. In addition, eating lunch with unhappy, unappreciated, underpaid, curriculum-driven teachers drains the positivity from your soul.

But here’s the more important issue. If you live close enough to go home for lunch, you also have a quick drive to work and a quick drive home. I’ve worked with teachers who endure a two-hour round-trip commute. I guarantee you one thing: those teachers aren’t going to coach long. It’s no secret, coaching can seem like a full time job on top of your true full time job. If you add 6-12 hours of driving to a work week, something is going to break. 

#2 CHOOSE WISELY

In my introduction, I mentioned my mom. She was a mother of four by the age of 30 and gave up a promising career in order to become a wife and a mother (common in the 1950’s). My dad chose wisely. Not only did he marry an attractive high school valedictorian from a solid family, but he also married a girl who understood sports. Three of my mom’s brothers played college football; two of them became career football coaches.

Venus & Mars marriages may not work so well for coaches.

I married Jill in 1983. We were both teachers. Before we got together, I knew Jill attended every home basketball game at Harrisburg High School. I was the head basketball coach. I also learned Jill was a huge football fan.

To this day, my wife enjoys sports as much as I do. 

#3 BUY A BACKYARD POOL

In 1993, I won a small settlement for a wrongful dismissal as head basketball coach. We invested around $3,000 into a backyard pool for our family of six. For the next 11 summers, our pool was the center of family life.

A picture of the Holler backyard pool, circa 2001. Resort living for a small price.

As a coach, I worked long weeks from August until May. In my first eight years of teaching, I coached football, basketball, and track. Over the past 41 years, I’ve coached 78 teams. And, as every coach knows, coaching doesn’t end when the season is over.

For the career coach, summer must become summer vacation. Creating a backyard playground makes sense.

Today, youth baseball is the tail that wags the dog for many American families. An alarming number of kids age 6 to 18 are paraded all over the country to play in tournaments and gain national exposure. Parents invest thousands into a sport that was once relatively free. When families follow their prodigies from game to game, the fabric of family life changes. Forget about that backyard pool.

When I think of a coach giving up summer vacation in order to follow their kids’ baseball teams from Tucson to Tucumcari, I just shake my head.

#4 RETHINK OBLIGATIONS

I was blown away by the book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. I believe it to be the best coaching book ever written, even though it was not written for coaches. 

I’ve learned to say “NO”. I have declined hundreds, if not thousands, of graduations, graduation parties, baptisms, first communions, confirmations, funerals, weddings, school plays, family get-togethers, coach’s parties, and just about everything else you can imagine. The only sport I watch on TV is football. 

Remember, these survival tips are mine. You may disagree. Throughout my coaching career, I’ve made decisions to simplify my life by going big on the things that mattered to me most. I’ve de-emphasized or eliminated many things that others hold dear.

Please understand I am not criticizing those who live lives of duty and obligation. I respect those who show up for their niece’s middle school graduation. I respect people who attend the funerals of distant relatives and friends of friends. Those people have made their choices and I have made mine.

#5 READING, RUNNING, AND WRITING

Books are always available. They never demand my attention, and they don’t make appointments. I’ve read around 1,000 books in the past 50 years. To me, reading allows me to travel without leaving my home. I can’t imagine my life without reading.

When money was tight, I got my books from the public library. Reading quiets my mind and feeds my spirit. Because of reading, I’m never bored. Never being bored is highly underrated.

Running and reading have become the common thread of my life. Both are relatively free. Both can be done without going somewhere in a car. Both make me feel healthy. When I’m feeling stressed or out of control, I always find that two things are missing in my life: reading and running. If you can’t run, walk. We often must resort to the “next best thing”. 

I did not write my first article until I had coached for 30 years. Writing does not quiet my mind like running and reading, but there’s a special relationship between all three.

How is my writing related to running and reading? When I run, my mind gets creative. Almost all of my ideas come to me when I’m running. No one taught me to write. Reading provides my only training as a writer. The knowledge that a sentence either sounds right or sounds awkward is a product of being a reader. 

Writing forces you to organize your thoughts. Writing helps you to refine your coaching philosophy and articulate your beliefs.

#6 ALL YOU NEED IS ENOUGH

My father never carried a wallet; never slipped me a 5-dollar bill. His pockets were always empty. Dad brought his paychecks home and handed them to my mom. Some people’s minds never stray from the profit margin. The struggle for the legal tender is the alpha and omega of many American men. Not my dad.

As a first-year teacher in 1981, I was assigned five classes of low-level science in a 100-year-old building with no air conditioning and plaster falling off the walls. I coached football, basketball, and track. My paycheck was $499, twice a month. Renting a trailer cost me $160 and my school loan payment was more than my rent. My teaching salary didn’t exceed $50K until I was 50. If I measured success based on my paycheck, I’m a career failure.

Teachers and coaches measure success on a different scale. Our success cannot be quantified (though poorly informed people think otherwise).

I grew up in a family who had enough to live on. My kids grew up with enough.

There’s nothing divine about living paycheck to paycheck. Small setbacks cause high anxiety. One of my life’s regrets is not being able to pay for my kids’ college education. All four of my kids borrowed around $100K to attend college. .

In my Hall of Fame speech, I told the audience, “When Jill and I got married, we were about $20,000 in debt and we rented a house. Here I am 30-some years later, and we are $20,000 in debt and we rent a house.”

#7 TAKE YOUR KIDS TO WORK

There was no separation anxiety when our kids went to kindergarten because they went to school with their mother. Whether Jill was teaching 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade, her classroom was right down the hallway from Adrienne, Alec, Troy, and Quinn. The perfect job for a mother puts her in the same building as her kids.

All four of my kids attended my high school. I had the privilege of teaching Chemistry-I, Chemistry-II, and Anatomy Physiology to Adrienne and Alec at Harrisburg High School. In Plainfield, I taught Honors Chemistry to Troy and Quinn.

I never coached my daughter, but I coached Alec’s freshmen and sophomore football teams. I was varsity offensive coordinator when Troy started as a wide receiver during his junior and senior years. Quinn was my quarterback in sophomore football. Alec, Troy, and Quinn ran track, and all three were hurdlers.

By the way, I quarterbacked my father’s sophomore football team and later started for his varsity basketball team. Dad was my World History teacher at Princeton High School in 1973.

Having keys to the gym is one of the few perks of coaching. On most Sundays, I would take my kids to the gym. It seemed like they could play there forever.

I don’t think there was ever a track meet where a couple of my kids didn’t ride the bus. They witnessed every locker room and every sideline. Not many jobs are as kid-friendly as coaching.

To this day, I share coaching with two of my boys. Alec coaches football and track at Edwardsville H.S., Quinn coaches football and track at Tinley Park Andrew H.S. 

#8 YOUR WIFE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A SUPER-FAN

I’ve known many coaches who expect their wives to support them by attending their athletic events. This is unhealthy.

Attendance at events should never be required. After a week of teaching 2nd grade (aka, “The Death March”), Jill would often require an extensive period of rest and recovery. Heading out to a Friday night football game or an all-day Saturday track meet would have done her in.

By the very nature of a coach’s job, the wife of a coach will be involved; very involved. Coaches take their work home. During the season, I am a coach from the time I wake in the morning until the time I go to sleep at night, and then I dream about it. Your wife may want to be your assistant, or the team mom, or a super-fan. She may want to sit in the stands and bask in your popularity and hear all the lovely things parents say about you. No problem. Just make sure the involvement is her choice and not yours.

#9 RAISE FREE-RANGE KIDS

It’s strange that so many people prefer free-range chickens, but choose to cage their kids. I don’t know when all of this changed, but parenting today can be a soul-crushing job.

At the risk of sounding like an old codger who talks about the good old days, here goes. Jill and I were born at the end of the Baby Boom. We were born before the pill made it much easier to plan births and limit family size. As kids, we walked to school and walked home. We went barefoot in the summer, climbed dangerous trees, and ate wild berries, green apples, and anything else that looked edible. We made up our own games in the backyard, made our own rules, and fought our own fights. Our dogs lived outdoors and ran around the neighborhood with us. Bikes would take us places we had never been.

When Jill and I became parents, necessity demanded we raise our kids the way our parents raised us. We were busy people with four kids and no money. Our kids walked from their school to my practice without supervision. Ninety-nine percent of my kids’ athletic development took place without uniforms, travel teams, or personal trainers. Needless to say, we didn’t arrange playdates for our kids.

If we would have raised our kids like the zombie apocalypse parents of today, there’s no way I could have continued to coach. I don’t know how modern parents do all they do. I’m sure it takes lots of sacrifice. I’m just not sure it’s necessary.

Here’s the good news: Kids don’t have to take up all of your time. Free-range kids grow up to be strong and healthy adults. As a bonus, parents of free-range kids also get to live as strong and healthy adults, instead of babysitters and soccer moms.

#10 FEED THE CATS

Less Is more. Tired is the enemy, not the goal.

Performance > Grind

Content > Process

Excellence > Work

Build “Apex Predators” (sprint fast, lift heavy, jump high, and jump far).

Limit practice time, get good at the essentials, and go home to your families.

Eliminate six-hour coaches meetings.

Sleep at night.

Don’t burn the steak.

Never let today ruin tomorrow.

Decomplexify.

Make practice the best part of a kid’s day.

Reflect the enthusiasm of your athletes.

Build racehorses not workhorses.

Understand that teams who are 100% healthy and 80% in shape will always beat vice-versa.

Burn your goals, go on a mission, and surrender to the results.

I am a coach. I am also a husband, father, and grandfather. Creating harmony between coaching, teaching, and home life allows me to be reasonably good at all three.

To all of you young teacher-coaches out there, always appreciate the uniqueness of your job. You inspire kids and chase excellence on a daily basis. You have the opportunity to share your work with your spouse and kids. When you fight through those tough weeks, remember summer vacation is coming soon.

I am very fortunate to have a job that still stirs my blood. I hope my survival tips will help coaches stay in the game.

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This article was written for HEADSETS, Volume 2, Issue 5, the online football magazine produced by Kenny Simpson.

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Bio: Tony Holler

♦ A coach’s son for 63 years
♦ 41 years of coaching (football, basketball, track)
♦ 38 years of teaching (Chemistry)
♦ Writer (approaching 300 articles) – book coming in 2023
♦ Co-Owner of Track Football Consortium (along with Chris Korfist)
♦ #1 Best-Selling DVD 2019 and 2020 – Championship Productions
♦ Over 8,000 FTC courses sold/booked on CoachTube
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♦ Two sons coaching (Alec and Quinn)
♦ Owner of “Feed the Cats”
♦ @pntrack
♦ tony.holler@yahoo.com
♦ 630-849-8294

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