High School Adding Additional Coaches

[CPop]

I have yet to write up an official email/essay, but bear with me here:
I inherited a squad this year. I have a varsity with 34 members, a "JV" that sometimes combines with 22 sophomores, and a freshman squad with 14. I am the only "paid" coach, with 2 volunteer coaches. My old AD refused to pay for another coach, even an assistant. I have this multiple times in writing, citing "it's only cheerleading." Unfortunately, school rules (due to parents complaining and the old AD not having my back) mandate having seniors/juniors for varsity only, and sophomores and freshmen on their respective squads.

There are 70 cheerleaders. It is completely insane to think 1 person can handle that many people. I can condition them together, stretch them together, do their tumbling warm ups together, and do stunt technique warm ups to extension together. Because they're placed in squads by grade level and not by skill it leaves HUGE gaps in skill on each squad. I have some sophomores/freshmen that compete on our competition squad who stunt like a dream, and people on varsity who have no drive to do anything more than an extension (state rules dictate they cannot try out with stunts). I could deal with the terrible placements if I could work with squads one on one, but when I'm dealing with 3 I'm struggling to keep them structured, motivated, and challenged.
Fortunately, the old AD got fired about 2 weeks ago. I had a meeting with the new AD and had him come to a practice to watch. He was overwhelmed with the amount of people. We had talked about another full paid position and came to the conclusion of "I get where you're coming from, but it's not in the budget for this year." I cannot pay for a full time coach out of the fund, but I can pay for a tumbling coach to come to one of our open gyms once a week.

SO, I am preparing for next year. I'm planning on getting a hold of schools in my size/class and comparing coaching staff. I'm also comparing between sports. Football, for instance, has 6 paid coaches with 30 athletes total (rugby is the new thing). I'm planning on making a nice data and statistic presentation, but coaches are slow to get back to me. So far the new AD has been nothing but reasonable, so I can't imagine not getting at least 1 more full paid position and at least 1 paid assistant coach position. If I have to take it to the school board I will.

Have you ever been a position like this? Should I add anything? HELP

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

I have yet to write up an official email/essay, but bear with me here:
I inherited a squad this year. I have a varsity with 34 members, a "JV" that sometimes combines with 22 sophomores, and a freshman squad with 14. I am the only "paid" coach, with 2 volunteer coaches. My old AD refused to pay for another coach, even an assistant. I have this multiple times in writing, citing "it's only cheerleading." Unfortunately, school rules (due to parents complaining and the old AD not having my back) mandate having seniors/juniors for varsity only, and sophomores and freshmen on their respective squads.

There are 70 cheerleaders. It is completely insane to think 1 person can handle that many people. I can condition them together, stretch them together, do their tumbling warm ups together, and do stunt technique warm ups to extension together. Because they're placed in squads by grade level and not by skill it leaves HUGE gaps in skill on each squad. I have some sophomores/freshmen that compete on our competition squad who stunt like a dream, and people on varsity who have no drive to do anything more than an extension (state rules dictate they cannot try out with stunts). I could deal with the terrible placements if I could work with squads one on one, but when I'm dealing with 3 I'm struggling to keep them structured, motivated, and challenged.
Fortunately, the old AD got fired about 2 weeks ago. I had a meeting with the new AD and had him come to a practice to watch. He was overwhelmed with the amount of people. We had talked about another full paid position and came to the conclusion of "I get where you're coming from, but it's not in the budget for this year." I cannot pay for a full time coach out of the fund, but I can pay for a tumbling coach to come to one of our open gyms once a week.

SO, I am preparing for next year. I'm planning on getting a hold of schools in my size/class and comparing coaching staff. I'm also comparing between sports. Football, for instance, has 6 paid coaches with 30 athletes total (rugby is the new thing). I'm planning on making a nice data and statistic presentation, but coaches are slow to get back to me. So far the new AD has been nothing but reasonable, so I can't imagine not getting at least 1 more full paid position and at least 1 paid assistant coach position. If I have to take it to the school board I will.

Have you ever been a position like this? Should I add anything? HELP

You are in an untenable situation:

Our school is 1400 students, our rival school (same school board) is 1800. We both have stipends available for 4 coaches, what amounts to 2 head coaches and 2 assistant coaches.

I also have freedom to manipulate the total stipend money to my liking.

I currently take slightly less than a Head coaches’ stipend. I then combine the remaining Head coach stipend and 2 assistant stipends. I pay 2 assistants just slightly less than myself, and throw a small amount at the school athletic secretary who is my “go to” contact in the building for my athletes (we are all paraprofessionals).

The other school’s head coach pays herself 2 Head coach stipends, and gives the two assistant coaches an assistant’s stipend.

I have better, more experienced assistants.

We have 26 athletes on roster, and they have about 10 more than us.

 

[coacha]

Yikes.

I’m at a small school of only around 500 kids. I get a Head Coach stipend and I have an assistant who gets an assistant coach stipend - together we coach Varsity and JV, which averages about 30-35 kids total. I also am in charge of hiring the the 2 middle school coaches, who together coach the 1 team of about 14 middle school kids. They both make an assistant coach stipend.

Our stipends are set by the school board and somehow affected by the teachers contracts and are based on steps - experience when hired plus how long you have been in the position. My actual pay is laughable when considering hours worked, and in no way compares equally to the football head coach.

 

[OldskoolKYcheercoach]

Yikes.

I’m at a small school of only around 500 kids. I get a Head Coach stipend and I have an assistant who gets an assistant coach stipend - together we coach Varsity and JV, which averages about 30-35 kids total. I also am in charge of hiring the the 2 middle school coaches, who together coach the 1 team of about 14 middle school kids. They both make an assistant coach stipend.

Our stipends are set by the school board and somehow affected by the teachers contracts and are based on steps - experience when hired plus how long you have been in the position. My actual pay is laughable when considering hours worked, and in no way compares equally to the football head coach.

I’m one pay grade down from our head football and head basketball coaches. I’m in line with head baseball and head soccer.

 

[CPop]

You are in an untenable situation:

Our school is 1400 students, our rival school (same school board) is 1800. We both have stipends available for 4 coaches, what amounts to 2 head coaches and 2 assistant coaches.

I also have freedom to manipulate the total stipend money to my liking.

I currently take slightly less than a Head coaches’ stipend. I then combine the remaining Head coach stipend and 2 assistant stipends. I pay 2 assistants just slightly less than myself, and throw a small amount at the school athletic secretary who is my “go to” contact in the building for my athletes (we are all paraprofessionals).

The other school’s head coach pays herself 2 Head coach stipends, and gives the two assistant coaches an assistant’s stipend.

I have better, more experienced assistants.

We have 26 athletes on roster, and they have about 10 more than us.

That is the model I'm going for. Does your athletic secretary schedule your gym bookings, athlete registration, etc? I'm interested in that idea.

I plan on moving to an open gym style tryout where I judge everything. At some point in the next two months I will go to our state board about stunting at tryouts. Having 2 girls on varsity who cannot even touch a thigh stand or tumble is asinine. I would have held tryouts again to cut to more realistic numbers (12-18) for my sanity, but they were already a month deep into practice, have no attitude issues, and are relatively hard workers and eager to learn. I'm taking baby steps and one fight at a time, but I've changed so many things already I'm dreading the inevitable "no."

What also terrifies me is I was the first and only applicant who applied and was hired within the first three days of the job posting. No one else was interviewed. I also think it's against our school policy for coaches to have any say in the hiring process, but I will explore this further. I hope my future co-coach next year shares my same philosophy. :rolleyes:

 

[coacha]

I also think it's against our school policy for coaches to have any say in the hiring process, but I will explore this further. I hope my future co-coach next year shares my same philosophy. :rolleyes:

All head coaches at our school are responsible for hiring their staff. Obviously they want the coaches to be able to all be on the same page and then they know who to hold responsible for things then. The buck stops at the head coach so to speak. Plus can you imagine a head football coach not able to hire his defensive or offensive coordinators?

 

[WinstonsGirl]

I can't comment on coaches pay or such as everyone in Canada at the school level is volunteer/teacher at the school doing it cos they love it.

That said, having been in the position of needing something for cheer, athlete safety has always been my best friend. When we needed new mats, for example, part of my argument was 30 kids on a concrete floor and 40 3-panel gymnastics mats was not safe. They foam was going in them, there were gaps where the velcro didn't line up well and stunts were either too close to each other, or too close to the edge. For about the same price as replacement mats, we got 7 strips of cheer floor. My Admin could see immediately how it was much safer for the kids and were more willing to go along with things I said were important.

Obviously you plus 70 kids stunting is incredibly unsafe. I think this is where you need to pull out supervision ratios for coaches to athletes, safety guidelines your state may have for cheer and use those to your advantage. I think you also need to have a chat with your AD about team placement. Again, use safety as you backup. Having new or more inexperienced cheerleaders on the same team as veteran experienced athletes is unsafe for all. The less experienced aren't able to stunt at the same level as the more experienced, leading to a potential for more injuries. The more advanced get bored and can't progress, leading to a weaker program. Sounds like your parents didn't like some Fresher being better than their little Suzy in grade 12.

 

[Elle B]

If you say that for safety reasons you need a better coach-to-athlete ratio, could the AD possibly argue that you just shouldn’t stunt or tumble? Would it be a better bet to just announce that teams will be smaller in future?