Episode Details

https://teachhoops.com/

Title: What Are The Three PRs Every Coach Has To Get Right?

Subtitle: Player relations, parent relations, public relations, and why losing your job usually comes down to one of them

Show Notes

Coach Collins sits down with a guest whose background is communications, not coaching, and it shows in the best way. She built a framework around three words that all end in the same two letters, and once you hear it you can't unhear it. Player relations. Parent relations. Public relations. Get those three right and most of the noise in your program goes away.

PR number one: player relations

This is the one she calls the most important relationship you'll ever have. And the honest part of the conversation is that it has changed. Coach Collins says it plainly. The Bobby Knight world is over. Adjust or become a dinosaur. You can even see it in Geno.

But here's the piece that matters, and both of them land on it. Adjusting is not the same as lowering expectations. Core values are still core values. Fundamentals are still fundamentals. You just can't teach them with a hammer anymore and expect the kid to give you their best.

The example she uses is the wraparound layup in the championship game. Player brings it down on the break, wraps the ball around her waist, puts up the layup, misses it. The old school reaction is "it don't take all that, just make the shot." But that move is who that player is. She makes it ten times a week in practice. Take it away and you take away the thing that makes her good.

PR number two: parent relations

Here the adjustment flips. With players, you adjust. With parents, they adjust to you. But that only works if you've set the stage early.

The whole thing comes down to one word, and Coach Collins says it three times because he means it. Overcommunicate. There is no such thing as too much.

What that actually looks like:

• A full practice schedule handed out from November through March. Every day. What time practice is, when the bus leaves, all of it.
• A month on a page calendar printed and in their hands.
• A weekly email every Sunday night. Here's the week. Weights got moved because of construction. Pasta dinner is at so and so's house. Parents know it's coming and they know everything is in it.
• Clear expectations stated out loud. What you expect from their kid. What you expect from them in the stands. What you expect from them after a game.

She points out where most coaches get burned. Christmas break, going day to day, telling everybody at the end of Monday's practice what time they're going Tuesday. Then a family has a trip to grandma's and the kid misses two days and now everybody's upset. Plan, plan, plan.

Then the part every high school coach should sit with. Coach Collins lists the three ways you actually lose a coaching job. You're inappropriate. You mishandle money. Or the parents come after you. And parents usually come after you because they don't know what's going on. If everything's running smooth, your admin leaves you alone.

PR number three: public relations

This is the one coaches skip, and she makes the case for why it pays you back. Get your town, your city, your community behind you and it doesn't just help your athletes, it helps your program. When you need funding you're not begging, you're asking people who already feel like they're part of it.

Her line, borrowed from Dawn Staley, is that they're not fans, they're fam.

The warning is against the photo op. Teams show up at the 3K walk, take the picture, post it, and never come back. That's not community work, that's marketing. Pick one cause and be consistent with it. Boys and Girls Club is her example. G