By Tamika Newman, Prairie View A&M Women’s Volleyball Assistant Coach
As I think about how I manage coaching as a single parent of a 5-year-old and several other roles that I have and going back even further to being a busy individual since I was an adolescent. As a kid, I played multiple sports and participated in academic clubs as well as being heavily involved in my church. I can’t quite figure out how I juggled it all. I mean I wasn’t the smartest person in my school, nor the most disciplined, and my resources were certainly limited. Somehow in that little immature brain, I realized I needed to develop systems.
Systems are simply the way you do your everyday tasks or actions that you take regularly, both at home and at work. Now 20 years later, developing systems in my personal life and coaching has saved my sanity and has been extremely influential in my productivity.
Listed are some questions to get you thinking about systems in your everyday personal life:
- What time do you wake up?
- What’s the first thing you do when you wake up?
- Do you eat breakfast or not?
- Do you listen to music or not?
- How much time do you give yourself to get to work?
- What days do you organize or clean up?
- Do you do work/check emails/make work phone calls at home?
- Do you eat dinner early or right before bed?
- How do you eat when not at home (take a lunch, pack snacks, eat out)?
- How often do you communicate with friends or family?
- Do you work out, what time of the day, and how many days?
- Do you make to-do lists, use a calendar, or any other method to track tasks or goals?
- How often do you engage in personal or professional development activities, reading, or conversations?
Answer the following questions and then list 3 personal goals. Will the systems you have in place help you achieve those goals?
Let’s take a look at some things you might have systems for on your team and in your program:
Team Management
- Tryouts/recruiting
- Determining positions
- Choosing team captains
- Demoting players from starting lineup
- Changing players positions
- Hiring assistant coaches
Game Management
- Timeout use/management
- Recording stats
- Substituting
Practice Management
- Starting practice
- Ending practice
- Conditioning
- Introducing new offensive and defensive concepts
- Taking attendance
- Random vs block percentages (Do you drill too much or too little, do you scrimmage too much or too little)
- Practice length and time of day
Managing Conflict
- Communication to athletes and parents
- Deal with family and personal emergencies
- Disagreements between athletes
- Meeting policies … who attends?
Answer the following questions and then list 3 program goals. Will the systems you have in place help you achieve those goals? When setting goals or analyzing why certain goals aren’t being reached, always check your daily systems. My hope today more than anything is that systems help your world operate more smoothly, your life is more balanced, and productivity increases in every area of your life.
