Thetford Academy’s first-year boys soccer coach, Bob Bristol, found the job earlier this year when he and his dog attended a canine play date near the school.
Bristol, who retired to the Upper Valley after a career as a coach and athletic director in Washington, wandered over to peruse a TA job board, and voila — the Panthers hooked themselves an experienced bench boss.
It’s almost never that easy for area schools to fill those openings, however.
At Hanover, golf coach Patrick Pelletier was hired days before the start of the current season. In March, Lebanon was fortunate that attendance secretary Bethany Robinson stepped up shortly before the beginning of softball practice to take the squad’s helm.
Hartford athletic director Jeff Moreno said past years saw the Hurricanes’ fall coaching staff confirmed three months before a school year began. This year, however, he had more than a dozen openings and only recently filled them.
“When I started doing this a decade ago, we’d get 10 to 12 applicants for a varsity head-coaching job,” said Sharon Academy athletic director Blake Fabrikant. “Now, we’re usually getting one person, if that.”
Which means he and other athletic directors go hunting. They post ads on their school district’s websites and on those designed around regional and national education employment. They use newspapers and word of mouth.
Quaron Pinckney is a onetime Woodstock athletic director now working the same job for the Burlington, Vt., school district. He scans local college sports rosters on the internet, then sends seniors an Instagram message, inquiring if they’ve thought about coaching after graduation.
Hanover athletic director Megan Sobel solicits each of the Dresden School District’s new employees, inquiring about their past sports experience and interest. If a target can only coach a few days a week, she works to line them up as volunteers in hopes they’ll progress to paid assistants or head coaches.
Lebanon athletic director Mike Stone said younger alumni form another potential pool, but some are beginning careers in their primary jobs and aren’t in a position to ask for a flexible schedule. Others who might be entering the management ranks and who could alter their hours to coach are often starting families and unwilling to surrender time with their children.
“My wife is very understanding, but not everyone is,” said Stone, a Hartford High graduate who coached baseball, basketball and football there for decades before taking his current position. He also notes that while accomplished coaches with long careers are a blessing, their track record sometimes scares off potential successors.
Not just anyone fits the coaching bill. Candidate A might be a professional educator and highly organized, but only played a certain sport briefly and at a low level. Candidate B might have played in college but can’t connect with teenagers and doesn’t respond promptly to emails, take practice attendance or view COVID-19 issues seriously.
“If I get (an applicant) who’s great with kids, organized and really understands a sport well, I’m taking that person immediately,” said Sobel, who regularly asks her coaches if they’ve run across people who might be a good coaching fit. “But there are times we don’t get any applicants.”
There was little qualified response to Stone’s winter’s quest to replace longtime Lebanon football coach Chris Childs. The athletic director brought this up to lacrosse referee Herb Hatch during a Raiders game in the spring, later convincing the former Hanover gridiron boss to take his first such job in 23 years.
That sort of networking is also key for Moreno, who previously worked in South Royalton and Hartland. Few people in the Upper Valley are more attuned to their community than the 1994 Hartford graduate, who regularly lands successful coaches who stick around.
Moreno said building strong, trusting relationships with his existing coaches is a crucial component. Such a bond means he’s usually aware when one has initial thoughts of resigning, allowing him as much time as possible to line up a replacement. Including the outgoing coach in the recruitment process has also been a useful tool, the Hurricanes athletic director said.
“If you put the word out widely and early enough, people come out of the woodwork,” Moreno said.
Child care can sometimes be an issue, so Pinckney encourages coaches to bring their kids to practice and get them involved. Hanover High baseball coach John Grainger’s fifth-grade son, Jack, regularly takes batting practice and does fielding work with the Bears, who tease and dote on him like a younger brother.
While the number of applicants has decreased, coaches say the stress and demands of their jobs have risen. Many positions require year-round attention at a time when payment stipends have not matched inflation.
Grainger, who recently completed his seventh season, said he received his first raise, for $250, before his most recent campaign. That boosted his overall compensation to $4,500, but as a building contractor, he estimates his time with the Bears costs him as much as $10,000 in lost work each spring. Another local coach said they earn nearly $300 an hour at their full-time job but estimate coaching pays less than minimum wage.
“If it rains early in the morning, I don’t go to work, I go to our field and work on that,” Grainger said. “It’s not expected of me, but it’s the best thing for the kids, because otherwise, we usually wouldn’t be able to play.”
Field maintenance is only one of a high school coach’s myriad responsibilities. Teaching individual and group skills, designing practice plans and staying abreast of evolving game strategy are the obvious ones.
Nowadays, however, a coach must also earn certifications in such things as concussion and sexual abuse recognition and be aware of not only the physical health of players, but also their mental condition.
“There’s a lot more that’s expected now, not just the X’s and O’s,” Moreno said. “There’s rightly such a focus on the emotional health of young people, and that aspect takes a lot of time and mental bandwidth for a coach.
“They truly have to look at the whole child and not just the kid who’s going to show up on game day and score some points.”
Coaches often can’t head home from a practice or contest until all players not driving themselves have been picked up. They must also ensure that those not taking the bus home from a road game have done so with previously approved adults.
No big deal? Tell that to a coach whose young children will be in bed by the time he or she reaches their house or who’s called on the proverbial carpet for allowing Madison to hop in the wrong minivan during postgame chaos at Exeter.
Former Thetford Academy athletic director and coach Blendon Salls coached reserve basketball at Lebanon before taking that job. He recalls leaving the Upper Valley as early as 1:30 p.m. for a far-flung game that was one of three the program played that afternoon and evening — JV, reserve and varsity.
“You take half a day of personal time off work in exchange for what sometimes amounts to babysitting,” Salls said. “It’s seven hours of your life you’ll never get back.”
That time involved and the window during which it must be put in seem to be the biggest obstacle. In Texas and a few other parts of the U.S., virtually all high school coaching positions are held by school district employees, who generally have the same schedule as students. In the Upper Valley, however, athletic directors often hire outsiders.
“People’s schedules are the hardest part of trying to get them to coach, because no one’s doing it for the money,” Sobel said.
They’re also not doing it for excessive scrutiny, meddling or criticism, all of which come from players’ parents to some degree. Stone chuckles wryly when discussing “email muscles” that are sometimes flexed in his and his coaches’ direction.
Moreno said few high school coaching hires are finished products when they join a program. Like anyone else, they make mistakes, require mentoring and improve their tact and interpersonal skills with experience. However, that’s not what athletes and parents want to hear.
“The long game can be tricky for parents and kids to appreciate,” Moreno said. “They’ve got their snapshot in time, and that’s their main concern.”
Social media’s rise means complaints, grudges and proverbial ax-grinding now spread more quickly. Critical posts, email chains and videos rocket around cyberspace. It’s rare to find a school where parents aren’t asked to observe the “24-hour rule” by waiting at least that long after forming an opinion before discussing it with a coach.
“There’s a whole lot of public scrutiny, and I think that’s at play when it comes to people deciding whether or not to coach,” Moreno said. “Athletics is under the microscope.”
Other possibilities raised as factors in the dearth of coaching candidates are the near-constant need to fundraise for more than basic needs, the puzzling drop in student sports participation and the evolution of the profession from a three- or four-month commitment to one that’s year-round to varying degrees.
Ryan Gardner, a 1996 Hanover High graduate and local attorney, recently resigned after eight years as the Bears’ boys lacrosse coach. He cited the job’s ever-increasing demands, which include certifications, paperwork and financial accounting.
Gardner estimated he dedicated between 30 and 40 hours per week to the team during the season. There were summer skills sessions, in which almost every successful program engages, sometimes with additional league play. To follow Hanover boys soccer coach Rob Grabill’s summer Instagram posts is to be given a tour of multiple futbol contests per week all over the Twin States.
“The offseason expectations for what’s essentially volunteer work are pretty significant,” Gardner said. “Realistically, the only people who can coach are those who are retired or self-employed. I couldn’t participate in family life during the season, and I didn’t want to skip things anymore.”
Grainger, a 2004 Keene High graduate, played for a Blackbirds baseball team on which eight players later competed in college. He’s the only one currently in coaching.
“They’re either in professions where they can’t take time off or they can’t afford it or both,” Grainger said. “The impact coaches have on kids is definitely similar to what a teacher has. What’s the price tag on that?”
Stone knows it’s more than he’s able to offer candidates at Lebanon, where he said annual coaching stipends range roughly from $2,000 to $5,000 and increases are negotiated every three years. However, he also knows money isn’t the only reason for the thinning ranks of coaching candidates.
“You’d think the answer would be something concrete, but it’s hard to pin down,” Stone said. “I’m hoping it’s just kind of a phase and we’ll get some young people applying and ramp things back up.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.