Coach Burnout--How do you avoid it?

This response is thanks to Steve Hunt

Get work study and secretarial assistance. This may sound innocuous but it

can be life saving.

Hire a law school assistant who is competent and can pass your college's

driving age rules to take l or 2 trips for you or in addition to you each

semester.

If you can't get a law school assistant, taking alums with you to help can

be very helpful.

Have squad captains in charge of events or genres of events. Make them

responsible for coaching younger students in part. This will save you (not

totally but somewhat) and be educational for them.

plan your schedule carefully in advance going to the fewest tournaments

but with the most competitive educational value you can find.

Occasionally, please not frequently, buy out of some judging so you can

watch/coach your own. Please bring extra judges with you to do this lest

you hurt management of tournaments.

Ask other dept members or alumni to critique some

speeches/cuttings/practice rounds

Go to tournaments that appreciate "wellness" that have food breaks, that

don't start at 8:00 AM and go to midnight.

GEt an appropriate amount of release time for DOF Running a full program

should give you l/3 to l/2 release time for directing/coaching forensics.

I am assuming multiple events and a squad of l5 or more at least 8

tournaments a year etc to justify the above. More might require more

release less less release.

These are all traditional ideas but mostly the ideas that have any chance

of working. Being an active caring responsible director of forensics takes

incredible amounts of time: budgeting, setting up transport, recruiting,

having meetings, coaching, going to tournaments with all that involves,

hiring and directing other staff, trying to set up a mission and learning

goals and cking on meeting those, teaching, critiquing practices, etc.

etc.

Steve Hunt

Lewis & Clark