What Factor Does Age Play in a Coach’s Job?
I am biased. I coached a professional women’s team in Sweden when I was 25-years-old. I ended up in Sweden because several high schools and junior colleges told me that I was too young to be a head coach. The team in Sweden never asked my age and never saw a picture of me until after I signed the contract, so they had no idea that I was only 25. They felt that I was qualified: age did not matter.
However, more often than not, age does matter to other people. When I coached in Ireland (at 30-years-old), a message board criticized my hire before I coached a game because it said that I looked younger than all the players. In the NCAA Tournament this season, TV people could not go more than five minutes without a crack about Brad Stevens looking younger than his players at Butler. However, his age or baby-faced good looks did not prevent him from reaching the championship game.
Last season, I wrote about coaching hires after reading criticism about Oregon’s hiring of Paul Westhead and the Arizona Diamondbacks’ hiring of A.J. Hinch. This week, I saw an article vindicating Hinch and explaining his evolution as a coach.
“The shock has worn off with a year of experience,” [General Manager Josh] Byrnes says. “Last year was the perfect storm of bad events, but the benefit of it was that he picked up valuable experience. Now it’s time to do just what he’s being asked to do, which is lead this group. He’s done a very good job.”
As for the learning experience:
Adds center fielder Chris Young, “He probably stopped worrying about what people thought and focus more on what people wanted to do as a team. That’s good, that’s how it should be.”
Once a coach is hired, he cannot worry about trying to be something that he’s not. Coaches who try to change their personality to prove something often fail. Some coaches are hard-asses or yellers while others are calm and quiet. Coaches need to stay true to their personality and focus on being a great coach rather than trying to create a new coaching persona based on what people think a coach should be.
There is no one great model of coaching. Some great coaches are young and some are old. Some are relentlessly positive and others yell more and use other motivational tactics. The important thing, as Sandra Bullock’s character points out to the high school coach in Blind Side, is to know your athletes. When you know your athlete, you know how to motivate him, how he learns and how to maximize his performance, which is essentially a coach’s job: improving the performance of the team and the individual players within the team.
