By Dr. David Hoch
David Hoch, EdD, is the Athletic Director at Loch Raven High School in Baltimore County, Md., and a frequent contributor to Athletic Management. He can be reached at: dhoch@bcps.org.
Athletic Management, 18.4, June/July 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1804/gpsummer.htm
With Friday evening football games and soccer, field hockey, and volleyball matches throughout the week, it takes a lot of work to get through the fall sports season. The winter is extremely taxing with all of the evening basketball games and wrestling matches. And then there is the hassle of rescheduling rained-out games in the spring.
Each season is demanding and vital to your high school athletic program, for sure. But over the years, I have found the most important season for me as an athletic director is the summer.
This is the time of year when I can recharge, become visionary, and get ahead. In some ways, what an athletic director does over the summer determines his or her success in the upcoming year.
A Time to Regenerate
A number of years ago, one of my colleagues shared his philosophy about the summer with me. He explained that, during the year, with games to attend and many deadlines to meet, he has little control over his time. His job is pretty much his life. In the summer, however, he changes his priorities completely. For him, it becomes family first, job second.
The summer offers you a chance to take a deep breath, and it’s vital to take advantage of the downtime. The trick is to find something that’s both relaxing and far removed from the normal routines of your position.
For my colleague, that meant spending a lot of time with his family. For someone else it might mean training for a marathon, painting the house, or traveling. I love sitting on my deck and watching my tomato plants grow. Take note, I didn’t say weed or water the garden, but merely watch it grow.
Another fellow athletic director goes out almost every summer day on his boat. He claims that he goes fishing, but who knows? Whatever he does afloat, it is very soothing for him and it gets him prepared to face another year.
Visionary Thinking
An important reason for taking this downtime, besides relaxing, is that it allows you to do what you’re really hired to do: think and plan. Most of us just don’t have time to be visionary during the school year. Yet, if we want to be successful, we need to do long-range planning at some point. The summer is the perfect time to ponder, explore, and project. Here are some of the questions I start with:
• Where would you like your program to be in, let’s say, three years? And what would you have to do to get it there?
• What is on the economic or political horizon for your district? What adjustments might be needed if things change?
• Are there any new projects or programs that you would like to implement? Are they feasible, and when would it be best to start them?
To get the visionary juices flowing, sometimes I’ll look through magazine articles I clipped during the year and kept in a special “summer reading” folder. Or, I’ll look over notes I took at a conference or workshop. A colleague of mine keeps a document on his computer desktop called “musings,” in which he quickly jots down any thoughts he has during the year. Summer is the time when he looks through all those ideas.
Of course, the summer is also a great time to re-examine your annual goals and the goals of each sport program. Although you can’t realistically do coaching evaluations during the summer, you can think more deeply about why a coach may be struggling and how to turn a program around.
Getting Ahead
With how hectic things will get once fall practices begin, summer is also a good time to get ahead. While I don’t kill myself with deadlines during the summer, using this time constructively in small parcels can really help with the upcoming year. Over the summer while sitting on the deck with my trusty laptop, I will typically:
• Update our Parents’ Handbook.
• Revise and edit the agenda for our fall coaches’ staff meeting.
• Prepare a list of items that need to be discussed in my first weekly meeting with our principal.
• Think about hiring strategies for any open coaching positions.
• Prepare PowerPoint slideshows for my fall parents’ and booster club meetings.
Another great summer project is enhancing your computer skills. Like many of my generation, adapting to technology is a slow process for me. This means that I don’t ever attempt to implement new software applications during the school year, but rather I do so in the summer. For example, last summer I took a two-hour inservice course dealing with Internet scheduling. Not only was I able to concentrate more since I didn’t have other pending responsibilities, but I had the time to use a hands-on approach and try out various techniques.
Personal Maintenance
Like many athletic directors, I often don’t have the chance to take care of personal maintenance items during the school year. So the summer is my salvation. Dentist, doctor, ophthalmologist, and even dermatologist visits (which are now necessary after all of those damaging years in the sun) are all scheduled for the summer.
And let’s not forget house chores. Throughout the year, my spouse maintains a household to-do list. While I do my best to postpone those that I absolutely detest, I do tackle some every few days in the summer.
Whether it’s boating or painting or watching the tomatoes grow, the key is to get out of the office and do something that is relaxing to you. Then sprinkle these activities among the long-range planning and non-deadline tasks that summer is ideal for. It’s amazing how much better—and more productive—you will find yourself in the fall.