While many of you are already into your fall seasons, some of you still may be looking to recruit an assistant coach to help out. Our state soccer association recently started publishing a Recreational Soccer newsletter, called the Sideline Beacon and the first issue had some good tips. Bill Furjanic, the NCYSA Technical Director of Coaching Education had this to say on the subject:

Rule of thumb is at the Parent Meeting; the first person to ask you a question becomes your assistant, the second person that asks a question is the team manager and then after that you will not get anymore questions. But all kidding aside, how do you select an assistant coach.

He says he’s kidding – sounds like good advice to me! First to speak up gets to assist! He goes on to share seven tips for finding someone.

Selecting someone is only half the battle. Convincing them to help is the next challenge. I’ve always found a coach’s shirt seals the deal. If they tentatively help out for a few practices, bring the shirt in their size and note how helpful they’ve been and it would be great if they could become a team assistant. More often than not… SOLD!

How do you go about recruiting an assistant coach and what qualities do you look for?