From demanding parents to stressed-out students to the pressure to win, high school coaches face more challenges than ever

Boston Globe

29-05-2025

They're at Bishop Feehan in Attleboro to begin their MIAA certification with the Schmidt-led four-hour 'Fundamentals of Coaching.'
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By the time class is dismissed, the coaches will be fully aware of what amounts to a state of crisis in their profession.
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It's not the lousy pay, long hours, and myriad logistical issues that are anything new.
It's this cultural moment, a time when winning has never been more highly prized and the $30 billion business of youth sports, combined with NIL compensation, has never been more transactional.
Raising the degree of difficulty is trying to reach the adolescent brains of a post-COVID student-athlete population that is more stressed, vulnerable, and locked in on social media than ever.
But above all else, it's the increasingly demanding parents concerned with their child's playing time or the team's success that successful longtime coaches agree are the toughest of all the challenges.
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Trevor Gagnier, girls' basketball coach at Apponequet the last 15 years, has learned to lay out the program's foundation and expectations to parents and players before the season begins.
'If you don't do that early, that's how you get screwed,' said Gagnier. 'And if someone's telling you, 'No, everything's been perfect for the last 15 years,' well, tell me where he or she's coaching, because that doesn't usually happen.'
Steve Dembowski has been coaching football for 32 years ― at Milton since 2015, and at Swampscott for more than 20 years prior.
When he became a parent of a student-athlete, he realized he needed to engage with parents if he wanted them to be allies rather than foes.
'Something that's really changed, which I think haunts a lot of coaches, is that communication with athletes and their parents is even more important than ever and a lot of coaches still want to be old school ― 'I'm not gonna talk about the team or your kid,' ' said Dembowski. 'That's a mistake now, when you need to be open and honest with families.'
When Milton football coach Steve Dembowski became a parent of a student-athlete, he realized he needed to engage with parents if he wanted them to be allies rather than foes.
Barry Chin/Globe Staff
To be demanding and not demeaning with student-athletes while keeping a team striving for excellence is the standard practice for current coaches.
Adding what it takes to corral parents into a positive force and still maintain the passion is beyond exhausting for some.
'I'm an executive leadership coach, right, but some days I feel like a therapist because of the adult coaches that break down on calls with me because of the stress, the pressure, and the embarrassment of some of these situations that come up within the job,' said J.P. Nerbun, a former youth, high school, college, and semi-pro basketball coach who founded TOC Culture Consulting and is the author of 'The Coach's Guide to Sports Parents.'
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Nerbun steers some of the coaches to therapy.
He asks all of them to remember why they're there in the first place.
'The greatest challenge for coaches is to continue to know themselves, to know why they coach, to make sure that they are actually doing the work to become and behave in a way that produces an impact and helps people grow,' he said.
That's a far cry from the 'my way or the highway' coaches who once ruled their roosts.
Those are being weeded out, along with the extreme examples of the bad-apple coaches who grab the wrong kind of headlines for crossing the line from tough to abusive coaching.
More than the X's and O's
When the new breed of 'Ted Lasso'-like coaches understand their mission as well as the mind-sets of students and parents, the odds of a more positive and stable experience for all three legs of the youth sports stool should increase.
Being an expert on the next best thing in the X's and O's of their particular sport is almost an afterthought for coaches these days.
'Even though the game is changing, coaches need to also recognize what is acceptable and what actually works better with the way they're interacting with their players,' said Jason Sacks, CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance, a national organization that trains and supports coaches. 'Sometimes coaches don't see that connection of, 'Hey, you know what? Guess what? Kids are different now. And you know what I need to do? I need to evolve as a coach and be able to meet them where they're at.' '
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They're at a place where athletes conditioned to the immediacy of social media want instant results, to know why they're being coached a particular way, and where they're not used to direct feedback and criticism.
'High school kids right now are under a tremendous amount of stress. Whether we think they're 'soft' or not doesn't matter,' said coaching development expert Karen Collins, a former collegiate field hockey and lacrosse athlete and coach and an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. 'If you can build honest and earnest relationships with athletes where you're transparent and you back up what you say you're going to do, then that has opened up the window for you to be a 'tough coach,' and that's OK.'
She pointed out that parents want what's best for their kids. Most do all they can to support their child's team and coach. It's a small minority who lose perspective.
When they act out in the belief, for example, that their child needs more playing time, their behavior has an outsized impact on coaches.
National data on retention of school coaches is scarce, but if perception and anecdotes add up to reality, then there aren't enough of them. Schmidt said flatly, 'There is a shortage of highly qualified candidates,' and said lately his applicant pool is 'less of the Pacific Ocean, more of the kiddie pool.'
National surveys by the Aspen Institute, of coaches in 2022 and parents of student-athletes in 2024, found that 80 percent of both groups believed there was a shortage of high-caliber coaches.
The percentage of coaches age 55 and older has grown over the last few years, which points to younger coaches leaving the profession.
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Nipmuc AD Chris Schmidt said, 'There there is a shortage of highly qualified [coaching] candidates,' and added lately his applicant pool is 'less of the Pacific Ocean, more of the kiddie pool.'
Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff
And while 80 percent of the coaches surveyed reported feeling satisfied, the percentage was nearly matched by moderately, very, and extremely stressful experiences. As an academic paper published in 'Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators' pointed out last July, the coaches survey pointed to parents as 'key contributors' to that stress. Seventeen percent of school coaches reported that parents often or always criticize their performance, with barely more than half the coaches hearing appreciation.
'We hear about the problem parents all the time and so we exacerbate the problem, but it's those problems that are running coaches out of the profession, there's no doubt,' said Collins. 'I think if we took a step back and thought about, why are the parents so angry? It's because it's this same transactional thing ― they're worried about the potential for their child.'
'It's hard enough to find coaches'
Tim Brillo is in his 15th year as AD at Ludlow and was a longtime coach of the girls' basketball team.
Like Schmidt, he's
one of the 20-plus certified instructors of the MIAA coaches certification clinic, which began in 1998 and is held 20 to 30 times throughout the year. Coaches hired prior to Aug. 1, 1998, do not have to take the course, and all first serving as a coach after July 1, 2005, must complete it, along with an approved first-aid course.
'In my conversations, coaches were run out by a group of parents simply because their kid wasn't getting playing time, and recently it was, 'We need to change the coach because it's the coach's fault,' ' said Brillo. 'It's hard enough to find coaches. Then, when you finally do find somebody that's willing to do it, there's these outside pressures and expectations on you from parents.'
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Mastering that coach-athlete-parent triangle takes up most of the morning in Attleboro.
There's also a section devoted to a long list of managerial concerns, such as an emergency care plan, field and dugout conditions, strength and conditioning, rules and regulations, and legal liability.
One breakout group delves into, 'Why did you get into coaching?'
Responses ranged from wanting to influence kids in a positive direction, love of the game, and those impacted by wonderful or awful coaches.
'Anyone talk about winning?' Schmidt asked.
No hands.
'Of course we want to be successful, that's OK, but is that your focus? If your answer is yes, that's a problem,' said Schmidt.
When the class ended, Corey Flynn, Winchester's assistant ultimate Frisbee coach, said he thought the course hit all the right notes.
Flynn hadn't always appreciated the magnitude of a coach's job.
'We have about 60 players who are attached to like 100-plus family members, and then with various school administrators involved, you rapidly become the center of about 200 people that have very direct contact with you on a regular basis,' said Flynn. 'That's probably the thing that I was shocked by. I was like, 'Oh, this will be great. I'm going to show up, I'm going to coach kids,' and I didn't understand it's going to be a much bigger responsibility than that.'
The responsibilities can feel daunting, said Flynn.
Luckily, he has a solid foundation in order to not be overwhelmed.
'Most coaches are lying if they don't have days like, 'This train has left the station and I'm on it and I can't get off,' but the good news is that generally kids are awesome,' he said. 'You do it because it fulfills you and it helps amplify other people and all that stuff. That's so worth it.
'And most days you feel that side of it.'
Michael Silverman can be reached at