My advice to young coaches is to recruit good kids who are good players
who can function academically and be happy in your school. Perhaps the
two biggest errors I see the young coaches make are first, they insist on
recruiting some borderline jerk who is talented. Eventually that kid throws
the team and the coach “under the bus.” Don’t bet on that person, Coach!
Get some good people. You’ll win your share and have a fair chance of
staying sane in the crazy world of athletics. Second, I see the young
coaches work the kids too much. Your players are not employees, or
machines, and you can run them into the ground. Perhaps the biggest
criticism I heard of my teams was that we didn’t work hard enough. But at

tournament time we were fresh, eager, and goal oriented. Often we waxed
the “hard workers” whose coach had worn them beyond caring much. I
never had a team that wasn’t ready to put away the racquet for a while at
the end of the season. It’s call “periodization.”