There was a time when it seemed as if every high school sports head coach was a teacher. That’s not the case anymore, though, with more people choosing to work in the private sector while also being involved in coaching.
A “National Coach Survey” study conducted by the Aspen Institute’s Project Play Initiative, LiFEsports at The Ohio State University, the Susan Crown Exchange and Nike put some numbers to this trend in 2022. More than 10,000 coaches were surveyed across all 50 states, including ones who coach youth sports like Little League baseball and pee wee football. Of the high school coaches surveyed, only 50% reported that they are teachers.
“What has resulted is a coaching field primarily filled by people without backgrounds in education and child development,” the report stated. “These coaches need additional competencies to be successful in today’s landscape of youth sport (i.e., 40% increase in mental health symptomatology) and for the most part the coaches in this study reported a desire to be better prepared in these areas.”
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To get a gauge of the number of head coaches that are teachers in the area, The Tribune reached out to the three public South Bend schools ― Adams, Riley and Washington ― the two public schools in Mishawaka — Mishawaka and Penn — and private schools Saint Joseph, Marian and Trinity School at Greenlawn. The question was simple: How many of your head coaches are teachers or are at least in the building in some capacity, whether it be as an administrator, security, etc.?
The private schools skewed toward having more non-teachers. Trinity is a small school, which probably affects why it has only two coaches total in the building out of the 19 head or assistant coaches it employs. The Titans compete in only 10 of the 24 Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA)-sponsored sports.
Among the bigger schools in the area, both Saint Joseph and Marian had less than 50% of their head coaches in the building. Marian had only six sports filled, while Saint Joseph had nine sports ― four of which were covered by one person, Mike McCarthy, who’s the head coach of both girls and boys cross country and boys and girls track.
Mishawaka was a 50/50 split, with 11 of its head coaches working in the school district and 11 others not. Riley was in a similar spot as well, with 12 total sports having a staff member in the building.
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Adams was a unicorn in some ways. Although it has 10 sports covered by head coaches in the high school, four other sports have school corporation employees who don’t work at Adams. So, although more than half of its head coaches work for the South Bend Community School Corporation, not all of them work specifically at Adams.
The two highest teachers-as-head-coaches totals came from Washington and Penn. The “Pride of the West Side” has 14 sports covered by someone in the building, headlined by four-sport head coach Adrian Swanson (boys/girls track, boys/girls cross country). Meanwhile, Penn had a staggering 19 sports with staffer head coaches, with only volleyball, boys soccer and girls golf currently without a teacher or staff member leading the programs (two sports currently have vacancies).
A key part of the numbers being this way is the “Damon Bailey rule,” which was implemented in the 2006-07 school year. The IHSAA used to require all football and basketball head coaches to have an Indiana teacher’s license. When Bailey, the state’s all-time leading scorer in boys basketball, wanted to return to his alma mater of Bedford North Lawrence and coach the team, the teacher’s license requirement was removed.
While other sports were allowed to have non-teachers as coaches prior to 2006-07, this new “Bailey rule” opened up the proverbial Pandora’s box for more private sector employees to become high school head coaches.
Follow Austin Hough on X (formerly Twitter) @AustinRHough and on Facebook at “Austin Hough – South Bend Tribune.” Hough can be emailed at ahough@gannett.com.
Email South Bend Tribune education reporter Rayleigh Deaton at rdeaton@gannett.com.
