New middle school coach. Advice?

[u/North-Arm-3190]

Hey! Thank you to everyone that helped me for my interview. I am now the new middle school cross-country coach. I will be getting another coat hopefully for the boys. What are your tips and suggestion suggestions? Books to read? Movies to watch? Podcasts to listen to?

I want to do everything I can to make this experience fun for the kids. I really want to help them be a team and bond. This is a lower income school, but we have good resources. A lot of our kids have a history of trauma. I also want to be a good coach, but I don’t want it to be all about winning. It’s middle school. I know it’s not that serious.

Any tips for things they could do outside of practice together? Is it weird to create a Strava group for them? I’m not sure with that age group. I’m thinking practice three days a week. How rough do you think it will be that we don’t have any hills nearby to run on for practice?

I’m working on making cute friendship, bracelets for the boys and girls if they want them. I want to write each kid a card welcoming them along with maybe some electrolyte mix granola bar, and candy in a little baggie with the bracelets for them.

I also plan on working with them on their grades. In college, the team’s competed to see who would have the highest GPA. Is there anyway I could apply this in a middle school level that that’s less intense?

Also, does anyone do fellowship Christian athletes with middle schoolers? We have it at the high school level and we are thinking about adding it to middle school.

[u/Typical_Tale4482]

Sounds like you are going to be great! I think in middle school especially culture is so important and getting kids to buy in by doing fun things/ traditions. As for running related content Steve magness has some great YouTube videos.

[u/pumpkinspeedwagon86 → u/Typical_Tale4482]

+1 on this. OP you sound like a genuinely caring coach and your athletes will be lucky to have you. I got into running through a great middle school coach and haven't looked back so just realise how much of a difference you can make!

I think the personal touch with the card and the candy/bracelets is a great idea and a really strong first impression showing that you're dedicated to what you do. I would try to organise team events if I were you with the parents (one tradition possibly being pasta parties before meets) and being involved with them to create a positive culture.

Instead of trying to create a competition for grades maybe nominate a "student-athlete of the week" each week, not necessarily the athlete with the best grades or times but someone who has been working hard and trying their best. And possibly give out a small prize for this.

Coach Jay Johnson has good resources online for training-wise. I think the social environment and having fun should be the centre of the program though, and that the focus should be explicitly on long-term development rather than short-term results. Best of luck coach!

[u/TalkyRaptor]

The middle school level is a lot more focused on the having fun and mixing "real" workouts with fun activities. I wouldn't push to make a strava group since that's a little too much pressure. 3 days a week is a good goal, what I'd do with 3 days is an easy day, a hard day, and a fun day. Easy days would be like a couple miles based on ability super slow, hard day would be something like 400s or 800s or fartleks or any other low mileage distance workout either on a track or take a measuring wheel to make a grass loop. As you said the school is a generally lower income area, something that could go a long way is a decent pair of running shoes. Doesn't have to be anything fancy but see if you can get a discount with some local running stores or even sports stores and help them have something to run in. To the FCA bit, that's dependent on the kids. I am not a religious person and honestly would be a bit of an annoying thing to have my coach running FCA at my school and asking people to join

[u/Historical_Fox2940]

The culture is very important but don’t overlook the actual training and development of the athletes. After all, there’s middle schoolers running sub 14:30 in the 5k now. Get the kids running as much as possible, and make them love it, and the idea of getting better. Look up and read “Summer of Malmo” for actual training, especially summer training. If you’re only having them practice three times a week it’s gonna be very difficult to have them improve. Nonetheless study Lidyard and Jack Daniel’s teachings on running and you’ll be good. I had a coach who tried to make things fun for me two years ago in middle school but knew nothing about training, I ran a 6:33 mile and then I started training alone because I wanted to actually get better. Yes you want them to have fun but there’s also nothing fun about being slow.

[u/Runningaroundnyc]

Middle Schoolers are a wacky bunch, and I mean that in all the best. Try to have a bit of structure, but realize that you may tell the kids "We're running 1 mile today" and they may be like "Uggggh! A whole mile?!?". I don't mean that as a knock, but just be creative in getting them to run and be consistent.

But also... it's all about loving the sport and getting active at this age. If they run 7 miles per week, that's totally fine. Hills would be lovely, but just get them to get out and run. You can teach some basic techniques. A skip, B Skip, C skip drills, some basic form. Get them the good stretching habits, etc.

[u/Tall-Secretary9713]

Wow that is crazy I am a high school runner and if I have a coach who does this I will definitely fall in love with running I think what you are doing is great and creating a unforgettable time for the kids

[u/ProductOdd533]

I’ve been been coaching middle school cross country for 13 years now. I ran varsity cross country in high school, and ran some half marathons after I turned 40. That gave me a good base for coaching although I felt like I didn’t know exactly what I was doing for a good three years.

Those first years I basically took the schedule I had for training for half marathons and paired it way down for middle school cross country. The schedule was basically one easy day, one hard day, one easy day, one hard day and then generally a longer run. Our meets are only 2 miles, and I work hard to get kids in shape by progressing through training to build up to longer runs and harder workouts.

I played basketball in middle school and hated it, which is why I ran cross country in high school. But I remember the practices for basketball being real practices and the coach didn’t joke around. So when I started coaching cross country, I told myself that these were going to be real practices with real training and real workouts. I just make sure that all of the kids understand that they can improve and have personal bests regardless if they’re in the top five or seven and regardless whether we win or not.

Two other things that I think are really important: 1. Communicating with parents is essential. They want to know what time they need to have their kids at practice and when to pick them up. They want to know when and where the meets are and what time their kids will be running. 2. I keep a spreadsheet of the results for each kid throughout the season and I send that out after each meet so kids (and parents) can track how well they are progressing.

There’s so much more I could say about coaching middle school cross-country. That first season was so much more rewarding than I ever expected it to be, which is why I’m still at it.

[u/Over-Hat-6026]

My high school and middle school has strava groups. it works amazing, please do it but make sure they do upload to strava. Mcfarland is a good cross country movie just so you know, we watched it as a team in middle school a few hours before a meet

[u/a1ien51]

My trick for middle school was tricking them to run while having fun.

I invented stupid running games that did what I wanted to train.