3 challenges in college sports for coaches and student-athletes

College coaches are masters of balance. Each year they juggle recruiting, scheduling, practice, travelling, administration and more. The number of tasks on any given day can quickly get out of hand and things can get a bit confusing. Most importantly, coaches must always think about the wellbeing and performance level of their student-athletes, making sure they are at their best in order to perform the best during the season. There is perhaps nothing more satisfying for coaches and student-athletes alike to actually see the results that their hard work has earned.

Dealing with the high-work load of student-athletes

Being a student-athlete requires careful balancing of academics, high-level sports, workouts, recovery, and maybe a social life. Exceptional time-management and organization can enhance a  student-athletes performance, reducing the level of stress and increasing the athletes focus on their game.

As a result, it is of high interest for college coaches to make it as easy as possible on their student-athletes when it comes to administration for things like practice planning, traveling, video analysis, and feedback. Facilitating ease of administration allows the athletes to have one less thing to worry about- they have enough on their plates as it is.

Providing a feedback platform for the student-athletes

Oftentimes, the above-mentioned aspects of administration are all managed on different platforms. For example:

• Practice notes are being sent to players via email or word documents.
• Departure times for games are announced verbally at a practice session.
• Individual lessons/coaching sessions are being changed up depending on the availability of coaches and student-athletes.
• Workout and conditioning times change depending on the progress of the season.
• Video analysis content is stored on a third-party analytics website. 

While managing academic classes, assignments, and studying, it is understandable that student-athletes can sometimes lose focus during a practice session or during game time.

The last thing a coach wants is for an athlete to miss out on reaching their full potential due to stress and overwork. In order to prevent, or at least minimize, the risk of such a scenario, coaches should consider administration solutions that make time management easier on their student-athletes.

By doing so, student-athletes will have more energy and less stress. In return, their performance is more likely to remain consistent or even increase.

Managing the everyday business

College coaches have to manage multiple areas such as practice, tournaments, games, scheduling, travelling, and recruiting.

• Traveling: Coaches need to arrange rental cars, flights, and call up hotels to set up accommodation needs for the team.
• Tournaments and games need to be arranged. Communication with various coaches from different teams needs to take place to set up the season schedule and find suitable opponents. Ideally, a coach wants to schedule a few weaker teams to strengthen the confidence of the team but also some higher-ranked teams with a decent chance of winning. This is an important factor since it has an effect of the strength of schedule and the likelihood of improving the national or regional ranking.
• Practice needs to be carefully planned and adjusted depending on the progress of the season. Workloads, practice content and practice sessions need to be changed up. For instance, in pre-season a higher emphasis is being put on improving technique and getting stronger while mid-season the practice load should be reduced to account for intense and strenuous games against other teams.  
• Recruiting is one of the top priorities for coaches. A significant amount of time is spent talking with recruits, scheduling campus visits, and managing paperwork and eligibility questions. Without good recruiting, it is difficult to perform well as a team.
• Communication and feedback to the team: In order to improve the performance of each player, it is necessary to provide feedback. This can be accomplished through one-on-one sessions with the students, video analysis and practice notes.

When it comes to administration such as scheduling, student communication, and feedback, coaches can lean back and rely on Planubo.

Planubo helps coaches to manage their day-to-day operations and provides an all-in-one feedback platform and tracking system for their student-athletes. Coaches can manage schedules and provide feedback to their players while each student-athlete is able to log-in to their own account. Student-athletes will be able to look up practice and travel times and access the provided feedback of coaches at any time within just one platform.