When it comes to parent communication, I don’t know too many coaches that think “Yay! This is really why I do this job”, but it is an area where if you have the proper tools in your coaching toolbox, it can make everything run a little smoother and you can spend more time doing what you love, which is most likely coaching kids. In my experience, I’ve found by keeping parents consistently and adequately informed leads to a reduction on parents being “over-involved”, questioning your coaching and decision making and gives you an opportunity to reinforce your key messages with that group. Supportive parents in-step with your culture is a wonderful thing. Over involved parents trying to run your program…not so much.
At a high school level, you most likely don’t have tools like team unify to help you manage calendaring and parent communication, so you have to get a little crafty to give you something that works. I also have found there are definitely more than a few coaches out there that are a little intimidated by technology, so you have to find the tools. There are two basic tools I use that have been very effective for me over the years.
The weekly email – Every Sunday morning I send an email to parents that covers three main points (and sometimes four)
- Action Items- things they need to do for the week. It could be volunteering for timing for a meet happening the following meet, filling out their photo form for team pictures, reminding them to make sure their kids are getting enough to eat, RSVPing for the banquet and random things like that.
- Informational (Last Week) – a quick recap of any meets and some of the focus items we’ve been working on in practice.
- Informational (This Week) – I reminder of meets, bus times, and what we are working on at a high level for the upcoming week.
- Editorial – this is an optional area I don’t always include, and I throw it at the bottom in case anyone cares to read that far. I’ll cover things like how I decide meet lineups, the difference between True team and MSHSL m=championship meets, meet scoring, and really anything nice to know about the sport. I’ve even done the history of swimsuits in the sport 😊
I’ve found that just by providing this basic level of information, parents remained engaged and informed. It only takes about 20 minutes to create, and a side benefit is that it helps me organize my week as a coach.
A google calendar – Google Calendars are great because you can put practice times, meet times, bus times, extra events, and everything in a single spot and share it via email with parent’s so they can overlay it with their family calendars. They even have the option to be notified when something is added or changed. Very useful! Now you must maintain the calendar as things change, but it is still a great tool. Setting up my calendar for the season is usually about 30 minutes worth of work.
In summary, there are some really low-tech ways you can communicate with your parents and keep them informed which in turn, makes your life easier throughout the season. There is a very small-time commitment and all you really need is a list of parents emails which you can create a group contact for or just keep in a spreadsheet. Simple, easy, effective!!!