More schools are hiring younger head coaches, many of whom aren't much older than the players on their teams.
By GREG AUMAN
Published October 21, 2003
Adrien Etienne looks at the group of 30 or so teenagers gathered by the pool, takes off his sunglasses, and gets practice started.
"FOUR-TWO-TWO, everybody!" he shouts, and a minute later, Wesley Chapel's swim teams are in the water at The Club at Seven Oaks, doing 400 meters of swimming, 200 meters of kicking and 200 meters of drills for arm strength.
It's a half-mile of swimming, a standard drill for a high school team. Etienne knows it well because two years ago, he was the one in the water.
He's 19 and already a head coach, taking advantage of an increasingly common combination of opportunity and initiative. He's not the only one. Across the Tampa Bay area, across the country, high schools are hiring coaches with less and less experience, at younger ages, all trying to keep up with the openings created by new schools and retiring coaches.
"It's a phenomenon we saw all through the 1990s," said Tim Flannery, assistant director of the National Federation of State High School Athletic Associations. "There's a large segment of the population that is retiring from teaching and coaching. The demand for coaches is still incredible. The supply of quality, trained coaches is not there, so everyone is trying to do the best they can."
For Etienne, the challenge is earning the respect of athletes, some only a year younger, others who were fellow lifeguards at the New Tampa YMCA just months earlier. Colleagues suggested he ask his swimmers to call him "Coach," a reminder of his position of authority, but he would rather let his actions do that.
"As long as you're in the water and showing me respect, wanting to learn and wanting to do well, you can call me Adrien. I'd prefer it," he said. "Some of the kids call me Coach, and I'm fine with that, and if I need to put my foot down, I'll put my foot down, but they don't have to call me sir. I'm 19 years old, man."
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Pinellas County athletic director Walter Weller was a college sophomore when he started as a high school assistant coach in volleyball and basketball. By the time he had an education degree, coaching was something to offer principals as evidence he wanted to work with kids. He said the demands of coaching now require more of a time commitment, one that eventually prompted his moving to athletic administration.
"It's harder to coach kids nowadays. Coaches are asked to do a lot," Weller said. "They're not just coaching. They're fundraising, organizing, conditioning. I got into coaching because I love kids, but I had to get out because it was killing my family."
Coaches usually aren't putting in the extra hours for the money, as financial supplements can range from about $1,100 for swimming to $2,600 for a head football or basketball coach.
Younger coaches, less likely to be married or have children, have more time and energy for extra hours. The lack of experience is somewhat offset by other benefits of youth, such as being able to line up - or dive in - with athletes and demonstrate techniques in a more hands-on manner.
Like Weller, Pasco County athletic director Kit Broadbelt started coaching as an assistant while in college but was 30 when he became basketball coach at Tampa Catholic. He said the market has changed enough that becoming a head coach is less of a final step and almost an entry point now.
"I was the freshman coach, then the junior varsity coach, then the varsity coach. Used to be you had to pay your dues," Broadbelt said. "That doesn't mean the coaches today can't do their jobs. It just means some of the positions can be posted without getting a whole lot of applicants."
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Pasco County's wrestling coaches last year included River Ridge's Carlo Parente, then 21, and Wesley Chapel's Charlie Helm, 19 when he became the Wildcats' coach. Hard work earned them the respect of their fellow coaches, who still doled out a little grief, once suggesting they celebrate the end of the season by going out for a few drinks.
"They said, "Oh, wait, you guys can't,' " said Helm, who is an instructional assistant in Wesley Chapel's in-school suspension program and working toward a degree in education.
Helm has more in common with his athletes than his coaching peers. The 2001 Zephyrhills High graduate had the rare honor of having competed against some of his athletes last year.
He spent one season as an assistant at Wesley Chapel, which he said was invaluable in preparing him for the challenge of leading a team of his own. He still turns to older coaches for answers, advice and inspiration.
"I've had a lot of fun with it," said Helm, also an assistant on the junior varsity football staff.
Parente, 22, stepped in when Mike DeGennaro, the school's football coach, decided to stop coaching wrestling. DeGennaro said there weren't many applicants, but he recommended Parente and can appreciate the challenge, having himself started as the weightlifting coach at Hudson when he was 19.
"Carlo was going to school to be a teacher and was obviously a good wrestler when he was here," DeGennaro said. "We thought Carlo would do a good job."
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Younger schools are all the more likely to get younger coaches. Consider Wesley Chapel, which opened in 1999 and has six head coaches under 30.
"We'd prefer someone with experience, but especially with male sports, it's kind of hard," said Wesley Chapel principal Andrew Frelick, who had 25 new staff members this fall, but one male among them. "I know Charlie Helm is a young guy, but I have a 19-year-old coach who is more mature than some 40-year-old coaches."
The Wildcats' youth hasn't kept their coaches from success. Julie Marks, 29, has two volleyball district championships and Brian Dorkowski, 28, took a boys soccer team that won five games in 2002 into the second round of the playoffs in the spring.
"You're excited to get in, to put your mark on a new program," said athletic director Annie McGhee, who was 24 when she started at Wesley Chapel four years ago coaching volleyball, soccer and track.
Commanding authority and respect can be difficult with such a small difference in age, but McGhee said a key first step for a young coach is establishing a normal relationship with athletes.
"The most important thing is to remember you're the adult and they're students," she said.
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Of all high school sports, football may be the hardest to crack as a head coach before age 30. The hierarchy is more well-defined, with years as an assistant coach, then time as a coordinator before a young coach is deemed ready to have a program of his own.
But when Wharton needed a coach for its football team, which reached the state title game last year, the Wildcats turned to 29-year-old Melvin Cunningham, a former Tampa Bay Storm player who had been a head coach for two years in West Virginia in the off-seasons.
Hillsborough has three other head football coaches under 30: Leto's Jerrell Cogmon and Bloomingdale's Corey Brinson are 29, and Freedom coach Jarrett Laws is 28.
"We have some great young football coaches, and it's great to have good, hard-working young people in the system," said Hillsborough County athletic director Vernon Korhn, whose county has added nine high schools in the past decade.
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Etienne's swim teams finished eighth out of nine teams in Saturday's Sunshine Athletic Conference meet, but in other ways, his season is a success. The turnout, 34 swimmers, is the highest in Wesley Chapel's short history. As many as half show up on Saturdays for voluntary workouts.
"He's gotten a lot out of them," said Denise Oliver, a self-proclaimed "swim mom" who has helped Etienne as an unofficial co-coach. "He can watch them from across the pool and he'll see things. He'll say, "You're still doing it with your arms.' I'm just a mom, so I'll say "What's wrong with the arms?' He's very hands-on, showing them specific things."
Etienne, a 2002 graduate of Gainesville's Buchholz High, is a full-time student at Hillsborough Community College, working toward a degree in physical therapy. Wesley Chapel thinks enough of him that it's sending him and Oliver to three coaching classes in the spring, where they'll learn about their sport as well as coaching theory and injury prevention.
"It has been gratifying," Etienne said of his first season. "I wanted to find a job but stay in the water. ... I have kids who didn't do swimming until this year and they're breaking 30 (seconds) in the 50 (meters). I came in a little naive, just getting my feet wet. But I'm running my own team, and I like it."
And if he tires of coaching, there could be someone younger waiting to take his place.
