Serious Coaching and Starting Families

[young coach]

I am a young coach in my twenties, debating many of those questions that we twenty-somethings debate. Somewhere near the top of that list is the question of how my chosen career - coaching - fits with other life goals. This seems like as good a place as any to try to find out how other people - serious coaches - have managed to balance their job with issues like starting families. How have they found time to be with their sweetheart when their work schedules are diametrically opposed? How have they balanced their work with the physical and emotional impact of having children? I am curious to hear about males and females, established and newer coaches, although obviously more interested in coaches who spend a significant portion of their worktime coaching (rather than coaching for an hour or two here and there after working the normal 9 to 5). Share your own experiences or tell stories about your coach or coaches you know. Other young coaches, what factors have impacted your decisions?

[jBirch]

I just had a kid and just haul him to the club with me. The female fencers go a little nutty over him and the parents keep a good eye while I'm out teaching, so it's essentially free day care. Having a kid only slows you down as much as you let it.

About the only thing that his birth did to me emotionally, was really put the gas on making my first million dollars and/or becoming famous.

As to time with the sweetheart, that's a little more difficult. She doesn't come to the club with me and instead, goes off and does her own hobbies during that time, so we both get to do our own thing. Weekends and tournaments can be really tough, but I invest significant time in my assistant coaches so if I need a weekend off, I can take it.

I am, however, a part time coach. I'm out at work all day and then straight to the club in the evenings. For me, at least, this means that I end up working MORE then most of the other professional coaches around here, just not working as much on the fencing related stuff as they are.

It basically comes down to you and your priorities in life. If a wife and kids are that important to you, and you can't see a fencing career working with that priority set, then now's a great time to find another job. If fencing AND working is something that you really want to do, then you figure out how to make it work and deal with the problems as they come. There's nothing that says you have to give up your own life when you get married and have kids.

Hope this helps.

James.

[jychuah]

Originally Posted by jBirch

As to time with the sweetheart, that's a little more difficult. She doesn't come to the club with me and instead, goes off and does her own hobbies during that time, so we both get to do our own thing. Weekends and tournaments can be really tough, but I invest significant time in my assistant coaches so if I need a weekend off, I can take it.

do you consider your coaching to be a second job, or more of a hobby? does it affect the way your spouse perceives your time spent at fencing?

in the same boat as young fencer.

[jBirch]

Originally Posted by jychuah

do you consider your coaching to be a second job, or more of a hobby? does it affect the way your spouse perceives your time spent at fencing?

in the same boat as young fencer.

I see it more as a part time job then as a hobby. It does affect the way my wife perceives what I do, since I can often drop the "I have to: people are counting on me" bomb on her.

*grin*

James.

[qatet]

Originally Posted by jBirch

It basically comes down to you and your priorities in life. If a wife and kids are that important to you, and you can't see a fencing career working with that priority set, then now's a great time to find another job.

Heh. It's kinda indicative of this career that you assume this young coach is a guy! Do you think that you could have kept bouncing along as a coach if you were a woman?

These are things that I've often wondered about as a female coach. I've seen only one or two women who coach professionally and have kids and it's rather made me wonder if the two are mostly mutually exclusive. If you work in a big enough club it might not be _such_ a big deal to get somebody to cover your classes and lessons if you decide to have a child. If you work in a smaller club, or if you own your own club, I could imagine that it would be trickier. From an economic standpoint it could be done, with lots of planning. But what about the coach's responsibility to provide their students with training? If nothing goes wrong I suppose that you could run classes pretty much up until the kid pops out, but lessons are a different matter. As I see it, one of the coach's paramount responsibilities is to make sure that the student is never afraid to hit them. No matter how comfortable I might be with getting hit (and I've heard of women using plastic guards like BPs for their belly), I wouldn't want to make my student hesitate or hold back.

Any other women out there? Anybody who knows female coaches who have had kids? I've been thinking about this for years, wondering if the job I've chosen is going to ultimately limit options that I may want to have open later.

[Jason]

Women coaching?
What's next--women voting??

[Allen Evans]

Jun Liang Smith (of Old Town Fencing in Alexandria VA) taught lessons until late into both her pregnancies (no, I'm not sure of the exact dates, but I think she was only out for two months when she decided to stop teaching each time). At the end of her time teaching, she was wearing quite a lot of padding--and obviously not moving very much.

I believe in the case of the first child, Jun was out during the end of the summer: definitely her slack time for lessons and classes. I picked up a few of her students while she was out, but for the most part, she had recreational fencers and being out for two months didn't hurt her students very much. I don't remember the time frame for her second child.

Having a career as a fencing coach, and raising a family doesn't strike me as any more difficult than having ANY career and a child. You make choices and compromises along the way.

AE

[Fencergrl]

Originally Posted by qatet

Any other women out there? Anybody who knows female coaches who have had kids? I've been thinking about this for years, wondering if the job I've chosen is going to ultimately limit options that I may want to have open later.

Conversely does being around children all day make you not want to have kids? I'm pass the age of needing to produce offspring... thank god!

Don't get me wrong, I love kids and would have like to have raised a family, it just didn't work out that way. My issue with those years was how powerful the need for having offspring was. It was very distracting... beyond all rational. So I'm relieved to do longer have that overwhelming need to get pregnant.

After spending all day around kids, I don't know if I would want to go home to more of the same. It's nice not to have to divide my responsibilities up between my own and someone else's kids. I'm glad I don't have a kid that everyone would assume would a) want to fence b) be good at it.

Hats off to James and any other coaches out there who can manage the responsibility of raising your own child while coaching other people's.

[jBirch]

Originally Posted by qatet

Any other women out there? Anybody who knows female coaches who have had kids? I've been thinking about this for years, wondering if the job I've chosen is going to ultimately limit options that I may want to have open later.

Juje Luan.

Olympic Gold.

A couple of kids.

Full time fencing coach of Edmonton Fencing Club.

Just qualified for Beijing 2008.

James.

[qatet]

Originally Posted by jBirch

Juje Luan.

Olympic Gold.

A couple of kids.

Full time fencing coach of Edmonton Fencing Club.

Just qualified for Beijing 2008.

James.

Any idea how she approached that? Other than with great determination and drive, of course. Was she coaching and/or competing when she had her kids? How much did she have to back off?

[jychuah]

Originally Posted by qatet

Was she coaching and/or competing when she had her kids? How much did she have to back off?

from working as a teacher in a middle school where there are currently 7 teachers who are or will be out on maternity leave, i'd like to point out that a work environment is capable of dealing with the absence of a teacher and that teachers don't hesitate to have babies just because they think 150 kids aren't going to pass the eighth grade and end up all wayward and dealing crack.

granted, a fencing club is different from a school in the sense that the school is typically a government funded, somewhat well-oiled machine. (okay, maybe not even I can believe in that, but you get the idea.) the impact of a coach's absence is more likely to be felt in the structure and operation of the club in the form of revenue generation and workload placed on the other coaches, in addition to the obvious impacts of competitive fencers getting results. but at that point, it's a matter of planning and priorities. do you get the fencing club up and running and stable first, or do you have the kid first then try getting it stable?

i'd like to think that any fencing club operates not only as a business and school but also to a certain degree as a family, especially with regards to the coach's relationship with their best students. as a result, the family understands that the coach might need to be physically away from the strip (either due to pregnancy or injury or wife aggro) and that the club will find a way to function, either through the use of assistant coaches (the school parallel being a substitute teacher) or altered training routines (which are like subsitute lesson plans.)

i'm currently an assistant coach on leave from my club because i'm severely burnt out on dealing with kids and parents. i'd rather take a month off and be able to come back to coaching than barrel through for a while longer and quit forever. other people have to pick up my slack. do you get the same results out of substitute teaching and substitute lesson plans in a school environment? no, probably not. are the kids negatively impacted by the absence, yes, most likely (unless you're so bad at your job that it's better if you aren't there.) but you have to ask yourself - is it more detrimental to miss two months of coaching or to miss out on a life decision and experience that will always leave you wondering?

we have an aphorism in teaching grade school - "there's always going to be more kids."

[Medinilla]

Guys thanks a lot, this topic is of great help to me...
A have started coaching, almost full time, and i might start my own family real soon, so black smoke was coming out of my ears, of too much thinking, traying to figure out what to do, and how to do it...
Always good to see, that you are not not the only one in this kind of situation.
Good luck!