Quality vs Quantity: The Coaches Dilemma

I have talked about how you need to have a coaching philosophy before, and honestly sometimes you have to make a few mistakes to learn how you prefer your team and your training to be.  One problem I often talk to my friends about who also coach at the high school level is how to build a team from a numbers outlook.  It is the age old quality vs quantity debate, but it one worth considering.

There are a lot of holes to fill in track in field from a coaches standpoint.  You have up to twenty events, some of which require four athletes while all the others have two spots available.  Here in Louisiana, for outdoor track you have a total of 42 spots to fill.  Even with allowing athletes to double, triple, and for a select few, a quadruple, you run into an issue of how to stock and organize your team.  Sometimes you even may be sharing an athlete with another sport, or waiting on a few to finish up their other seasons.

First off, let me say this: as far as quality and quantity is concerned, no coach should ever simply look at a situation from a numbers standpoint and build up a program just for the sake of saying they have such and such amount of athletes on their team.  That being said, I want to address the reasonable approach to quality and quantity.

That daunting number of spots to fill for the district or league meet can cause a coach to reach out and try to acquire more athletes for his team, and this is understandable.  The more athletes on your team the better odds you have of being successful, it's a numbers game in that sense.  The quantity approach becomes an issue with respect to two issues (well, there certainly can be more but those would be more circumstantial to the individual program):

1) Not having enough resources to properly train the athletes.  If you don't have coaches willing to back you up, or at least volunteers to help with certain events, instead of having one well trained group of athletes for a set of similar events, you will have a whole bunch of athletes who are average because you didn't get to spend enough time with them.  If one coach is trying to train distance runners, hurdles, and javelin throwers on the same day, and all after school, something is going to fall through.  Time management should always be on the mind of the high school coach.  Consider this when you are building your team and your staff, even if that means looking for volunteers and parents.  If you have two coaches who have the same background, see if one would be willing to step outside his comfort zone and learn a new set of events to help the team.  Being a time crunched coach is never optimal, although there are certainly ways to still keep your sanity and have a decent team.

Another issue with resources is space for training.  Not every school has a track.  We don't at the school I coach at, and our sprinters, distance runners, and throwers all practice at separate places to accommodate their needs. Travelling to practice may be an issue with more athletes, so that needs to be factored in.

2) The other main issue is bringing on athletes who have the same vision, or goals, you do for your team.  If you are reaching out to students just to fill spots, and they come out with a different work ethic than what the team needs to accomplish the vision, you may be doing more harm than good.  The desire to build numbers can be great, but distractions at practice can ruin a workout, a training week, or even a season.  Make sure, as you build your numbers, you are not merely causing more work for yourself with no reward.

Quality does not have to be the opposite of quantity if the number of your athletes are all in on the same plan to achieve the team goals.  Furthermore, keeping kids involved in the sport helps keep it alive and well.

Organizing and building the quality of your program is of high importance for a track coach.