Building a Team

The difference between a teacher and coach is obvious – a teacher teaches and a coach coaches. But what exactly does this mean?

A teacher usually imparts new knowledge to a pupil. In tennis, this often means stroke skills. A coach helps a student achieve things for themselves, by motivating, guiding, helping set goals and providing feedback. Teaching focuses more on technical skills, while coaching focuses more on tactical skills.

Building a team is more than simply deciding who will play singles and who will play doubles, and where each player will play. Building a team means getting your players to work together and understanding that their individual behavior affects the entire team. The USHSTA spoke with Jeff Hoham, head coach at Lincoln East High School in Lincoln, Nebraska, which won an incredible eight straight state titles from 1988-1995. Hoham’s players have won 11 individual state titles.

Working with two assistants on seven courts, Hoham coaches 40-50 players per season, splitting squads into varsity, junior varsity and reserve squads. By planning practices in advance, he is able to run three 90-minute practices per day. With such large numbers, Hoham inevitably faces huge talent gaps, from ranked players to those who do not even know how to score.

Because Nebraska does not allow players to take private instruction during practice times, this eliminates a dilemma many coaches face. Should you force highly-ranked players to work out with lesser teammates, or should you allow them to miss practices if they are training somewhere else?

Hoham does understand that holding practices later than directly after school interferes with those players who hold jobs they must have in order to pay for college, and he tries to make accommodations. As a member of the American Sport Education Program (ASEP) Hoham follows the program’s overriding coaching principal of athletes first – winning second.

Hoham begins each year with a preseason team meeting that includes player’s parents, at which he explains the goals of the tennis program, his coaching philosophy and the team rules. He emphasizes not only his goals for the program, but the school’s goal for all its athletic programs, and makes it clear that tennis teams members are student/athletes. His goal is to get players and parents alike to buy into the program’s aims.

Hoham points out that many parents make a significant emotional and financial investment in their children’s tennis, and he has seen tennis coaches lose their jobs as the result of dissatisfied parents working to oust a coach. Getting parents involved early gets them interested in the program and makes the team’s progress throughout the year a regular family topic at home. Motivated parents are also more likely to get involved in fundraising and other booster activities, Hoham points out.

Fundraising efforts helped Hoham’s team purchase high-quality uniforms, which gave team members a sense of unity and more team spirit and pride during each match.

Hoham develops an objective ranking ladder at the beginning of the year, which determines the team’s lineups, because he believes there will be less tension if the results of challenge matches determine where a player plays, rather than the coaches selection. This avoids the problem of players believing the coach is playing favorites.

Off-court get togethers, such as pasta feeds before matches, putt-putt golf outings, movies or basketball games, with parents participating, increases team unity. As with any team, a high school tennis coach will find popular and non-popular kids in the same pool of players, and getting them to socialize off-court helps decrease the separation that often takes place between team members of different social standing. Hoham occasionally allows his players to plan and run a practice.

Keeping in mind that he is coaching young people, not tennis, Hoham’s philosophy when he faces problem players is to rehabilitate, not eliminate. Hoham had one player who continually screamed and threw his racquet on the court. Rather than trying to eliminate this behavior by suspending or cutting the player, Hoham determined why the player was acting this way.

If a player needs attention, give him some, Hoham advises. If the player has a negative self-image or low self-esteem, boost the player’s ego. Hoham successfully uses a variety of anger management techniques with players, such as letting them release their anger by screaming into a towel and using breathing exercises. While some of his players have been terminated from other sports, Hoham never had to cut one player during his first 13 years of coaching.

A player’s negative behavior isn’t always overly serious, Hoham believes, and it is better to deal with it off the court than to create a confrontation during a match. An English teacher at Lincoln East, Hoham has his players keep journals, with players writing responses to questions he puts to them, or allowing them to free write. Hoham recommends that every coach in any sport become certified in the ASEP program, which has successfully helped guide his winning program.

Hoham’s Philosophies

•Have a preseason team meeting with both players and parents to explain both the school’s and your goals for the tennis program.

•Set up an objective challenge ladder to eliminate any complaints about the fairness of who is playing and who is not.

•Hold non-tennis, team activities periodically throughout the season.

•Put some thought and effort into team uniforms to create team spirit. Get player’s input.

•Have players keep personal journals.

•Rather then eliminate, try to rehabilitate.