Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Should Professors Coach Too?

by Julie Walton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Exercise Science, HPERDS, Calvin College

At Calvin College, we participate in NCAA Division III athletics, and have historically worked valiantly to stick to a professor-coach model in which the majority of varsity sport coaches are also faculty members with terminal degrees in their fields.  Our coaches who are also professors are increasingly struggling with the natural and urgent time-demands associated with coaching.  Despite what was once felt to be adequate teaching release-time, our professor-coaches are now stretched to the limit in their attempts to be excellent in the four areas of faculty expectations:  teaching (and coaching), scholarship, advising and service.  The demands of coaching- including significant recruiting of student-athletes that no other faculty is asked or expected to do - have been consistently ramping up over the past decade to the point of infringement upon every area of the professor-coach’s professional and personal life in ways that are all-consuming.  A colleague of mine defines the professor-coach paradigm as omnivorous.

We ask not why we are one of the few colleges left that feels it is important for the co-curricular nature of athletics to be housed within the Department of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Dance & Sport (instead of becoming its own independent department), because we have always believed that sport should be philosophically underpinned by the HPERD disciplines in ways that continue to academically search for and reflect on the importance and nature of sport in its contribution to the mission of the college.  Even more important for us as a Christian college is the notion of the integration of faith in sport that goes deeper than having pre-practice devotions or praying before a game.  But every year, this position gets harder to do in practice, and even harder to defend in principle.

It is frustrating for everybody when teaching priorities become subservient to coaching simply because of the characteristics of coaching.  Given enough time, coaches can coach well and teach well. But, coaches are rarely credited enough time, and, frankly, sport is moving at warp-speed in its appetite for full time coaches. 

So, our current model is inherently stressful, and, since the sport is what’s so visible to the rest of campus, it is the sport that naturally gets most of our attention. Our coaches do more than just plan practices or lead game strategies:  they help set schedules, attend coaching meetings, take students on spring break trips (giving up their own break), recruit students, both in person and by phone, watch hours of video sent by prospective athletes, meet one-on-one with and mentor athletes, deal with parents, give media interviews, help Development raise funds from alumnae, spend days on bus trips to away games, and answer multitudes of emails from fans and critics after every game or match.  Oh, and they prepare lectures, grade papers, and advise students too!  This is not to say that professor-coaches are poor teachers. Only that they unfairly face the see-saw dilemma of conflicting priorities every single day totally unlike that experienced by people who only coach, or by other non-coaching faculty.

So, the ongoing question at Calvin College is can we in any way remain committed to the professor-coach model?  Can we keep on recruiting and retaining reformed Christian men and women with terminal degrees who also want to (and can) coach, particularly when the ground forces swell an ever-evolving athletic agenda set by alumnae, administration, the conference, parents, and athletes themselves?  And how, in the midst of such pressures, do we continue in our athletics to honor God and experience His joy-filled revelation through human movement without the sport itself becoming an idol?  We’d be interested in your thoughts.