Why tennis clubs need more than just a Club Coach.
I started coaching a small amount of tennis as a teenager doing some part time hours but officially started full time as a tennis coach in 2001. After working for and learning from more experienced coaches/tennis managers for 5 years, I started my own tennis business in 2006. We started with 0 players and grew our program to consistently have between 350 to 500 players each week.
Like so many setups in Australia, registered tennis clubs contract out the coaching rights at their facility to a tennis coach. The tennis coach will set up and grow their business at the tennis clubs facility. Outside of being responsible for conducting lessons and training programs, the contracted coach will likely have extra responsibilities such as organising junior social play, supervising junior pennants or running or playing in # of amount of club tournaments. Coaches will often have a lease on x amount number of courts and perhaps a coaches room/pro shop. Given the coaches are a huge asset to the club, some agreements will not have a lease fee (or a very low lease fee) especially if the coach is giving time to the club in other ways as mentioned previous. If the responsibility of hiring out tennis courts to the public is delegated to the coach or if the coach has exclusive access to a larger amount of tennis courts then a more significant lease fee would be expected. The contracted coach will be known as the ‘Club Coach’.
So the coach who wins the contract, announces their tennis coaching program to the club members and community and gets started building lessons. In the early stages of building the program, its important the Club Coach does lessons, meets members and generally is involved in as many opportunities as possible to network and grow. The club is happy because they now have someone to refer to for lessons and to look after anything to do with junior tennis. Clubs ultimately though, when they select the right coach, have a free, marketing machine to help grow the clubs membership. The coach builds their program and soon enough they are doing the peak hours of 330pm-7pm each afternoon, Saturday morning and a scattering of morning sessions. The coach has got to the 20 hours or more per week number which gives them a decent income and the business a good foundation. However this is also the point where the business can experienced rapid growth. Where of course some kids (and adults) may stop, if you are doing a good job then the following can happen:
- The kids in the group improve and need a higher level squad like session with similar kids.
- The kids in the group really love the sport and ask for private lessons.
- The kids in the group enjoy it and they (their parents) refer others to also attend.
- The reputation of your program/club starts attracting newer players from the area.
So as they say, these are great problems to have but the ‘Club Coach’ has their first big staffing issue.
Who is going to take those lessons?
Now normally it will work like this. The Club Coach will coach the new higher level squads and private lessons and delegate what is likely Hotshots beginner groups to another coach. But which coach?
Do they go for the younger casual rookie coach and train them up to be able to take on the younger kids?
Do they try and employ someone (even on a part time basis) and offer them a 10 or 15 hour minimum with the intention to build further hours?
So where both of these options can be good, they are also very dangerous. The younger rookie coach, if not properly trained, can damage your reputation quicker than a Ben Shelton serve. As the Club Coach, you’re ‘brand’ so far has been curated with your coaching style and personality. There is a high likelihood that the current young players (and their parents) will be disappointed in the change of coach to a less experienced one. Employing a more experienced tennis coach to join your team is great is theory but harder in practice. Career tennis coaches can be rare and the very best are often running their own business or have work opportunities with multiple other tennis programs. Sometimes you can find a coach who wants to work part time (combined with another job or study) and they can be great as its takes the pressure off you as the business owner having to guarantee or promise a full time salary. Otherwise the Club Coach is put in a situation where they have to promise a full time position just to get the right coach. If employing international coaches, this goes with the territory with a minimum guaranteed yearly salary. So these crossroads can be tough and making the right decisions on the type of coaching the team is essential.
So unlike other sports such as football or soccer, the growth of the amount of players requiring training is not the responsibility of the club, but of the contracted Club Coach. The Club Coach has to take the financial risk of employing someone or training up new staff and of course, as the business owner they are incentivised to do so with the aspirations of business growth and profits.
In the USA and other places, the country clubs will employ a Director of Tennis and/or Head Coach with a salary and profit share on lessons. So in this situation both the club and coaching team are invested into the sustainability and growth of the coaching program. In Australia though, this is delegated to the contracted coach.
The challenge is that once the second coach builds their hours up to the 20 + hours, then once again its back to the drawing board growing the team with more coaches. The reality is even more difficult as certain timeslots get the highest demand and therefore 4 coaches may be needed on one afternoon or Saturday morning and only 1 or 2 needed on others.
As a guide though if the coaching program has 100 kids then one coach cannot take on all of these players. If a program has 200 kids then its more like 3-5 coaches, 300 kids 5-7 coaches and 400 or more will need 7 coaches or more. Note this is a generalisation and depends on group size and program design but the bigger the program is, the more kids are going to become passionate players which means private lesson demand will also skyrocket.
So an established program needs a team of coaches, not just one Club Coach who does it all. Burnout is common for coaches so to have longevity in the tennis coaching world you must become a smart about building and maintaining the coaching team. In my own business, I was lucky to have some part time coaches who were at university who were very trainable before I employed a fulltime female coach on a work visa from the UK. My strategy there was we would have two fulltime coaches, one male and one female. As long as the coaches shared some similar values and followed similar lesson plans, differences in the coach can become an asset as some people may prefer a female coach, or a quieter more gentle coach, or a energetic style coach, and this will help build the business further. At Scarborough Tennis Academy these days we have a combination of fulltime coaches and part time coaches making a team of 9 of us currently in the main coaching team.
I know in conversations with other club coaches/business owners, the single biggest issue is ‘finding coaches’. As I mentioned before this can be finding decent rookie coaches to train up or employing and facing the difficult financial commitment of fulltime coaches. Adding to this is the seasonal swing of Summer to Winter as well as unpredictability of weather through those same months makes it all the more a challenge.
However for a tennis club to flourish, they need far more than one coach, they need a coaching team. A coaching team which can look after the array of different tennis opportunities from beginner children, to junior club squads, private lessons, adult lessons and cardio, competitions, performance and more. In my experience our junior club membership is around 20% of our total players in coaching programs. So 200 in a coaching program should end up with 40 kids who have reached a level to play Junior Club and benefit from membership. A strong coaching team IS the key to building club memberships and ensuring there is a long term sustainable coaching team and program at the club.
Cheers
Rick Willsmore
Director of Tennis
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