You held the coach training. Attendance was decent. The content was solid. Everyone left with good intentions and a certificate.
Six weeks into the season, none of it stuck.
The communication techniques got replaced by old habits under pressure. The safety protocols got fuzzy. The positive coaching framework disappeared the first time a game got tense. By mid-season, you couldn't tell who'd been trained and who hadn't.
This isn't a failure of your coaches. It's a failure of the one-and-done model.
Pre-season clinics feel productive. You gather everyone in a room, cover the important stuff, check the box. But information delivered once, in bulk, before coaches have context for applying it, doesn't translate into changed behavior. It translates into forgotten content and expired certificates.
The data confirms what you've probably observed: training completion rates are actually declining over time. Project Play found that coaches trained in safety and injury prevention dropped from 34% in 2019 to 26% in 2024. We're not building on training gains. We're losing ground.
Ongoing training isn't a nice-to-have. It's the difference between coaches who actually improve and coaches who attended something once and moved on.
Why One-and-Done Fails
The pre-season clinic model has fundamental problems that no amount of better content can fix.
Wrong timing. Most training happens before coaches have any context. They haven't met their team yet. They haven't experienced the situations the training addresses. Information about handling a difficult parent lands differently when you've never had a difficult parent. Two months later, when they're in the middle of a conflict, the training is a distant memory.
Cognitive overload. A three-hour clinic covers safety, communication, positive coaching, playing time philosophy, administrative procedures, and emergency protocols. That's too much information delivered too fast. Retention research is clear: people remember a fraction of what they hear in bulk training sessions. The rest evaporates within days.
No reinforcement. Skills require practice and feedback to develop. A coach who hears about growth mindset once doesn't automatically coach with a growth mindset. They need reminders, examples, and opportunities to try it with support. Without reinforcement, training is just exposure.
No accountability. Once the clinic ends, there's rarely any follow-up on whether coaches applied what they learned. No observation. No check-ins. No measurement. If nobody's watching, the path of least resistance wins. Old habits return.
Life happens. Coaches miss the pre-season clinic because of work, family, travel. Now they're coaching without any training at all, and catch-up options don't exist. The one-time model has no redundancy.
The pre-season clinic isn't worthless. It's just not sufficient. And treating it as sufficient is why training gains keep slipping away.
What Ongoing Training Actually Means
Ongoing training doesn't mean more hours of content. It means distributing learning across the season in smaller doses, timed to when coaches actually need it.
Pre-season foundation. Keep a baseline session, but make it shorter and focused on absolute essentials: safety protocols, program philosophy, administrative basics. Sixty to ninety minutes maximum. Save the nuanced stuff for when it's relevant.
In-season micro-learning. Short modules delivered during the season, when coaches have context. A 10-minute video on managing parent conflicts sent in week three, when conflicts typically emerge. A refresher on hydration and heat safety sent before the first hot weekend. A playing time communication guide sent before the mid-season slump when complaints peak.
Just-in-time resources. Not training exactly, but learning support available at the moment of need. A searchable library of "what do I do when..." scenarios. Scripts for difficult conversations. Quick reference cards for safety protocols. Information coaches can access when they're facing a real situation, not just when you scheduled a session.
End-of-season reflection. A structured look back at what worked and what didn't. What situations did you handle well? What do you wish you'd known? This cements learning and identifies gaps for next season.
The rhythm matters more than the total hours. Consistent touchpoints beat front-loaded dumps.
Building the Micro-Learning Calendar
Map your training content to when coaches actually need it. Here's a framework:
Pre-season (before first practice):
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Safety essentials and emergency protocols
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Program philosophy and expectations
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Administrative basics: schedules, communication channels, who to contact
Weeks 1-2 (early season):
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Practice planning fundamentals
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Setting team culture and norms
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Early parent communication
Weeks 3-4 (settling in):
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Managing different skill levels
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Keeping practice engaging
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Handling the first difficult conversation
Mid-season (weeks 5-7):
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Playing time communication refresh
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Recognizing athlete stress and burnout signs
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Maintaining your own energy
Late season (final weeks):
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End-of-season communication with families
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Recognizing and celebrating growth
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Transitioning athletes to next level/season
Post-season:
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Self-reflection prompts
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Feedback collection
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Preview of next season's development areas
Each touchpoint should be short: a 10-minute video, a one-page guide, a quick scenario to consider. The goal is maintaining presence without overwhelming already-busy volunteers.
Making It Stick Without Adding Burden
The biggest objection to ongoing training is time. Volunteer coaches already feel stretched. Adding more requirements feels like piling on.
The solution is making learning feel like support, not obligation.
Embed it in existing touchpoints. If you're already sending a weekly email to coaches, include one learning nugget. A tip, a reminder, a link to a short resource. You're not creating new communication. You're enriching what already exists.
Keep it short. Really short. A five-minute video. A two-paragraph scenario. A single-page reference card. If it takes more than 10 minutes to consume, most coaches won't do it.
Make it optional but visible. Not every piece of learning needs to be mandatory. Create a library of resources that coaches can access when they need them. The coach struggling with parent communication will seek out that guide. The coach who's doing fine will skip it. Both outcomes are okay.
Use peer learning. Coaches learn from each other. A mid-season gathering where coaches share what's working. A group chat where someone posts a challenge and others respond. A mentor relationship where experience transfers informally. This counts as ongoing learning and doesn't require you to create content.
Tie completion to benefits. If you offer any coach perks (priority scheduling, registration discounts, recognition), tie them to ongoing learning completion. This creates incentive without making training feel punitive.
Refreshers That Actually Get Completed
Annual refreshers have a completion problem. Coaches ignore them until someone chases them down, or they click through without engaging just to get the certificate.
Design refreshers for reality:
Make them mobile-friendly. Coaches are completing training on their phones between obligations. If it doesn't work on mobile, completion drops.
Keep them focused. Annual refreshers should cover what's changed and what's most likely to have faded. Not a complete re-do of initial training. A targeted update.
Add scenario-based elements. "What would you do if..." questions force engagement more than passive video watching. Even simple multiple choice creates more cognitive involvement than just clicking through.
Set deadlines with consequences. "Complete by this date or you can't access the schedule" works better than "please complete when you have time." Deadlines with real stakes get attention.
Send reminders. Multiple reminders, through multiple channels, starting before the deadline. People forget. Reminders work.
Celebrate completion. Acknowledge coaches who finish early. Create visible progress toward program-wide completion. Social proof motivates stragglers.
The Safety Training Problem
Safety training deserves special attention because the stakes are highest and the decline is documented.
When only 26% of coaches are current on safety and injury prevention, you have a risk management problem. Not just an educational gap. A liability exposure.
Safety refreshers should be non-negotiable. Every season, every coach, no exceptions. This is the one area where "mandatory" is completely appropriate.
Make safety training:
Concise. Focus on the protocols most likely to matter: head injuries, heat illness, severe allergic reactions, emergency action plans. Fifteen to twenty minutes covers the essentials.
Practical. Scenarios, not just information. "A player takes a hit to the head and seems dazed. Walk through your next steps."
Verifiable. A quiz or acknowledgment that creates a record. You need documentation that coaches completed training, not just access to content.
Annual. Not "when you first start" but "every year." Protocols change. Memory fades. Repetition builds habit.
Position this as protection, not burden. "This training protects you and protects our athletes. Completion is required before your first practice." Most coaches will understand.
Tracking What Matters
You can't manage ongoing training without tracking it.
Completion rates by module. Which training elements are getting done and which are being ignored? Low completion on a specific topic might mean it's not accessible, not relevant, or not enforced.
Completion timing. Are coaches finishing training before it's needed or scrambling after? Pre-season training completed in week three isn't serving its purpose.
Knowledge application. Harder to measure, but possible through observation and feedback. Are trained behaviors showing up in practice? Do coaches reference what they learned?
Retention over time. If you're doing ongoing learning well, coach performance should improve over seasons, not reset to baseline each year. Track whether experienced coaches are actually better than first-year coaches.
Keep the tracking simple. A spreadsheet showing completion status by coach and by module is enough to start. Sophistication can come later.
The Culture Shift
Making ongoing training work requires a culture shift, both for coaches and for program leadership.
Coaches need to see learning as part of the job, not an extra burden on top of it. This means building time expectations that include learning, not just practice hours. It means talking about development as an ongoing process. It means celebrating coaches who grow, not just coaches who've been around longest.
Program leadership needs to commit resources. Not huge budgets, but consistent attention. Someone has to create or curate the content. Someone has to send the reminders. Someone has to track completion. If ongoing training is nobody's responsibility, it becomes nobody's priority.
The programs that do this well treat coach development the way they treat athlete development: as a continuous process that requires investment, attention, and patience. You don't train an athlete once and expect them to stay sharp forever. The same applies to coaches.
The Compounding Return
Here's what makes ongoing training worth the effort: the benefits compound over time.
A coach who learns something useful in year one and builds on it in year two and refines it in year three becomes dramatically more effective than a coach who restarts from zero each season. Institutional knowledge accumulates. Program culture strengthens. Quality becomes consistent instead of variable.
The programs with the best reputations aren't just lucky with volunteer recruitment. They've built systems that develop coaches over years. They retain coaches longer because the job keeps getting more manageable and more rewarding. They attract new coaches because the existing coaches are visibly supported and successful.
The pre-season clinic got you started. But it's the ongoing investment that builds a coaching corps capable of delivering what families actually expect.
Training once is a checkbox. Training continuously is a competitive advantage.
Ian Goldberg is the CEO of Signature Media and the Editor of the largest and fastest growing sports parenting newsletter. He’s been recognized as an industry expert by the National Alliance for Youth Sports, the US Olympic Committee’s Truesport, and the Aspen Institute's Project Play. Ian is also a suburban NJ sports dad of two teenage daughters and has over 2,000 hours of volunteer time coaching them (which he calls the most fun form of R&D for his newsletter content). Ian and his team provide players, coaches, parents and program directors with the articles and content they need to have a great sports season. Ian has spent most of his career in digital product development and marketing and got his start at the White House where he worked for the economic advisors to two US Presidents.
