What is the Role of a Good Assistant?
My friend just asked me that. He’s been one and he has several. I think long before I answer him because the answer isn’t at all what anybody wants to hear. It’s hard to define and even harder to measure, but this is what I think:
The number one role of a good assistant is to see the gaps. The number two role is to fill them. The rest is busy work. Busy work can be never ending, and it usually sits right on top of the gaps. And gaps are everywhere, for everyone. That’s why good assistants are so valuable and so incredibly hard to find. It’s also why head coaches are rarely satisfied with them. It’s hard to teach somebody how to look for something that isn’t there. Our brains work best with concrete matter.
So, head coaches often create massive job descriptions for those they have hired to ‘assist’. The job descriptions have countless lists and box after box after box to check. Concrete matter. Busy work. Head coach erosion. Assistant coach frustration. Nobody gets what they need.
What head coaches really need are foxhole sitters with night vision goggles on. Guys who help their leader move the troops toward their chosen destination with as much efficiency and as little bloodshed as possible
What head coaches really need are foxhole sitters with night vision goggles on. Guys who help their leader move the troops toward their chosen destination with as much efficiency and as little bloodshed as possible. There isn’t really a playbook for that kind of work. It’s part feel and part diligence. Good assistants are way clearers by day who moonlight as fence builders. They are the overwatch who keep their eyes on the weeds so the head coach can see where he’s going. It’s the kind of work that doesn’t really lend itself to boxes that can be checked. This work is treacherous and it’s hard. It requires a different set of eyes.
Great assistants are gap finders. The guys who can sniff out disconnects in whatever realm they occur. The gaps might be in teaching—the relaying of a concept from an experienced mind to a novice one. So much can get lost in translation. Or the gaps might be in strategy—a systematic approach that is rock solid but doesn’t fit for reasons of personnel or general style of opponents or even rules at any given point in time. Or the gaps might be in recruiting—what you’re selling, what they’re buying, what’s not clicking the way you think maybe it is. Usually, these pieces are so slightly unhitched that it doesn’t take much time or effort to sew them up, but somebody who can see them while the space is tiny, before it becomes a gaping hole, is invaluable. The really good ones have a pulse for all that. These are the gaps at the shallow end of the job.
The best assistant coaches find the holes in the subsequent layers.
That’s what the night goggles are for. They help their leaders make their way in the dark of isolation while the world is clapping and spraying confetti or shouting obscenities and shooting darts. Because both worldly reactions happen outside the loneliness. it doesn’t really matter if things are going great or limping lousy, the isolation is the same. Assistant coaches who understand that are invaluable.
Ultimately, what the best of the best do, is save head coaches from themselves. Head coach roads are dark and twisty. But nobody really knows about that. Everybody sees the glitz. The power. All the free tickets to the front of all the best lines. What’s hidden is the undergrowth. From the outside, the head coach is like the guy at the bar on Friday night. He’s having the best time. He’s drinking and laughing and dancing and buying rounds for the house. He’s the center of the party, the one singing karaoke to ‘More Than a Feeling’ at the top of his lungs. He’s who everybody wishes they could be.
But nobody sees Saturday morning. The headache, the nausea, the misplaced wallet. The complete non-recollection of how he got home. Nobody witnesses that. The downside to the upside that is an isolated slog.
Navigating the undergrowth is tricky. Head coaches carry a backpack full of everybody’s expectations while wearing a weighted vest of their own, and they’re never off the clock. They are problem solvers and therapists, decision makers and line holders. The toughest stuff they have to do, no one ever sees. Leading has long been lonely work. The best assistant coaches can’t cure the lonely, but they can be aware of it which, by definition, builds a bridge to cross a perilous gap.
When head coaches need the perspective that stillness provides but they can’t get it because the vortex has too much force, great assistants help them see. Just another gap buried deeply at the opposite of the shallow end. What is obvious on the top branch of the tree is undiscernible at the base, so the best assistant coaches find a way to get their leaders up to where the sight lines are discernable. Gap fillers. Skilled artisans armed with mortar to keep it all together. The leader and the work.
That’s what the best ones do— that is who they are. They make recruiting calls and excel spread sheets. They diagram plays and design drills. They cut film and they prepare for opponents, but none of that is where their value is found. They see the gaps and they fill them. No boxes and no salary cover that.
Sherri Coale
P.S.
