In this series, we unpack the latest data from a national AD survey and share winning plays for dealing with the pressures of the athletic department.
You're chasing down a coaching vacancy before the first practice, fielding a parent email before lunch, and hoping the scorer's table is actually staffed on Friday. Nobody had to hand you a survey to tell you the people side of this job has gotten heavier. You live it every day.
This is Part 1 of a four-part series breaking down the state of our profession, built off Coach & Athletic Director's 15th annual Athletic Director Survey, published in the magazine's May/June 2026 State of the Industry report. We're starting with the people problem, because coaches, parents, and event-day staff are where most of us spend the bulk of our energy, and where the right systems make the biggest difference.
None of what follows requires you to be a superhero. It requires a little structure and the right tools in your corner. Let's get into it.
This has been the number one or number two issue for five straight years, and honestly, it's not budging. The coaching pipeline is shrinking while the job description keeps growing. Coaches today are asked to be tacticians, counselors, social media managers, and part-time chauffeurs, often for a stipend that hasn't kept pace with the demands.
Build the pipeline before you need it. Stop waiting until August to panic about a JV opening. Keep a running list of former players, student teachers, and community members who have expressed even a passing interest in coaching. When a spot opens, you are recruiting from a warm list instead of a cold one.
Coaches stay where they feel developed, not just paid.
Make the offer bigger than the stipend. Mentorship, clear evaluation criteria, and a real onboarding process matter more than people think. Coaches stay where they feel developed, not just paid. Pair new coaches with a veteran on staff for the first season. It costs you nothing but a little intentionality, and it's the single best retention tool I've ever used.
Hire from inside the building first. Teachers who already know your culture and your kids are lower risk hires than an unknown outside candidate, and they tend to stick around longer.
Get consistent about how you evaluate and communicate expectations. Once you have a staff of coaches across a dozen or more sports, consistency becomes its own challenge. This is where Bound's Program Management tools come in handy, giving every coach the same expectations, the same forms, and the same communication standards no matter what sport they're running. When your whole department operates from one playbook instead of 12 different ones, coaches feel supported instead of guessing.
Here's where I'll be honest with you. A lot of good coaches walk away from a program that feels disorganized before they ever coach a single practice. If onboarding a new coach means chasing down five different forms and three different logins, you're bleeding candidates before the season even begins. Speed and clarity are retention strategies nobody talks about enough.
Tied for the second biggest concern in the country, and it always will be until we get ahead of it instead of reacting to it.
Set the expectation before the season starts, not during the first blow up. A parent meeting. A code of conduct. A clear communication chain for concerns. Most conflict happens because nobody defined the rules of engagement.
Give parents a real way to help. Booster involvement, volunteer roles, and recognition turn a frustrated bystander into an invested partner. People who feel useful complain less.
Document everything and communicate consistently. When parents know exactly where and how to raise a concern, and they see it handled the same way every time, the drama drops. Not to zero. Let's be realistic. But it drops.
Get ahead of the information gap. Half of the parent complaints I've fielded over the years boiled down to one root issue: they didn't know something they felt they should have known. A schedule change. A cancellation. A pickup time. Using Bound's Team Communication tools to push consistent, timestamped updates to every parent's phone at once closes that gap fast. It's a lot harder to be upset about a schedule change you found out about the second it happened.
This climbed five spots in a single year, one of the sharpest rises on the whole list, and anyone who has tried to find a scorekeeper on a Tuesday in February already knew that before the data confirmed it. Ticket takers, chain crew, table workers, gate staff — someone always seems to be missing on gameday. The official shortage compounds it further. Fewer people want to take verbal abuse from the stands for $60 a night, and I don't blame a single one of them for walking away.
Use technology to fill gaps fast.
Build a bench, literally. Retired teachers, alumni, and parents of younger siblings are an underused pool for event staff. Ask them directly. Most people just need to be asked.
Pay fairly and pay on time. Nothing kills a volunteer or part time worker pipeline faster than confusion about compensation. This goes double for officials, who talk to each other constantly about which schools pay promptly and which ones make them wait six weeks for a check.
Use technology to fill gaps fast. A shared staffing calendar where available workers can claim open shifts saves you dozens of phone calls a week. Bound's game worker management tool is one of the most underrated pieces of the platform, letting you assign your scorekeepers, ticket sellers, and gate staff to a specific event and know exactly who's covering what before you ever leave the office.
On the officiating side specifically, Bound's Officials Management and Officials Pay tools let you assign, contract, and pay officials from that same connected system, which means fewer paper vouchers floating around your office and fewer officials wondering when their check is coming. Treat your event workers and officials like valued vendors, not an afterthought, and they'll keep showing up.
Get the people side right, and you've solved the hardest part of this job. But even the best team in the building can't outrun a budget that won't stretch far enough. That's Part 2: funding, sponsorships, and the facilities squeeze — and where the real money is hiding in plain sight.