EDITORIAL – WHAT EXPERTISE AND ROLES ARE NECESSARY TO COACH A HIGH SCHOOL TEAM TO SUCCESS?

In this day and age of YouTube and internet golf instruction, it is easy to get lost in the woods, so to speak (and sometimes literally with wayward ball striking!). A lot of golfers want to learn on their own without professional instruction, and this includes high school golfers.

Of course, there are different levels of high school golf. Some teams have serious players hoping to play in college and perhaps professionally, and some are built around players just seeking to have fun. In any case, it is the coach’s job to coach and not babysit. This means knowing enough about the game to be able to help players improve, and one of the best ways to do this is for a high school coach to have USGTF/WGTF certification. After successful completion of the Associate Member course, that person is qualified to give a competent lesson to beginner to average players, which should constitute most high school golfers.

In addition to certification, high school golf coaches need to formulate practice plans and qualifying criteria. There are numerous resources online that can help with this. Finally, coaches need to look at their players with an unbiased filter. For example, there are coaches who won’t play freshmen, no matter how good they are (yes, this happened to one of the members of the USGTF Technical Committee!), or play someone who used to be one of the top players but no longer is. But most of all, being a high school golf coach means developing their golfers more as people than golfers, and that’s something we can all be thankful for.