Position: Coach

Now this may seem kind of obvious, but you'd be surprised the confusion this can create!  The coaches primary responsibility is to prepare the players, but there's more to consider:

Define the Goal: is the goal to have a winning team?  Fair game time for everyone?  The coach and the board need to make sure everyone is clear on this.

Prepare for and Run Practices: The coach is responsible for running the practices.  This means that they need to come to practice ready to go, not trying to figure out what to do once they get there.  The focus is: conditioning, team building and tactics.

Leadership Development: At a minimum, this starts with picking team captains, but captains don't magically appear and know what to do.  Guiding the captains in their responsibilities and preparing future captains.

Coordinate Support: Usually a coach can't do it all.  There may be times when they need someone to work with the goalies or new players.  Identifying those skills takes time - getting to know the parents and building those relationships is where it starts.  Once they have some people selected, they need to define the goals, pick times, and monitor progress.  It's important to understand a coach as a manager of resources that will improve the players and equip them to meet the goals of the program.

Get to Know Coaches: It's super important for the coach to get to know the other coaches in the league.  This happens at games, league meetings, emails in off season, etc.  Building these relationships helps to smooth any problems that they will encounter later.  And there will be problems.

Player Feedback: There is, of course, constant feedback to players, but a formal assessment of the players mid season is highly recommended.  This way they can know what their strengths and weaknesses are.  Writing out a player assessment and giving this to the players is very valuable.

Track Metrics: The coach needs to figure out what to measure - goals, assists, player time, endurance, speed, etc are all numbers to track.  You can improve what you don't measure.

Protect Players: Make sure the players are safe in games or practices.  This is a very physical sport and these are teenagers, so there is risk here beyond the control of the coach.

Understand Rules: The coach should know the rules of the game, seems obvious, but newer coaches may not be up on them.  At least get the rule book and look up rules as situations arise.  It's recommended, if possible, take a referee class.

Character Development: This is not the coaches responsibility, it's the parents.  That said, there opportunities to influence this development by providing timely feedback, setting the tone at the start and end of practices, etc.  Make prayer a priority at the end of practices.  Also, the coach should take the opportunity to share their testimony.

Schedule Review: The coach will need to review the draft season schedule that's being worked with the league.  The scheduler usually has questions about number of games per week, should we schedule games near tournaments, what vacation is the coach taking, etc.

Who does the coach need to coordinate with?

Athletic Director: This is probably the most important working relationship.  The primary focus here is schedule for the week, specific and special equipment needs.

Scheduler: Usually more at the start of the season when the season calendar is being developed.

Board Chairman: Focus will be on status of program and any special issues.

A recommendation about the relationship between the coach and the board: the coach is not a voting board member, there are meetings where the board should have time to discuss issues without the coaches present.  Get your board to discuss this and write down how this should work.  You'll want to coaches there sometimes and not others.  Just be clear about it.