When winning doesn’t matter

I came across an interesting coaching record. It demonstrates how little winning and losing matters in some situations.

The coach of an NCAA Division III women’s team had a combined overall record of 23-257 over 9 seasons. Their conference record was 13-145 in that same period. Those numbers are already pretty bad, but it gets worse. The first season of that string accounted for 8 of the overall wins and 5 of the conference victories.

Wait. There’s more.

In the last four seasons with this coach in charge the team won only 3 matches combined, and just one in conference. Two seasons were entirely winless. And those weren’t the last two in the series (they were seasons 6 and 7).

I don’t know anything about the situation at this school – other than the fact that they changed conference right before this coach’s stint in charge. No coach with a record like this keeps their job for 9 years in a place where winning matters at all. Clearly, there were much higher priorities and said coach managed them well enough to be kept on despite their record.

I mention this because a lot of people legitimately don’t understand that this really can be the case. Thus, they unfairly judge coaches in these types of situations.

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John Forman

John is currently the Strategic Manager for Talent (oversees the national teams) and Indoor Performance Director for Volleyball England. His 20+ years of volleyball coaching experience includes all three NCAA divisions, plus Junior College, in the US; university and club teams in the UK; professional coaching in Sweden; and both coaching and club management at the Juniors level. He's also been a visiting coach at national team, professional club, and juniors programs in several countries.

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