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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