We use 3 of our six lanes for practice while the well, baby pool and the other half of the pool are Rec swim. |
60 hours a week for 9 weeks plus preseason work. Plus there is a whole lot more to it then just being on deck. Practice and season training plans, coaches meetings, dq evaluations, line ups (this takes 10 hours easy), stroke and turn work and team events. Generally about a 14 week gig. Head coaches I know expect Minimum of 10k and upwards of 20k. Minimum wage alone would be about 10k. |
$3k-20k or more. |
same. And we have had the same coach for a few years. |
we are NVSL and have both morning and evening practices. The evening practice is only Tues-Thursday and uses three lanes of the pool. The old people complain about not being able to do laps between 5-7 but swim team brings in a lot of money |
$7-8K. Three-hours of practice five times per week. About 8 hours at meets per week (some weeks have more hours at meets because of extra meets like relay carnival, some weeks have less hours of practice like divisionals and all-stars week). Time spent doing meet sheets and line ups. Time spent dealing with parents and volunteers. |
This thread is really old. But it doesn’t seem like head coaches are making any more now. |
Holy cow. Our swim team is staffed by college students coaching the HSers, HSers coaching the little guys, and parent volunteers managing it all. Coaches get minimum wage or community service hours. |
$11K middle division in MCSL. |
That’s a huge range and not really helpful. |
It is a huge range. Our pool pays next to nothing so we cannot get coaches and if we do they don’t stay. The top ones pay very well. It’s a lot of hours. |
Our pool pays $10K and can’t get a coach to stay because our parents suck. It’s summer swim. Have fun. Your kid is not going to the Olympics. |
Coaches at our pool work roughly 30-31 hours per week. Then an additional 4-5 hours for each relay carnival. Then there are typically a few big outings each season.
Our coaches work roughly 220-230 hours/season with a pretty crappy schedule. Most of the head coaches in our area are teachers or club coaches or both. Definitely not enough to pay them minimum wage to deal with all of our swimmers (and parents!) |
It is true, though. Occasionally the leagues do a salary survey. Coaches at top division pools can make five figures. Mid tier pools in that $6-9 range. Bottom tier closer to $3-5. |
The best way to run it on a budget is to have a "manager" coach who is/are a parent volunteer(s) that do everything except spell out the workouts. Comms, entries, everything. Then have a "coach" or coaches for the practices and meets. Agree, college student, 17/18yo swimmers, anyone good with kids and somewhat knowledgeable about strokes etc. Lets face it, its not real training, its maybe getting strokes right and having fun. The skilled kids already have a coach and know what to do. OTOH, if your team has the dough and wants a turnkey solution, throw some bucks at a real coach, club practices are often dialed back that time of year so they're available. But whatever way you go, make sure the duties and expectations are spelled out explicitly. Make sure the club coach is actually up on the admin parts of coaching if they will be doing those things. |