Comanche coaching crunch time

It can be hard to find teachers, it can be even harder to find coaches and others involved in extra-curricular activities.

That reality is setting in at Comanche Public Schools, though it is not anything new to them. It just is coming down to the wire harder and faster this year than in some previous years.

For the 2022-23 school year at Comanche High School, Comanche had to find a high school boys basketball coach during the summer. When it was getting crunch time, the school received a call from Anthony Bowie asking if they were still looking for a coach. They were, Bowie got the job and the Indians have been better for it.

It has not been as easy for the 2023-24 school year. They hired Gary Richardson as the head football coach last spring, but they lost softball coach Aaron Minor who resigned and went to Kingfisher, and girls basketball coach Megan Robbins accepted the same position at Marlow.

Now they will be looking for a softball and baseball coach after Jarod King told administrators late last week he has accepting a position in Newcastle. Comanche had announced just the week before that King was going to be taking over the head softball duties as well, so King moving on opened up two positions at once.

Do not think the problem is limited to Comanche, however, it is a statewide problem. Just a quick trip to the job board on the Oklahoma Coaches Association website will tell you that.

In the month of June alone, there were more than 100 job postings for junior high through high school for both head coach and assistant coach positions in every sport played.

Reading through the high school head coach openings in sports which Comanche plays, you find: five postings for football, four for boys basketball, six for girls basketball, four for softball, 14 for baseball, five for wrestling, four for golf, five for cross country and six for track. There are postings from Texas and Arkansas schools as well.

That’s the type of competition Comanche is up against to woo coaches to Comanche.

People might say, “Well, that’s not ideal, but school doesn’t start for another month, so there’s still time.”

Here’s the kicker, though, most teaching contracts start on July 15, so getting someone who is already a coach at another school gets a lot harder after that date.

And to add to that, this week is “Dead Week,” a week where coaches are not allowed to have contact with athletes, so they may not be answering any phone calls either.

There is some good news. I’ve been told there may be a new girls basketball coach named by the end of the week.
But, we haven’t even talked about band, yet. The school district is in the same spot. The most recent number I heard of schools looking for band directors is 22.

It used to be schools had their pick of teachers and coaches. Now, teachers and coaches have their pick of schools.

So, what’s the solution? No doubt those on the political left and the political right each have their own ideas of the root causes and solutions.
I won’t dip my toes into that right now, but I do think their are some non-political factors as well.

One of the main ones is geography. Many coaches and teachers want to be close to their hometown to be near friends and family.

Another is preferred lifestyle. As much as we may enjoy small town and country living here in our little corner of Oklahoma, there are others who prefer the comforts and accessibility of larger cities. Many of us rural folks don’t think twice about having to drive an hour-and-a-half to go do something. That’s just a part of life. For others having to drive an hour and a half to do something is preposterous. You can find this attitude on social media market pages. The small town people will drive two hours to buy a car, but the larger city dwellers don’t want to drive across town.

I’m sure there are financial considerations in play as well. While base pay may be similar across the state, there can be big differences when it comes to supplemental coaching income.

What I’m not sure of is what the solution is. The easiest thing to point to - and it may be true - is to increase pay. Education, however, is already getting the largest share of the state pie. You would either have to make cutbacks in other areas, decrease the amount of money going into state coffers to use down the road, or come up with new revenue streams, which is a kind way of saying doing away with existing tax cuts or creating new taxes.

That’s a discussion though for people much more knowledgeable and smarter than me. All I can do is sit and wait until I get the “We’re hiring a new coach,” text on my phone.

What I do know is that I can trust those making those decisions.