The organizational roles and tasks of a women's basketball coaching staff

Abstract

The Coaching Model, as developed by Côté, Salmela, Trudel, Baria, and Russell (1995a), characterizes the job of a coach and has as the goal, athlete development. Three of the components of the Coaching Model--training, competition, and organization--directly affect this goal and consequentially described the coaching process. The training and competition components detailed the actions of coaching in practice and games, respectively. While the organization component involved creating the ideal conditions for the other two components. Much of the available literature neglects the organization component, despite its importance to the coaching process. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the organizational roles, responsibilities, and tasks of a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I women's basketball coaching staff, using as a theoretical framework, Role Theory. The study employed a qualitative case study approach, with the case for study, the University of South Carolina Women's Basketball Coaching Staff (SC Coaching Staff). The members of the SC Coaching Staff were the Head Coach, Associate Head Coach, First and Second Assistant Coaches, and the Director of Basketball Operations (DOBO). Also, a former player was an additional source of data. The study utilized interviews, observations, and artifacts as sources of data. The data were analyzed inductively by creating tags and categories from text with similar meanings. This analysis identified the (a) organizational structure, (b) organizational roles, (c) organizational responsibilities, and (d) organizational tasks. Environmental factors and hierarchal positions comprised the organizational structure. The organizational roles of the SC Coaching Staff were "Delegator," "Recruiter," "Promoter," and "Coordinator." "Monitoring the Academic Progress of Players," "Analyzing Opposing Teams," "Evaluating the Capabilities of Players," and "Promoting and Selling the Program" depicted the organizational responsibilities. The organizational tasks were "Preparing Scouting Reports," "Pursuing Potential Players," "Reinforcing Programmatic Tenets," and "Responding to the Variability in the Coaching Environment." The organizational structure, roles, responsibilities, and tasks resembled the synthesized definition of Role Theory in Biddle (1986).