The 3 Groups Every High School Coach Must Focus On (Beyond the X’s and O’s)
How to strengthen your pipeline, program, and product for long-term success
Most high school coaches step on the field with one goal in mind: winning. But if you zoom out, the true health and longevity of your program depends on how well you take care of three groups:
Incoming Freshmen (Your Pipeline)
Your Current Team (Your Program)
Your Graduating Seniors and Alumni (Your Product)
If you neglect any one of these groups, your program eventually feels the impact. Let’s break them down.
1. Incoming Freshmen: Your Pipeline
Freshmen represent the future of your program. At the high school level, you don’t get to “transfer in” an entire class. You build with who walks through the doors at orientation.
This means your culture and your plan have to be clear before they arrive. Don’t wait until they put on your jersey. Start early: visit feeder schools, connect with 8th graders, show them what to expect.
Lay out the plan in their language:
How you will develop them as athletes
How you will support them as people (personal wellness, community impact, career readiness)
How you will prepare them for life after the game
When freshmen hear this vision from you at “fish camp” or middle school visits, they step into high school knowing the expectation and the opportunity.
2. Current Team: Your Program
Your current roster is the actualization of everything you’ve promised. They are your walking, talking evidence.
When parents, future players, or community members look at your program, they look at the current team. Do they embody the values you spoke about at the parent meeting? Do they reflect the culture you said you would create?
This is where many coaches miss the mark. We get caught looking at the next class or next season. But if the team you have now doesn’t reflect your standards, no recruiting plan or highlight reel will save you.
Think of it like a restaurant: you can run the best commercials in town, but if the food is bad, no one is coming back. Your current team is the food. They are the reason people buy into your program.
3. Graduating Seniors & Alumni: Your Product
This is the most overlooked group, but also the most powerful.
When your athletes graduate, they are no longer your pipeline or your program. They are your product.
What story do they tell when they leave your care? Are they thriving in college, careers, and community? Or do they feel unprepared for life beyond the game?
Your alumni are the proof that what you do works. They are the ones younger players will look to and say, “That’s what I want my life to look like after high school.”
And alumni engagement doesn’t stop at graduation. Invite them back. Create events where current players see what’s possible. Check in with the ones who may still need guidance. They are not finished products yet.
Pipeline. Program. Product.
If you align all three, your program sustains success. You win on the field and you develop people who succeed long after the final whistle. That is what true player development looks like.
And if you’re ready to go deeper, I created a Player Development Program Readiness Assessment. It’s free and will help you see how prepared your program is to serve these three groups.
Because at the end of the day, it’s not just about games won. It’s about lives impacted.
