Strike Balance Before You Strike Out

As a former college coach, I know how easy it is to convince yourself that exhaustion is just part of the job. College coaching doesn't stay inside practice times and game schedules. It's recruiting calls at night, film when everybody else is asleep, early morning workouts, travel, compliance, fundraising, scouting, academics, player issues, staff meetings, camps, emails, parents, administrators, and the constant pressure to win while somehow keeping an entire program moving forward. You tell yourself this is what you signed up for, everybody in the profession is tired, and you'll slow down when recruiting settles down, when the season ends, or when you finally get through the next thing. The problem is that there's always a next thing.

I loved coaching, which made recognizing burnout harder. When you care deeply about your athletes and your program, overworking can start looking a whole lot like commitment. You convince yourself that being available every hour makes you a better coach, sacrificing another weekend proves how dedicated you are, and missing time with people you love is just the price of doing something important. Somewhere along the way, being exhausted can almost become a badge of honor in coaching, and that's where we need to be willing to call ourselves out.

Psalm 127:2 (ESV) says, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.”

This verse isn't condemning hard work, and Scripture certainly doesn't teach laziness. Psalm 127 is confronting the idea that everything depends on human effort while leaving God out of the equation. That's a message coaches need because we're control freaks by profession. We prepare for every scenario, analyze every weakness, recruit every position, solve problems before they happen, and carry responsibilities most people outside the profession will never see. Eventually, though, we can start living like the entire program depends on us holding everything together.

It doesn't.

There came a point when I had to recognize that working myself into the ground wasn't proof that I cared more. Being constantly exhausted didn't make me more committed, and answering another email at midnight didn't make me a better coach. There is a difference between working hard and believing everything will collapse if you stop working, and Psalm 127 forces us to confront that difference.

Matthew 11:28-30 (ESV) says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.”

Jesus isn't giving coaches a modern lesson about work life balance here. In context, He's calling burdened people to Himself and contrasting the rest found in following Him with the crushing burdens placed on people elsewhere. Still, there is something coaches desperately need to hear in His invitation because many of us have become incredibly good at carrying things we were never supposed to carry alone.

Coaches carry losses home. We carry struggling athletes home. We carry recruiting misses, budgets, job security, playing time decisions, angry parents, administrative pressure, and the fear that one bad season can change everything. We carry responsibility for dozens of young people while trying to convince ourselves that we can keep absorbing more without eventually paying for it.

You can't.

Burnout doesn't always arrive as some dramatic collapse where you suddenly realize you're done. Sometimes it looks like losing patience faster than you used to, becoming cynical about athletes you once would've loved coaching, resenting another text or phone call, struggling to be present when you're finally home, or feeling absolutely nothing after something that once would've meant everything to you. You can still show up, run practice, recruit, answer emails, smile at donors, and do your job while knowing privately that something inside you is running dangerously close to empty.

That's why rest can't be something coaches earn only after everything gets done, because everything is never going to be done.

Exodus 20:8-10 (ESV) begins, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The Sabbath command was given specifically to Israel within the Mosaic covenant, so I don't want to flatten it into a generic command that every college coach must take Sunday off. Christians disagree about how Old Testament Sabbath requirements apply under the new covenant, but the broader biblical truth is impossible to miss. Human beings weren't designed for endless production, and our value isn't determined by how much work we can squeeze out of ourselves before we finally break.

That's especially convicting in coaching because we can become excellent at preaching recovery to athletes while refusing to practice it ourselves. We'll talk about sleep, recovery, managing workload, mental health, and taking care of their bodies, then live on caffeine, five hours of sleep, missed meals, constant stress, and a phone that never stops buzzing.

At some point, we've got to practice what we coach.

Proverbs 14:23 (ESV) says, “In all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.” Hard work matters, and I don't believe the answer to coaching burnout is lowering every standard or pretending excellence doesn't require sacrifice. High level athletics demands long hours, uncomfortable decisions, discipline, and seasons when the workload is legitimately heavy. The problem starts when sacrifice stops being seasonal and becomes your permanent way of living.

There's always something you can sacrifice for the program. Another dinner with your family, another night of sleep, another weekend, another workout, another church service, another friendship, another hour you promised yourself you'd take off. The program will take whatever you're willing to give it, and unless you decide where the line is, coaching can eventually take pieces of your life you never intended to put on the table.

Colossians 3:23 (ESV) says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” I've heard that verse used to justify working harder, staying later, and giving more, but Paul isn't telling Christians to destroy themselves proving their work ethic. In context, he's addressing faithful service to Christ within ordinary responsibilities. Working for the Lord should change why we work, not become another excuse to make work our god.

That distinction matters because coaching can become an identity before we realize it's happening. We stop saying coaching is what we do and start living like coaching is who we are. Our mood depends on the last match, our confidence depends on recruiting, and our sense of worth gets tangled up with our record, our title, our athletes' success, and what other coaches think about our program.

Then eventually somebody asks who you are without your whistle, your team, or your title, and you don't have a very good answer.

I understand that now in a way I didn't when I was buried inside the profession. Stepping away from college coaching forced me to recognize how much of myself I'd wrapped around being Coach. There were incredible parts of that life that I'll always value, and I don't regret caring deeply about my athletes or working hard for them. What I would challenge other coaches to examine is whether caring about the job has quietly become permission to stop caring for themselves and the people who love them.

Your athletes need a committed coach, but they don't need you to destroy yourself for them. Your program needs leadership, but it shouldn't require every available piece of your life. Your family shouldn't continually receive whatever energy is left after everybody associated with your job has taken theirs, and God certainly doesn't need you to prove your faithfulness by running yourself into the ground.

There's also a hard truth coaches don't like admitting. No matter how important you are to your program today, eventually somebody else will coach your team. Somebody else will sit in your office, recruit your athletes, run your practices, and wear your school's logo. College athletics moves on incredibly fast, which should make us think seriously about sacrificing relationships, health, faith, and years of our lives for something that was never ours to keep forever.

I still believe great coaching requires sacrifice. I still believe in long hours when they're necessary, doing more than what's convenient, and giving athletes the preparation and leadership they deserve. I don't believe anymore that exhaustion proves commitment or that burnout is an unavoidable requirement for being good at this profession.

If you're a coach reading this and you're constantly exhausted, increasingly cynical, disconnected from the people you love, and struggling to remember the last time you actually enjoyed the profession you once couldn't imagine living without, don't automatically write that off as part of the job. Pay attention to it.

You may not need to quit coaching. You may need boundaries. You may need sleep. You may need to put the phone down. You may need to delegate something you've convinced yourself only you can do. You may need to reconnect with your spouse, kids, friends, church, therapist, mentor, or the parts of yourself that existed before your career swallowed the calendar.

Most importantly, you may need to remember that God never asked you to be the savior of your program.

Coach hard. Serve your athletes well. Recruit your tail off. Prepare with excellence and take the responsibility you've been given seriously, but stop confusing faithfulness with self destruction. There is nothing noble about giving absolutely everything to your profession and then discovering you have nothing left for your faith, your family, your relationships, or yourself.

The job matters, but it was never supposed to become your entire life.