High School Coaches: Inheriting a New Program? Do This First!

🔥 Inheriting a new program? These new coach tips will help you build trust, create team culture, and avoid costly mistakes → https://coachfreetraining.com
 
Taking over a high school sports team can feel overwhelming—especially if you’re trying to change systems, set standards, and earn athlete buy-in all at once. In this video, I’m sharing three game-changing strategies every coach should implement when stepping into a new role. Whether you’re rebuilding from scratch or inheriting an established program, these insights will help you lead with confidence, build trust fast, and avoid losing your team before the season even starts.
 
👋 I’m Coach Bre – a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion. I’ve taken over two different high school programs, and I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) what to do—and what NOT to do—when you're the new coach on campus.
 
✅ Inside this episode:
🔹 How to take over a high school team the right way
🔹 The first thing to do before running new drills or systems
🔹 The power of 1:1 athlete meetings (and the questions to ask)
🔹 How to start mental training with your team—without being a sports psych
🔹 Tips for coaching a new program with confidence
🔹 How to create culture, clarity, and connection from day one
 
🎯 This is more than just high school coaching advice—it's a roadmap for building a mentally tough, drama-free, unified team that performs under pressure. Because no offensive scheme will fix a mindset issue. 👊
 
🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction: Setting the Tone for a New Program 
00:29 Start with Stability: Easing the Transition 
01:19 Building Relationships: One-on-One Meetings 
02:58 Prioritize Mental Training: The Key to Success 
05:23 Conclusion: Building a Winning Culture
 
👇 Coaches – comment below: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced when taking over a new team?
 
📌 Want to learn more tips on how to take your team’s game to the next level?
🔹 Grab our FREE training for coaches → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 Check out our plug & play elite mental game info → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

If you're a coach stepping into a new program, whether it's a total rebuild or just a fresh start, don't make the mistake of rushing into new drills, new systems, new strategies right away. The first things that you do when you take over a new program will set the tone and you wanna make sure that you don't lose your team before the season even starts. As a head coach myself, for the past 14 years, I've won four state titles, but also taken over two programs. And here are the three things that I have learned the hard way that I would do if I were taking over a new program from the fresh start. Number one, start with stability. When you take over a new program, you've got a lot of players who are wondering. What's going to happen? What's gonna happen to my starting role? What's gonna happen to my planning time? What's gonna happen? Oh, all over. Now people are gonna be excited, but there's also gonna be a good number of players and parents who are. A little bit worried about what's about to happen because change, even if it's good, change, can represent some fear and some anxiety. So recognize at the bat that things will change and things might be different, but here's what's not changing. Recognize that there also are some things that won't change and identify what those things are for you and for your program, and maybe it is something around the work ethic, the commitment to each other, our standards, our integrity. Whatever it is, make sure that you lay that out as well and recognize that. Some things aren't going to change, and that's okay too. All right. Number two, meet with every athlete. And this is something that you can do if you inherit a program and then you have a little bit of an off season. Before you officially start your season, meet with every athlete one-on-one and ask them a couple of questions. What do you love about playing here? What do you wish would change? And this is going to be a couple of things, um, that's really good for you. You're going to build some relationships very fast with your players. You're also going to recognize that, hey, you have a voice and I am here to listen to it. You're also gonna uncover what's going on in the program, what athletes love, and also you're gonna start to notice some themes around what to change. I know it's really easy as a coach to wanna come in. I know when I took over the programs that I did, I was like, this is what's going to change and I wanna get going and hit the ground running.'cause this is what I know works. Newsflash, if you don't have the buy-in from your players, nothing's going to work. And I overlooked some, some things that I wish I would've known that didn't come up until after the season. And by the way, we didn't have a great season. That's that first season that I took over this. Pretty established program because I don't think I listened enough to the players. I kinda came in with my agenda because I was a college player and a successful coach, and this is how it's gonna be done. But if you don't listen to what your players want, what's already working well, what traditions they have established, then you're gonna lose them before the season even starts. It's gonna be pretty challenging. And one example of that is at the end of the season, one of my players was like, well, we didn't do the, the backpack tradition where we put a note in the backpack and we didn't do this like touch the pride thing. And I was like, I didn't even know about those things. Because I didn't ask. Okay. So meet with every player. Ask those things, and that's gonna give you some insight into what's working well so that you can cultivate that some things that matter to the players, and also some things that really are going to come up as themes to change. Number three, the last thing, prioritize mental training early. Yes, I am a mental performance coach, and the reason why is because when I took over. My, the program that I've been at right now, this one that I've been at for over a decade, um, we lost pretty badly in the same fashion two years in a row. And it wasn't due to the physical skill that we didn't have because we had all the skill in the world. We had all, we had very talented teams that should have gone far at state, but we lost due to mental errors and, um, specifically in these like winner to state loser out situations where we crumbled under the pressure. After we were already up, we only needed a couple more points to win the whole match and move on, and we couldn't do it because I had not trained that side of the game. And so that kickstarted my journey to become a mental performance coach, to teach these skills to other coaches and to other athletes. Now, you don't have to do that, right? That's the hard path. I make it really easy for you. So go to coach free training.com. I teach you a few really simple strategies that you can be teaching your team right out the gate so that you don't have to. To wait until the pressure hits because it's going to, things are gonna be really exciting at the beginning of the season because it's a new coach, new program, new culture, new everything, and it's like, woo, this is exciting. This is fun. That's not going to actually help athletes with what they're probably already struggling with because all athletes struggle to come back from mistakes fast to deal with pressure. No new install of any new offense or defense is going to fix an athlete's perfectionism problem that holds them back when the game is on the line. Absolutely not. And so you have to be able to give them tangible skills to deal with those moments because they don't know those things. And coming in as a new coach, it's a really, really great time because you do kind of have a fresh start in some areas and giving them really simple, tangible mental training skills. So that you can allow all of those things that you're doing as a coach to pay off, right? The new installs, the new defense, the new offense, the new fundamentals, like those things are actually gonna be, be able to pay off when it matters, because not only do they have the skill that you're introducing, but they also have the mindset to be able to execute in those pressure situations. So really simple things I wish I would've done earlier. In fact, that's why I had to go. Going down this long path of learning how to teach these two these skills to my athletes. But simple things like how to get over mistakes. How to deal with nerves when you're nervous before a big game. Um, how to evaluate your performance, how to deal with like self-talk. All of those things that athletes need. You recognize they need them too, because. Sports are 90% mental, but most coaches dunno how to teach it because we're not taught that, right? That's not our specialty. But I make it easy for you. So go to coach tree training.com. We've got some really simple ways that you can do that, and that is what I would do if I were taking over a new program in order to help build a winning culture from the start. One other thing, as you're meeting with players individually. If you want some resources on how to communicate their role when it gets to that point in the season, check out my next video on Player Impact plans. This is how you can communicate clearly what their role is on the team, how much playing time is associated with that, and also how to communicate that to their parents so that there's not any drama when it comes to playing time and what their role is. So check out that video next. That's really gonna help you as well when it comes to communicating with your athletes.