The volunteer coach's accounts: where the hours actually go
A volunteer youth coach spends far more time off the pitch than on it. Here is where the hours go, and which of them are worth cutting.
Most people who agree to coach a youth team are agreeing to two sessions and a match a week. About five hours.
The real number is higher, and the difference lies almost entirely in work nobody mentioned.
A realistic week
For a U13 coach with eighteen players, in an ordinary week:
| Task | Hours |
|---|---|
| Two sessions including setup and packing away | 3.5 |
| Match including travel and waiting | 3.0 |
| Planning sessions | 1.0 |
| Messages, lift rotas, absences | 1.0 |
| Parent enquiries | 0.5 |
| Club meetings, courses, admin (apportioned) | 0.5 |
Around nine to ten hours. Of those, six and a half are with the players.
That is not unreasonable in itself. The problem is that when the pressure rises — a tournament, a conflict, the start of a season — it is not the sessions that give way. They are fixed in the calendar. What gives way is everything else: the planning, the follow-up, the individual feedback.
The tasks that disappear first
It follows a predictable pattern, and it is precisely the wrong ones:
- Individual feedback. No deadline, nobody asking for it, nobody noticing it is missing — except the player.
- Development conversations. Postponed until "after the tournament" and then until next season.
- Following up on what you agreed last time.
The striking thing is that those are the three things players themselves name when you ask them what matters.
What is worth cutting
Planning drills from scratch. Ready-made drill libraries exist, your national association's included. Very few coaches become better by inventing a passing drill themselves.
Administrative message handling. One fixed channel, one fixed time a week, and a clear signal that you do not reply at ten at night.
Post-match processing. This is where technology can genuinely shift something — not by making you a better coach, but by stopping what you already say on the pitch from being lost. We have written about what actually works.
What is not worth cutting
The time immediately after training. Those ten minutes where players hang around by the fence talking are a large part of why some of them keep turning up.
The development conversations. Twice a year, fifteen minutes per player. For a squad of eighteen that is an evening and a half a year. It is the best-invested time in the whole account.
An honest conclusion
There is no tool that gives a volunteer coach their free time back. Anything claiming otherwise is selling something.
What does exist is the chance to move the hours to where they matter: away from administration and post-processing, towards the players.
And if you are heading for burnout, it is worth saying so out loud at the club before you resign. Most clubs would far rather find an assistant than a new head coach.