With a fresh undergraduate degree under their belt, some students are often presented with two options. One is to pursue their career goals. The other is to pursue their master’s degree. This can be a very good option and can have a lot of perks associated with it as well. While pursuing a master’s degree, there are often opportunities to become a graduate assistant. Becoming a graduate assistant has its ups and downs but can be very beneficial in the end.
The position of graduate assistant was created in 1976 by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.1 Although jumping into your profession is not totally bad and can be a lot of fun, the experience of being a graduate assistant has proved to be very important. While being a graduate assistant, you are still taking classes (blah) you are still getting the experience of a full-time coach. These opportunities can help a prospective coach learn the ins and outs of coaching. Learning these things before being fully thrown into positions prove to help a person develop the necessary skills needed to coach a team in the future. It has been proven that being able to properly transition into roles help with the overall development regardless of profession.2
As for myself, being a graduate assistant has showed me a lot of lessons associated with coaching young women to give their bests regardless of being on or off the court. Although I am not a full-time coach, I do help in the preparation and the administrative side of things. As a player, you do not simply think of all of the things that coaches and their staffs handle each and every day. These simple tasks can be very crucial for teams, as different fines can be assessed and just simply preparation for games. The coach has a lot of responsibility and your players are constantly looking for you to point them into the right direction. d. Not only is it essential to teach the tactical and technical aspects of the game, as a coach, you must learn to approach and communicate with each player. As a player, having a coach being able to communicate with you is huge, and can either make or break a team in general. If a coach is continually yelling, they may not directly understand each player and how to approach them. This comes with the overall development of players.
If I had to rank the issue of communicating with players, along with the others while associating with coaching a team, I would definitely put this very high on my list. I think it is important that while going through your graduate assistant job, you learn how to talk to your players and fellow staff. One must realize that not everyone's the same. This is easier said than done. It’s important that you understand that everyone do not communicate the same. Not everyone can handle being yelled at and some do not respond to nonchalant passive communication. While some need a push, others are standoffish. It is the coach’s responsibility to be able to understand the differences and be able to read others and know how to talk to a group of people and get them to truly buy into their philosophy and their program’s ways.
While playing, I was blessed to have amazing graduate assistants that worked with our team as well. They taught me and actually made things easier at times. It was really easy being able to communicate with our particular graduate assistants because a lot of us players actually had the opportunity to play with them as well. This made it easy for us to ask them for help and they also understood some of the issues and things that we were facing. I hope that with me being a graduate assistant now, that I am the positive influence like our graduate assistants were to us when we were playing. I think this is very important that graduate assistants are positive and always looking to help, simply because they have been in the same situations and can bring more insight to certain situations.
Learning all of these things are really important, and while being a graduate assistant, you get to learn all of these valuable things without having all of the hardships and responsibilities that a full-time coach has. As a graduate assistant, you will make mistakes and those are expected. It is up to you to learn from them and develop yourself as the professional you want to be.
“Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.” -Candace Parker
1Dunn, T. P., & Dunn, S. (1992). The graduate assistant coach: A preliminary profile of an endangered species. Physical Educator, 49(4). Retrieved December 2, 2017, from https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.zeus.tarleton.edu/eds/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=1543de35-9007-4d19-81f6-6e69c729606d%40sessionmgr103&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=9609192513&db=s3h.
2Kirby, J. L., Mazerolle, S. M., & Walker, S. E. (2016). Support Received During the Transition to Practice for the Secondary School Graduate-Assistant Athletic Trainer. Journal of Athletic Training, 51(10), 780-788. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-51.12.10
