Private wealth managers.
Personal trainers.
Sales and marketing employees.
The makeup of the school football team’s coaching staff has it all.
For head football coach and history instructor Harry Flaherty, the search for great assistant coaches is a top priority. St. Mark’s football team currently has six assistant coaches that help train and develop players into both great football players and young men of character.
“We want coaches that take this seriously and are competitive,” Flaherty said. “But at the same time understand that we’re primarily trying to use football as a developmental tool and try to build character through the sport and a sense of team.”
Flaherty, a former Princeton football player, admits that there are challenges in finding and recruiting coaches to help St. Marks, but also many benefits of coaching at a private school.
“You don’t have this natural pipeline of teacher-coaches that just work within the system,” Flaherty said. “The positive, though, is that you are free to go out and look for the best people in society, working nine-to-five jobs that have a great background in football.”
Flaherty balances finding coaches with the right skills and knowledge that also will fit best within the program.
“It’s more important to find the right fit,” Flaherty said. “Somebody that can appreciate St. Marks and be excited about coaching a bunch of well-rounded student-athletes that care about football, but are also great in the classroom.”
Flaherty has used multiple avenues to find coaches. He has used family members, teammates, St. Mark’s alumni, and other connections to find coaches for his staff.
“For example, our quarterbacks’ coach Dalyn Love,” Flaherty said. “He played at Dartmouth, and through the connections that I’ve built with some of the Dartmouth coaching staff, I asked if they had any former players living in the Dallas area that might be a good fit to coach. They said that ‘actually, our all-time leading passer lives there and would be a great fit’.”
Once Flaherty identifies coaches he wants in the program, he also has to sell coaches on why they should choose St. Mark’s over other opportunities.
“Just because they are interested doesn’t mean they are going to sign on,” Flaherty said. “Selling them on, these are what our kids are like. These are our facilities. This is our history here. These are the other coaches we have on staff… what makes St. Mark’s special.”