Former GNTC coaches team up to form athletic consulting firm
The latest study by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes shows that the average coach stays in coaching for just seven years.
And it’s that alarming stat that caught the attention of David Stephenson.
“As someone who has now been in (coaching) for over 35 years, I heard this and asked ‘why is that?’,” Stephenson explained. “So I started going back and trying to jot things down about why these people would want to bail.”
It was that initial brainstorming session, along with past conversations Stephenson had with his good friend, Karen Stoker, that led the two former Georgia Northwestern Technical College coaches to join forces and form their own company, Total Athletic Consultants.
“I thought, who else do I know that has this much experience in this type of career and who has talked with me about this more than Karen?” he continued. “So one day I called her and asked her to lunch because I wanted to talk to her about it. She didn’t know this (at the time), but if she had said ‘no, this doesn’t sound like a good idea and I don’t want to partner up with you,’ I wasn’t going to do it by myself.
“Between the two of us, we’ve got almost 70 years of experience and not just X’s and O’s, but administrativewise, policy-wise, development-wise...we want to help people and pass on what will help them.”
According to its mission statement, Total Athletic Consultants “will help schools improve all aspects of their athletic departments, thereby, making a better professional and proficient environment for staff, student-athletes and spectators.”
Stoker said their services wouldn’t be limited to just high schools or middle schools, but city and county recreational departments, small colleges or even individuals.
“We hope that we can mentor athletic departments and the coaches that make up those athletic departments, so that they will stay in longer than seven years and won’t get frustrated and throw their hands up,” she said. “We want them to know that there are some people out here that know what they’re going through and can help them get through the tough times. We also want to celebrate their successes with them.
“We’re going to learn a lot as we go through and meet with them as well. I may not ever coach again, but it’s nice to know I can learn something from somebody else and pass it along.”
Among the services TAC will offer will include development of athletic departments’ philosophy, vision and mission statements, development of team rules and regulations and athletic handbooks, alignment of the handbooks to states’ athletic governing bodies (GHSA, TSSAA, AHSAA, Christian Athletic Associations, etc.), and other topics like coaching do’s and don’ts, emergency plans, facility evaluations, referee assignments and scheduling, tournament design, community support and fundraising ideas.
“Once we got started, we started brainstorming about what all could we help people with,” Stephenson added. “Even though we don’t know a lot about things like field maintenance or marketing and promotions, we know people that do and we can refer those people to them. We know a little bit about all of this, but as far as specialists go, we can refer people to other people.”
Referred services by TAC will also include athletic trainers, team chaplains, team clinics, and sports psychological counseling, among other things.
“Even things like dealing with COVID-19,” Stoker added. “We’ve gathered some information that we can use to help some folks develop some plans. You get a young athletic director, sitting down somewhere in their first year or two in the position, and they really don’t know what to do. We’re hoping that we can come in and do workshops and clinics for them and their coaches, or know people that can put clinics together for certain sports.”
Referral and consultation fees, along with overall evaluation, workshop and clinic fees, will be posted on the company’s website (TotalAthleticconsultants.com). Stephenson and Stoker can be reached by email (dstephensontac@gmail.com, kstokertac@gmail.com). They can also be reached by phone at 423-987-9793 (Stephenson) or 423-8831668 (Stoker).
“Mainly, at the end of the day, we just want to help people,” Stephenson said.
“We want people to learn from our mistakes because we have made mistakes that they could potentially be making,” Stoker added. “The other thing is making sure we communicate to them best practices of coaching, especially people who didn’t grow up in a sports family like I did. It’s not just X’s and O’s, but all the other stuff. The X’s and O’s are really the easy stuff.”