Watch the 60-second version above — or read the full breakdown below.
You didn’t sign up to spend the week before your first practice putting out fires. But every season, the same small stuff slips through the cracks — and it’s never the X’s and O’s. It’s the boring, easy-to-forget details that quietly turn Week 1 into a scramble.
After years on the sideline as a volunteer and a coordinator, I can tell you the coaches who have a smooth opening week aren’t smarter or more experienced. They just don’t rely on memory. Here are the five things volunteer coaches forget most before Week 1 — and exactly how to handle each one before it becomes a problem.
1. Registering your coaches — not just your players
Everybody remembers to register the players. What slips through is registering the coaches. Most leagues require every coach — head and assistants — to register, pass a background check, and sometimes complete a concussion or safety certification before they’re allowed on the field.
Here’s how it bites you: if your assistant isn’t cleared by Week 1, he legally can’t coach, and you’re suddenly running practice alone. Don’t assume your assistants handled it on their own. Pull your league’s coach requirements today, send every assistant the exact link and the deadline, and confirm each one is actually cleared — not “working on it.” Background checks can take a week or more to process, so this is a today problem, not a night-before one.
2. A real water-break plan
“We’ll take water when they look tired” is not a plan. In August heat, by the time a nine-year-old looks tired, he’s already overheating.
Script your water breaks into your practice plan the same way you script drills — every 15 to 20 minutes, on the clock, whether the kids ask or not. Tell parents to send a full, labeled bottle every single day, keep a few spares in your bag for the kid who forgets, and know where the nearest water source is before you need it. Heat illness is the one Week 1 problem that’s genuinely dangerous, and it’s almost completely preventable with a plan on paper.
3. A backup whistle
Small thing, big headache. Your whistle will break, disappear, or the little pea inside will stick — and it’ll happen at the worst possible moment, with fifteen kids spread across a field who can’t hear a word you’re saying.
Throw a second whistle in your bag. While you’re at it, put a spare on an assistant so practice never grinds to a halt because one whistle failed. It’s a two-dollar fix for a problem that quietly derails a practice.
4. Ice and a first-aid kit
Somebody is going to roll an ankle, take an elbow, or scrape a knee in the first week — that’s just youth sports. If your plan is “hope a parent has a Band-Aid,” you’re not ready.
Build a simple kit and keep it in your practice bag from day one: instant cold packs, athletic tape, Band-Aids, gauze, gloves, and the emergency info or action plans for any kids with known conditions like asthma or allergies. Make sure at least one other coach knows where it is. You don’t need to be an athletic trainer — you just need to not be empty-handed when it happens.
5. A plan for the assistant who can’t get there on time
This is the one that gets everybody. You’ve got assistants lined up — but at least one of them can’t get off work in time for a 5:30 practice. Which means for the first fifteen minutes, it’s you, alone, with a dozen kids and a parking lot full of parents watching.
Have a self-starting routine ready to go. A dynamic warm-up and one simple, safe drill the kids can run on their own — or that an early-arriving parent can supervise — while you get everything set up. Post it, teach it in Week 1, and those first fifteen minutes stop being chaos and start being productive, even when you’re short-handed.
The real fix: stop running on memory
None of these are complicated. They’re just easy to forget when you’re a volunteer juggling a full-time job, a family, and a roster of kids who are counting on you. The fix isn’t working harder or caring more — it’s having a system, so you’re not trying to remember all of this the night before.
That’s exactly why I built the free Preseason Checklist. Every one of these five is on it, along with everything else that has to happen before Week 1 — laid out in the order the season actually comes at you. It’s a printable PDF and a live Google Sheet you can check off right from your phone.
Grab the free Preseason Checklist →
Start your season organized. Show up. Run practice. Win.