“Wins and Losses Are Secondary”: Goals Developed by High School Athletic Directors to Evaluate Coaching Success

High school head coaches play an important role in the achievement of wide-reaching benefits afforded student-athletes through their athletic participation. Given this impact, athletic directors must establish expectations that reflect successful coaching efforts by those tasked with leading athletic programs. Limited research has considered the use of performance appraisals within high school athletics as a way of evaluating head coaches, and a gap exists related to an in-depth examination of the criteria utilized to guide this process and detail how athletic directors perceive coaching success in this role. Therefore, the purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze the goals relied upon by athletic directors to evaluate head coaches during the performance appraisal process. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants representing athletic directors across school classification (i.e., 1A, 2A, 3A, and 4A) and school type (i.e., public and private), with a thematic analysis yielding six main themes (i.e., coaching leadership behaviors, in-sport priorities, student-athlete life skill development, school day behaviors of student-athletes, promoting the athletic department, and investing in the feeder system) that detail the diverse areas considered by athletic directors during coaching evaluations. From a theoretical perspective, this work advances understanding of the performance appraisal process and goal setting theory within high school athletics, while practitioners can utilize findings to reflect on their personal expectations of coaching success through the specific goals implemented for evaluating performance.