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Today's coaches still work year-round, but with more and more young athletes choosing to focus on one sport all year long, many coaches are following suit.
"If we have a head coach and we can get them to assist somewhere else, that's about all we can get out of most coaches," said Adams, now Bluffton High School's athletics director. "And a lot of them just do one sport."
When they do help coach in another season, it's often in the same discipline -- Bluffton's Dana House coaches cross country and track, as does Hilton Head Island High School's Bill Wrightson, and many of the area's golf and tennis coaches lead girls teams in the fall and boys in the winter.
In all, only eight of the 57 varsity head coaches at high schools in southern Beaufort County also served as coaches in another sport outside their primary coaching discipline this school year. Only one of those -- Hilton Head Preparatory School's departing volleyball and boys soccer coach, Rodney Fisher -- served as a head coach in two varsity sports.
None of the schools' varsity head coaches in football or basketball -- boys or girls -- coached another sport in their offseason.
Tommy Lewis, Hilton Head Christian Academy's athletics director and head football coach, views the trend toward year-round coaching as an extension of the move toward early specialization of athletes.
"If more kids are just focusing on your sport, then you have to be available in those offseason time frames," Lewis said. "A lot of coaches probably feel the necessity to focus on one sport."
The exponential rise of club and travel teams means more high school coaches are involved with their primary sport during what used to be their offseason, and they're often coaching the same core of players year-round.
Bluffton High School coach Al Stern and Hilton Head Island High School coach Chris Gray have enjoyed the benefits of that arrangement through the Lowcountry Volleyball Club, which they started in 1996, when Stern was an assistant coach under Gray. Now their rival high school teams consistently contend for state titles -- one or the other has reached at least the Class 3-A Lower State title match the past three years, and Bluffton won the state title last fall. Stern says the opportunity for his players to play club ball for six to eight months during the high school offseason is a big part of the Bobcats' success.
"You're able to do so much more," Stern said. "If you can coach a girl for a year versus three months ... you're way ahead of the curve."
Even in sports in which club and travel teams are not as prevalent, such as football, the year-round training and coaching craze is gaining traction. When Adams was interviewing candidates for Bluffton High School's head football coaching opening last year, many of the candidates asked him if the school offered a special physical education class for athletes.
The candidates told Adams most schools were offering such a class, usually offered in the last class period of the day, taught by the football coach and populated mostly by football players -- more or less, a football class that serves as a weightlifting class during the offseason and a jump-start on practice during the season.
At the time, Bluffton didn't offer such a class. But it does now.
"If you can do all your weight training and all your film, and some coaches even put in a little of the kicking game," Adams said, "just think about how much of a head start you have."
The trend toward year-round coaching has trickled down to youth sports, too, according to John Miller, director of Beaufort County Parks and Leisure Services. Miller said it used to be common for one person to coach a different sport in each season, but because many of the PALS coaches are parents, as more and more of their children are focusing on one sport, the coaches are following suit.
As a result, many parents and coaches believe children today develop more refined skills and have a better understanding of their chosen sports at an earlier age than ever before. In the case of all-star and select teams, they might be right, says Marty Ewing, a professor at Michigan State University and researcher at the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports. But Ewing says that coaching expertise isn't necessarily filtering down to the majority of young athletes.
"I would say certainly the bulk of kids in a community are not being exposed to that," Ewing said. "We still have the volunteer parent who is coaching the bulk of the kids in a community, and I would strongly argue that more coaches education is needed for the parents, the volunteers, who are doing this to help the kids have that good experience but may not be helping the kids develop the skills that they could if they had more understanding of both the techniques as well as what is required mechanically to do the skill."
Ewing fears the trend toward specialization is creating an even greater divide between elite athletes and ordinary athletes, and at a younger age than ever.
"That's the part that we have to keep real clear," she said. "Yes, we've got more specialty coaches, but they're still serving a few, not the majority."
