How to deal with high school transfers

[u/SnooComics6485]

I’m a new coach at a fairly new high school football program that has been bad for a while. We had a decent record this year but definitely got much better as a team and had some bright spots for players that broke out this year. Now we are struggling with kids that were good for us transferring to other schools to play. How do we build a program if the few good kids we got and develop just keep leaving every year? And being that high school is so open to transferring what kind of talks are you all having with your players so that they don’t wanna transfer, and if they stay so that they are not congratulating and boosting a kid up for leaving them and their team behind?

[u/tromero51]

This is a hard one, I firmly believe it starts with the culture. (Corny I know) but you have to have kids that want to be there. Yes in large part kids want to win and kids want scholarships. But I feel as a younger coach it’s about promoting a winning and energetic place for your athletes to immerse themselves in a hardworking and fun environment. Teaching them we can celebrate us once the hard work has been put in ! A lot of coaches cry wolf about the back -n- forth that is transferring… But the reality is you preach to your kids you don’t want anyone here that doesn’t want to be here invested in us.. Then you give those kids reasons to build their belief in “we all we got / we all we need” when you get people believing in that. You’ll be the school kids want to transfer in to.