Mandy Green
COACH • AUTHOR • SPEAKER • TRAINER • CONSULTANT
President Busy Coach
National Recruiting Coordinator, Tudor Collegiate Strategies
"As a coach, I have always been goal-driven and focused. I would say that my intensity drives my husband crazy! In fact, we are a family of coaches and have two adorable kids, Jack (14) and Ashleigh (11), and we have a 8 year old Chocolate Lab and a 3 year old German Shephard."
I’ve been a college soccer coach since 1999, and when I first started out as an assistant in my 20s, I absolutely loved recruiting. I could spend 10 hours a day at tournaments watching games, talking to players, writing to them, getting them on campus, and eventually securing their commitment. At that stage, I had the luxury of devoting over 40 hours a week to recruiting.
But as my career progressed, new responsibilities came. I became a head coach, got married, and started a family. Even with the added pressures of life and work, I was determined to keep dedicating the same time to recruiting because I knew it was vital to the success of my program. But trying to balance it all eventually led to frustration and burnout. I felt overwhelmed, and for the first time in my career, I wasn’t sure I could continue at this pace.
I refuse to let my kids or my family be the reason why I can't achieve excellence as a coach; rather they are the reason why I must. My need to manage my time between family and work, and become more efficient doing it, forced me to start looking at all that has been written about time, energy, and email management.
In my search for answers, I attended one of Dan Tudor’s “Building a Winning Recruiting Message” workshops. It was a game-changer. Dan’s advice on creating a compelling recruiting message and better communication strategies opened my eyes to new possibilities. I was inspired to implement everything I learned, but quickly found myself drowning in all the new ideas and tasks I was trying to execute. I needed a system to manage it all.
That’s when I decided to take a step back and evaluate how I was spending my time. I broke down every activity—from writing emails to organizing on-campus visits—and identified where I was being inefficient. This was a breakthrough moment for me. By prioritizing the most important tasks and managing my time more effectively, I suddenly had room to breathe. I could still recruit successfully, prepare for training, and even get home earlier to be with my family, all without feeling overwhelmed.
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As I streamlined my recruiting process, I realized something crucial—there were no time management tools designed specifically for college coaches. Despite trying various planners and techniques, none of them worked for the unique demands of coaching, recruiting, and running a program. So, I decided to create my own system.
Over the years, I've developed a college coach specific time management system that integrats all the critical aspects of being a college coach: administrative work, recruiting plans, practice schedules, email, managing staff, to-do lists, phone calls, meetings, and more.Â
I wanted to help other coaches avoid the stress and burnout that I had experienced and give them the tools to balance their professional and personal lives more effectively.
"Structure your day based on the goals and vision you have for your program so you are taking daily action to make your goals a reality"
It is very easy to feel busy; and when we feel busy, we feel productive. That actually may not be the case and that could be dangerous thinking. At times when we feel the busiest, we are sometimes actually less productive.
If you are not effectively and continuously measuring your productivity or structuring your time, you could be wasting a lot of time and energy doing things that will not lead you toward the results that you want for your program. I want you to think bigger than just managing fires in the office. Fires will happen no matter what. I want you to structure your day based on the goals and vision you have for your program so you are taking daily action to make your goals a reality.
Having a predetermined protocol for categories that fires normally fall into is a critical first step. How do you handle the 100's of emails that end up in your inbox everyday? How do you keep track of and consistently communicate with all of your top recruits? How do you manage interruptions? How do you identify and eliminate what is not working and identify and improve what is?
I have experienced all of these things and more. My job was a nightmare my first few years here at South Dakota. I have survived building a program with limited staff to assist me, low budgets, bad facilities, and no winning traditions. I rebuilt recruiting databases that had been wiped clean and managed abysmal team logistics. I had to recruit 21 new freshman for my 2nd season because 15 of the 20 I inherited my first year were extremely hard because we were going through the painful process of rebuilding a program that was in pretty poor shape. And I needed to get home to my new baby and husband. This was not a sustainable work schedule.
