Organizational Structure in a High School Track Team

My experience with organizations manifests itself mostly as extracurricular activities in high school. Primarily, my school's track & field team, which I had been a member of for three straight years, serves as the bulk of that experience. Compared to other activities around the school, we were one of the largest, generally sporting between 75 to 100 registered members and three or four coaches. The team itself, however, was composed of three divisions, generally: short distance sprinters, medium/long distance endurance runners, and strong armed fielders (shotput and discus), each managed by separate coaches during practice and meets. A fourth division, comprised of members from some or all of the previous divisions, would assemble, at the discretion of the coaches, to work on field events such as the high jump, long jump, and triple jump, or to practice hurdle sprints. Sometimes, some boys would find an affinity for two divisions and undertake a hectic schedule moving between the two, attempting to balance important practices and recovery days that may or may not be concurrent between both divisions, and sometimes, members would make full transitions to a different division, even after two years with another. However, for most of the team, members only mingled, on a daily basis, with 20-25 other boys from his single division, and said division's coach.

Naturally, authority within the organization rest with the coaches. At our school, the distance coach, who also happened to coach hurdles, was the team's head coach. However, the boys answered primarily to their division's specific coach, and would only need to see the head coach in regards to event placement for meets or long term issues regarding attendance, grade eligibility, or deficiencies regarding motivation and effort in practice.

Further moving down the hierarchy, each division's coaches delegated leadership to select upperclassmen; depending on the batch of boys, it was often two boys who led the rest, sometimes four or five. These select leaders were usually identified by the coach's judgement on their capacity to lead, by spirit or by example, and generally bridged by that member's initiative, as leadership was extended as optional hours after practice to learn the training that is to be led by these upperclassmen and introduced to the rest of the team at a later time. When the divisions came together during practice or meets, it was the student leaders' responsibility to lead stretches, call for warm-up laps, and organize team chants for the 4x400m relay.

Unfortunately, even within the small branches of the boys, incentives often clashed. The objectives of the leaders often coincided with that of the coaches, and that is to generate winning performances at meets through rigorous training of the entire team. Although the coaches are still very active and present during practices, taking times, signalling when to move to the next exercise, offering criticism, and cracking down on shirkers, a noticeable amount of responsibility is transferred upon the leaders, who are expected to identify the appropriate times to be serious and to be lazy, generally trying to keep the other boys in line before the coach points it out. A very powerful source of motivation, as upperclassmen, stems from the "ticking hourglass" that signals the leaders' graduation from both the school and the team. A saying that our head coach has always passed around was "to leave everything on the track," meaning to walk away from high school track & field without having to ever regret the time and sweat that was or wasn't invested. With each passing year, this sentiment becomes ever more important to the upperclassmen, who wish to see their final year go out in a series of wins and record setting. The abrupt grounding of reality to upperclassmen directly clashes with the freshmen and sophomores, many of whom carry lofty ambitions of making it big on the track or in another sport, banking on some sort of "untapped potential," to only realize that the time for their potential to blossom had been squandered away once they themselves attain the leadership position in the following years.

It should be noted that the transaction costs of having to repeatedly monitor and enforce attendance and honest commitment to practice could be observed in many organizations around the school. I dare say that I am so confident as to say if it were not for these costs of time, we had the capabilities of entering more than a few runners or a handful of clubs to state level competitions, and winning.