1. krossover.com http://www.krossover.com/blog/2014/10/coaches-korner-social-media-your-team/
Coaches Korner – Social Media & Your Team
The Do’s And Don’ts
Jay Hollister – Penn Yann HS (NY)
When it comes to social media, I feel like I am so far out of touch. The student-athletes are just so much more
technologically advanced than me. I am still getting used to Facebook and Twitter, whereas they have already moved
onto Snapchat and Instagram.
We have been lucky so far with social media. We have not had any major issues with it. With that being said, what
are our do’s and don’ts of social media? I apply Coach K’s philosophy. Thus, I don’t give them a whole bunch of rules.
I just tell them not to put anything on there that would be detrimental to the team, because anything that is detrimental
to the team will almost always be detrimental to them.
Each year, we sit down as a team and I explain to them that their social media sites are an open book. People of all
sorts are always checking up on them. It may be a high school coach, a parent, a prospective college coach, a
prospective college admissions office, or an employer. They need to understand that anyone and everyone could be
checking up on them, and so they need to think twice before hitting send.
We have had a social media success story, I think. Last year we had a game that was extremely important for our
sectional tournament seeding rank. We were playing a league game in which both teams were equally matched. I
needed something to get my team motivated just a bit more, so I made up a tweet that was supposedly sent on
behalf of a fan of the opposing team. Our school is very rural with a lot of farmland surrounding us, so the tweet said,
“the farm boys are no match for us.” Needless to say, my team went absolutely bonkers and was going to make sure
the farm boys took it to them. We ended up winning by a point. I think that made up tweet, ethical or not, was the little

2. bit of extra motivation that was needed to get the win.
Whit Keadle – George Washington HS (WV)
We monitor our student athletes’ social media pretty tightly. As an assistant coach, I do most of that. I’m up front with
our student athletes about what should or shouldn’t go on there. We have a police officer come and talk to them
about how their accounts will never go away. If there is a problem with one of them, I usually go to them first and talk
to them. I try not to involve the head coach unless it becomes necessary to do so. It has happened before. They have
to understand that playing basketball is a privilege and not a right. They can’t do whatever they want and we have
certain expectations. Our general rules are as follows – Do not post anything that embarrasses the program and do
not talk negatively about our school, a teammate, or an opponent.
Heather Hunsucker – Springdale High School (AR)
When it comes to social media, things have changed drastically in the past two to three years for me as a coach. This
wasn’t even a concern when I first began coaching, then it was only Facebook, and now it has grown to Instagram,
Snapchat, Twitter, and countless other sites.
On the very first day of school, we discuss social media as a team. I share my rules with them and then get their
ideas of proper conduct.
Our team prohibits the use of profanity on any sort of social media – either by physically typing it in, or by retweeting
something with curse words in it. There should be absolutely no pictures or references to drugs and alcohol – so no
pictures of a player holding a red cup at a party. We don’t allow references to other teams or players in any way. This
was the players’ idea, since they don’t want to give the other team any “bulletin board” material or start any wars over
the internet.
We encourage praising our team or teammates, being positive about our school and team, posting motivational
things to other teams at our school, and sharing photos of ourselves playing the game.
I manage the players on social media by using my own account to follow each of them and check on them regularly.
Also, I have my assistants do the same. Our players came up with consequences for violating any of our rules. First
time, they get a warning. Second time, they get a discipline contract from me and three laps around the gym. Third
time, they are suspended for three games. Fourth time, they are dismissed from the team.
Jarrett Hatcher – Robert E. Lee HS (VA)
Our team does not have an official social media account, but it is inevitable that nearly all of my athletes have some
form of personal account. I ask my team to keep their tweets and posts very neutral. Do not say bad things about the
officials, the other team, our team, and, most importantly, about me or my coaching staff.
We have digital media responsibilities within our division and I apply that to my kids in the classroom and off-campus.
I ask that all of their social media postings be positive and that we do not let our frustrations with each other seep into
social media.
Creating A Brand For Your Team
Ryan Moore – Occidental College (CA)
@RyanJMoore4
Social media can be a daunting proposition in this day and age. We believe that you are foolish if you try to ignore it

3. or pretend that it can’t help you. Over the past few years, we have slowly integrated ourselves into the social media
world.
We began with a Facebook page a few summers ago. While the younger crowd is not as active on Facebook as they
once were, it has still been a useful tool. We have had a great time posting pictures of former players and many
former coaches as well. We post a picture of a former player every Thursday, trying to capitalize on the “throwback
Thursday” craze. It has been great to see the responses that come rolling in as everyone sees it and shares it. When
we started the page, we let each player take control of it for three days to see who could generate the most likes. It
got us up to over 1,000 likes pretty quickly. We are considering doing this with our new players every year now.
We then ventured into Twitter. Although NCAA DIII rules prohibit us from following recruits, it does not prohibit them
from following us. We have found this to be the most successful method of reaching recruits with information about
our program. We have found that our recruits love when we post videos and pictures of our program.
We do talk to our players about being responsible on social media and ask that they represent the program at all
times. We have had a few very minor instances of things that weren’t thought through before they were sent, but
nothing major. Our standard line for our guys is, “If your mom were on Twitter, would you have said that?” That takes
care of most problems like swearing, party pictures, and inappropriate jokes or comments.
The most common challenge we get from players is, “Well if I am just retweeting it why does it matter?” They know
the answer and we discuss it calmly, until they admit that they were just trying to find a loophole. Our problems with
social media are very minor. If we have one issue per year, that is a lot. We are lucky to coach great kids who get it.
Communicating with Your Fanbase and Community
James Puliatte – Fort Lee HS (NJ)
@iCoachP53
I really don’t have anything set up for controlling or monitoring athletes on social media. In the past, our football team
was not allowed to post anything during the season. But I constantly use social media to build excitement for our
whole athletic program. We have a school website, an athletic website, and some teams have their own sites. But I
looked at the traffic and realized that these sites were barely getting any visitors. It was mostly just me visiting the
pages!
I learned while I was still in the classroom that students were more inclined to notice a class announcement via
Twitter than if I posted it to the website or emailed them. So I decided to take this route with athletics as well; to
publicize events, to give recognition to players, etc.
The tricky part with Twitter is the timing. I have found web-based apps like “Twuffer” that will push out tweets on a
scheduled basis, so I usually would tweet during lunch periods, during homeroom, or around 8pm-9pm.
Then Instagram took publicizing events and pumping up school spirit to a whole new level. I ask coaches to text me
their scores, any pictures from events, special announcements, and info about big games. I have built a little library of
pictures I can use as well.
I usually start the week on Instagram with a picture of the week’s schedule. Then I make other posts throughout the
week when an athlete or team achieves a milestone or notable accomplishment. I have these pictures automatically
pushed out to Twitter and Tumblr as well.
Every year, we have a different motto that I use as a hashtag. This year it’s #WhyNotUs – so I end every athletic
tweet with #WhyNotUs.

4. I use a cool service called “Group Tweet” and I have it set up so that whenever any of the athletic Twitter handles end
a post with #WhyNotUs, it automatically gets retweeted by the other athletic Twitter accounts that I manage:
@FLHSathletics
@FLFanatics
@FLHSvolleyball
@FLHSBBALL
Kids love seeing their pictures go up! Or should I say they “Like” it!
How Social Media Affects the Future
Paul Lichtenheld – Crystal Lake Central HS (IL)
@CoachLichty1
We have a Powerpoint that we present to our entire program at the beginning of each year, discussing how to handle
the media and how to properly use social media. What we stress above all is that proper usage of social media is so
much bigger than our basketball team or their season. We certainly warn them about providing bulletin board
material for other teams, but I think that is secondary to their future college and career plans. We show them
statistics, articles, and information from colleges and employers who monitor social media. I also show them Tweets
from college coaches who have stopped recruiting athletes based on their social media usage, as well as coaches
who themselves have been reprimanded, and even fired, for their own use.
We give them all the common things to remember when posting – think before you post, err on the side of caution, be
respectful, watch out when retweeting, sharing, and “liking”, watch out what pictures are posted, avoid game-related
tweets or posts on game day, and even check spelling, grammar and word usage. However, in the end, we stress that
if you wouldn’t say it to your parents or grandparents, don’t post it. Unfortunately, even that doesn’t always work, as
we’ve found parents who use social media inappropriately.
Horror Stories
“We had once incident where players retweeted something that referred to our program in a derogatory manner. The
players who did it were starters, and we elected to have them start the next game on the bench. I felt that the lesson
hit home when we lost the game by one point in overtime.”
—Paul Lichtenheld
“In my first year at this school, I had a player make a post about alcoholic gummy bears. It turns out that she brought
them to school and shared them with several members of our team. That player got suspended from school and for
several games.”
—Heather Hunsucker
“I had a player that was an all-region athlete and a pretty good scorer. We were playing a rival school with a kid that
went on to play at the Division I level. It was a big game and the DI kid played amazing, torching us for nearly 40
points. My kid played horribly. I learned later that my player had been on Twitter before the game antagonizing the
other team’s great player and trash talking all over social media. Because of that embarrassing incident, I have my
assistant coaches monitor all of our players’ social media accounts so that we can be aware of what they are doing.”
—Jarrett Hatcher
Share your social media do’s and don’ts, tips, and horror stories with us @krossovr.
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