Hiring a coach

One of the big commitments that your team can make is who is going to coach your team.  There are many factors that go into hiring a coach including:

• Finding a qualified coach.
• Figuring out how workouts are delivered to the team
• How to pay your coach.
• How do you want your workouts structured.
• What do you expect from your coach.

Finding a qualified coach.  Finding a qualified coach in your area may be a difficult task but it is doable if you know where to look. First, try looking on the USAT website, there is a list of USAT certified coaches by location.  Second, go to cycling, running, or triathlon stores in your area and ask around about coaches in your area. Third go to races and talk to the fast people about who their coach is and ask them if they know anyone who might be a candidate to write the workouts for your team.
Figuring out how workouts are delivered to the team.  Now that you have a list of candidate coaches, you need to make sure you know how you want the workouts that your new coach writes delivered to the team.  One of the best ways to build value in your team and promote team unity is to post your workouts on a calendar that only dues paying members can access with meeting times, locations and the session's workout plan.  The only problem with that, is that it can be a lot of work updating the calendar, so you will need to decide who is going to post these calendar entries.  The MCTC network is working on a way that coaches can write workouts in a spreadsheet, and upload the information into the calendar automatically, but right now each workout is added individually.
How is your team going to pay your coach.  Most good coaches know that a college team has a tight budget, especially new small teams, and that typical payment structures don't make sense.  One way to structure how you pay your coach is to base it on your membership.  If you base your coach's payment on membership you can give your coach incentive to help you build your team and help your coach think about future money with increased membership and new personal clients when current members graduate and are no longer eligible to be members of the team but still want to do triathlon.  A good model is $10 per dues paying member per semester.  If you have 100 dues paying members, that monthly number can jump to $1000.
How do you want your workouts structured.  You are a collegiate team, so you probably want to work out together, and individualized training plans are probably out.  Most clubs work with a workout plan focused on three core groups, beginner, intermediate, and advanced which generally translates into your coach writing three generalized plans that all focus on the same couple of races.  Those races are usually regionals, and nationals.  You might want to set up color groups for each core group with an example like blue=beginner white=intermediate and red=advanced or whatever your school colors are.
What do you expect from your coach.  Since you are a team, and individual attention from your coach is not really doable especially since you only pay your coach $10 a member, it is probably best to ask your coach questions at meetings, or on your forum where he/she can give advice to everyone all at once.  Also expecting your coach to be at all of your practices is unreasonable but you can ask your coach to be at technique specific practices like track, or at time trials that measure improvement.  Most of the time a designated club member can look at the workouts on the calendar before practice and then tell everyone what to do once at the practice.  One thing that is very important is that you pay your coach on time, and that your coach delivers your team's workouts on time.  There is nothing more devastating to a team than the workouts not being delivered on time.
 
I am sure that there is more good advice, so anyone is welcome to post comments.