Good candidates for student staff can come from everywhere. Some are students who didn’t make the roster that want to contribute and have a high-level knowledge of the game and its meta, some are non-competitors looking to get involved, and others are people coming from different kinds of competition looking to lead or manage in a way that best uses their skills.
We’ll go over some basic requirements/characteristics you should look for in your student staff members. If someone doesn’t have some of these skills, it doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t excel at their position. A large component of esports teams is growth from players and staff.
While the student staff aren’t the main leaders of the team, leadership skills are important for student staff members. These skills include, but are not limited to:
Being composed and stable when talking to your teammates
Listening to people and not talking over them
Acting professionally by respecting others and team rules
Is hard-working and on-time
Communicates well
Student staff members don’t need to be experts at the game. They should still at least understand the game, particularly if they’re in a gameplay-focused role (more on that in a little bit). The basic requirements for Game Knowledge are:
Plays (or has played) the game or has watched it enough to get a fundamental understanding of the game
Knows how to research and find resources and relevant information
Keeps up to date with patch notes and trends in the game
There are plenty of students who are passionate about games. There are plenty of potential coaches who could excel as leaders. For an esports team, you want a coach that is both passionate and professional. Some things to look out for are:
Students who are willing to put in extra hours without sacrificing their academic standing
Students who are enthusiastic about being a part of the team and make other players and staff enthusiastic in turn
Students who look for ways to contribute to the team in other ways not listed here!
A lot of what student staff members do will vary from student to student. It’s always best to make sure you and your teammates are in a position to succeed, so finding the correct role for everyone is critical. A good assistant coach is a fundamental part of every team. The head coach is the main authority figure, so assistant coaches should keep in mind that they are basically on par with the players, since they both answer to the head coach. When an assistant coach is dedicated, respectful, and having fun, they become a staple of any kind of esports team. We can divide some of the coaching staff roles into two categories: Performance Coaches and Management Coaches.
Performance Coaches are coaches who primarily help players develop their in-game performance. The primary ways performance coaches do that are by helping players grow and helping them develop healthy habits. For a performance coach, the goal of the year is to have all of your players show marked improvement throughout the course of you working with them.
The official titles of assistant performance coaches can vary depending on the game and the way your team is set up. Here are a few of the responsibilities expected of a performance coach:
Helping plan the weekly goals with coaches and players
Working with the team to develop and fine-tune strategy
Getting your players focused in group conversations
Facilitating VOD reviews with the team
The way a performance coach differs from an analyst is that while the analyst renders judgments, the coach tries to turn those judgments into meaningful improvement. Performance coaches work with other members of the staff to ensure the continuing growth of players. This means that performance coaches will work with analysts to identify weak areas in a players’ game and work with that player to plan out a solution.
As such, game knowledge is crucial for performance coaches to have. After all, it’s hard to help someone else perform if you have no idea what they’re performing in. That doesn’t mean that performance coaches need to necessarily be experts, but they have to have expert level game knowledge through personal experience or research.
The coaching roles in this category have less to do with the game being played and more about the way the team works. At a basic level, the role of a management coach is to help the Head Coach run the team. This can range from day-to-day operation to overall big picture ideas, with specific examples of management coach responsibilities including:
Leading warmups and running practices and scrimmages
Helping the head coach with administrative tasks
Finding and facilitating weekly scrimmages with other schools
Bridging the gap between players and head coach in communications
Assistant Management Coaches and Student Managers don’t need game knowledge to perform their roles, though having game knowledge can never hurt. Instead, the management coaches have a crucial responsibility: making sure the team runs as well as possible.
This means that management coaches are responsible for executing the day-to-day and overall plans developed by the head coach and other coaching staff members. These student coaches can find aspects of the daily grind that they can improve or optimize and make that their role in addition to other tasks given to them by the head coach.
The most important tool at a management coach’s disposal is their ability to communicate. A good manager or assistant coach can keep things running smoothly and help their fellow students with conflict resolution through rational responses. Management coaches should make sure they have a good temperament and won’t lose their cool, since their ability to stay calm while the rest of the team might appear frantic can act as an anchor for the rest of the team. Make sure your players and other peers are healthy, happy, and heard, and you’ll have done an excellent job as a management coach.