8 Ways to Choose Team Captains

Every team is different. The dynamics can change from year to year. Even if you have the same athletes, they have possibly grown and are at a different place. As a coach, you are always adjusting and adapting. The way you approach selecting team captains may also vary from year to year depending on your situation. 

Here are eight ways you can choose your team captains …

1. Team vote
2. Coaches pick
3. Representatives
4. Seniors
5. Rotating captains
6. Committees
7. No captains
8. Application

You can also combine some of these ideas to find the best captain strategy for your situation. Finally, as you consider how you’ll select captains, be sure to read our article “4 Mistakes Coaches Make When it Comes to Having Captains” to see if you’re committing any of these errors.

Team vote

Allowing athletes to vote is a common way of selecting captains. This is a way of getting a good idea of what your team’s consensus is but it also can turn into a popularity contest with the chance of getting a poor leader as your captain.

Voting doesn’t have to look the same for every team. Here are a few alternatives to the traditional athlete vote …

• Vote at different times during the year. If you want the team to vote on their captains and you plan on having three captains, then a vote could take place during the preseason, at the start of your practices, and then again when games start.
• You can allow your athletes to vote on a specific pool of candidates. You (or the team) can establish criteria and then only the athletes meeting those stipulations are eligible to receive captain votes.
• You don’t have to specify the number of captains you’ll choose and instead, wait to see what the voting looks like. If you say you’ll only have two captains, but a third (or fourth) athlete is close in the voting and they’re someone you’d like as captain, you might consider this. Similarly, if you say you’ll have three captains and the third is a bad apple or someone you don’t want, you are now boxed in. Depending on the team dynamics, you may not need to specify how many captains you’ll have.
• Instead of one vote per athlete, you could either have them rank order a certain number of teammates (e.g. list your top three captain choices in preferred order) and then tally the votes based on points.  You could also have them just list two or three captain choices with each of them receiving the same weight. This is particularly helpful if you’ve got multiple athletes that would be good captains.
• Allow managers, support staff, and coaches to have an equal vote can also be considered. This is especially beneficial if it might sway the vote in a favorable way to get better captains. However, only do this if it’s acceptable to your team. If your athletes resent that non-athletes have a vote, they’ll be less likely to buy the outcome of the vote. Having everyone directly associated with your program vote on captain can be a good thing as it reinforces that everyone is interconnected, and you do things together.
• Have your athletes put their name on the ballot so that you know who voted for whom. This is too important of an issue to leave it anonymous – at least from the coaching staff. This can lead to future dialogue with that athlete about leadership. It also provides an additional layer of accountability and might encourage them to give their selections more thought knowing the coach will know who voted for whom.

Coaches pick

When you pick your own captains, you’re able to set the criteria that’s most important to you. Though you might get who you want, that doesn’t mean those captains will be accepted by the team. Sometimes those selections can be seen as “coach’s favorites” and it’s more difficult to get buy-in from the team. Oftentimes, a great compromise is to have the team vote for captains but have the candidate pool made up of athletes you approve of.

The legendary basketball coach Don Meyer used to say, “You can pick your captains but not your leaders. Whoever controls the locker room controls the team.” You should be more focused on developing your team’s leadership and building an overall strong culture than picking your captains. Yes, team captains are vitally important but if you don’t have a strong culture, you probably won’t get buy-in from your other athletes on who you picked as captain.

If you’re going to pick your captains, make sure to effectively communicate your rationale with the team. This can be an additional opportunity to reinforce the standards, goals, and values of the program. Realize there might be some hurt feelings and you’ll need to proactively address those. Be sensitive to these situations because how you deal with them now can have lasting consequences – both positive or negative.

Representatives

You might be familiar with leadership councils or athlete councils. They are a form of representation leadership. Regardless of what it’s called, having representatives is a good alternative to the traditional captain position. Having representatives give you a cross-section of experience, viewpoints, and representation.

Here are a few options for splitting up your athletes or segmenting them for the purposes of representation …

• Status (freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, JV, transfer, underclass, upperclass, new, veteran, etc…)
• Positional (DLine, OLine, Secondary, Offensive backfield, Receivers, Special teams, etc…)
• Geography (in-state/out of state, local/out of district, in-town/outside city limits, American/international, etc…)
• Interest (academic majors, extracurriculars, hobbies, other sports played, etc…)

Having representatives can serve in conjunction with team captains or it can be a replacement for team captains. They can serve both the same and different roles in a program. The phrases “representative” and “captain” can also be used interchangeably, or mean different things depending on your program and what you want to accomplish with your athlete leadership positions.

Seniors

In theory, your seniors should know best how to be leaders and know best what you want as the coach. You could also extend this to upperclassmen, rather than just seniors. As you know, seniors can be extremely beneficial to your program. However, there are times that you have seniors who are really just fourth-year freshmen. Experience only matters if that athlete has learned the lessons that should have come with that experience.

In theory, any senior on your team should be captain material or else they probably shouldn’t be on your team. If they are a senior, they already have some sort of status, position, or authority just based on their seniority. More than likely a number of team members will look to them as leaders whether you name them as captains or not. The senior approach works best if you already have an established culture.

Rotating captains

A team might not have official season-long captains but have rotating captains. The captains could rotate each day, each game, or each week. Selection could be based upon merit or some other prescribed method. Their responsibilities could be fairly comprehensive, or the position could be more ceremonial in which they really only meet with the officials pre-game.

Here are some benefits of having rotating captains …

• It can serve as a great leadership development tool. Rotating provides you with the opportunity to teach multiple athletes what it means to be a captain. This is especially helpful for younger athletes who are emerging or future leaders.
• If you have a below-average group of leaders, it spreads out the tasks and responsibilities. Rotating captains doesn’t put too much load on any one person’s shoulders. If also keeps a bad captain from serving in that role all season long.
• When you have lots of athletes with captain potential, rotating captains can keep them happy and can avoid hurting feelings. Let’s say you have four seniors that want to be captains, plus you have three underclassmen that are future or emerging leaders, then rotating captains can be a win-win.
• Rotating captains put the emphasis on overall leadership and team culture rather than an individual. It de-emphasizes the position or even a particular individual in favor of an overall atmosphere of standards and values. It can send the message of “this is how we do things here” or “this is what is necessary each week to lead this team”.

Think about how you’ll address the issue of nobody having the official designation of captain for the season. The title of captain can be very beneficial on college applications or resumes. You might make a deal with your seniors that they’ll be able to call themselves official captains once they complete the season in good standing with the program. You could even make this into a special ceremony of awarding them their captain status.

If you’re going to rotate captains, make sure you effectively communicate how it’ll benefit this particular team and its’ members. Anytime you do something that is non-traditional, you’ll have to educate your athletes (and their parents).

Committees

Committees (or small groups) are comprised of various team members that address different topics on a team (e.g. fundraising, community service, social media, travel, pregame music, meals, apparel, etc…). You can have as many committees as you want and decide on whatever guidelines are necessary.

Benefits of committees include …

• Accomplish more tasks, duties, and responsibilities that are necessary for the team to operate.
• Spread out the workload.
• Maximize the various strengths and skill sets of your team members.
• Develop leadership skills.
• Provide more opportunities to lead.
• De-emphasize the position of captain if you have potentially bad captains.
• Assign more leadership titles, which is especially helpful if you have more good leaders than you have traditional captain positions available.
• Being a committee captain is a pseudo consolation prize for an athlete that wasn’t selected team captain

Committees can be the ultimate win-win situation. Committees can be a replacement for captains or be a great complement and resource to your team captains or leadership council.

No captains

Coaches that don’t have captains typically treat all their athletes as “captains of themselves”. Every athlete has a responsibility to act like a captain. This can increase the team’s overall leadership potential. Instead of training a few captains, a coach trains each athlete to be a leader. There isn’t one specific athlete that’s responsible for the team’s leadership as the captain. Rather every athlete has an ownership stake in the team’s leadership.

Having no captains only works if you have a strong culture already or have committed to really training, developing, and growing ALL your athletes as leaders. You have to be all-in as a coach on team leadership development. It’s also not recommended at the high school level unless you have a healthy culture, established reputation, or very supportive administration. Though, having no captains works better if it’s in combination with an alternative such as committees. 

Application

Having your athletes complete an application isn’t always a specific way of selecting captains but it can be utilized in conjunction with other selection methods. Here are some benefits to utilizing an application …

• Athletes take more ownership in the process.
• Forces athletes to invest and spend actual time putting forth their thoughts.
• Coaches find out which athletes are truly committed enough to the responsibility of being a captain.
• Learn new information and insights about your athletes.
• Can serve to narrow down your captain candidate pool.

Your captain application can be whatever you want it to be, but make sure you put some thought into it. Don’t make it so short that you don’t get any useful information from it. Conversely, don’t make it so long that your athletes don’t want to complete it. You need to have a purpose for every question you ask.

PLAYER-LED TEAM

Make sure that you’re giving a lot of thought to how you select your captains. They are oftentimes the face of your program. Anybody can be a leader, but your captains will be consider the main leaders on a team. They have a bigger platform than others. How you utilize the leadership positions (captains, seniors, leadership council, etc…) is vital to the success (and image) of your program.

Though extremely important, selecting team captains is just one component to strong team leadership. Selecting (and having good captains) isn’t enough. Good captains with bad followers can hold a team back. It’s not just enough to be a good coach or have good captains. You must continually fight for your culture. You must strengthen your team’s leadership.

Getting ownership from all your athletes and having them invested in the entire program is crucial. Hall of Fame basketball coach Tom Izzo says, “A player-led team is better than a coach-led team.” No matter what kind of method you use to select your team captains, you’ll want to make sure that you’re on the way to developing a player-led team, so be sure to click here to read our article about developing a player-led team.

The way you do anything is the way you do everything. Your leadership philosophy and the way you go about choosing the leadership positions on your team, speaks to how you do everything in your program. Your culture is made up of the standards, beliefs, and values that you reinforce daily. Your culture is intentional. Your team’s leadership is typically a direct reflection of your culture and your culture, in turn, is a direct reflection of how you approach your team’s leadership.