Overview
Founding Student Success Coach Jobs in Des Moines Metropolitan Area at Iowa Sports Prep
Title: Founding Student Success Coach
Company: Iowa Sports Prep
Location: Des Moines Metropolitan Area
Company Description
Iowa Sports Prep is building sports-focused microschools for youth student-athletes across Iowa.
Our schools combine personalized academics, athletic development, and practical skills in a smaller, coach-led environment. Students complete software-supported academics, train and develop as athletes, and build the habits, confidence, communication skills, and practical knowledge they need for school, sports, college, work, and life.
Our mission is to give students the opportunity and tools they need to build a happy, healthy, smart, and rich life.
Role Description
Student Success Coaches are the primary coach/mentor figures inside each Iowa Sports Prep location. They are responsible for helping students make measurable progress across the four ISP outcomes: happy, healthy, smart, and rich.
This is not a traditional classroom teaching role. Academics are primarily software-based and supported by ISP systems. The Student Success Coach creates the daily environment, keeps students motivated and accountable, leads non-academic programming, coordinates student goals with parents, and makes sure each student is making visible progress.
Core Mission
The Student Success Coach is accountable for each student showing evidence of progress toward:
- Happy: loves school, trusts their coach, has goals and dreams, builds positive relationships, and develops confidence.
- Healthy: stable and consistent mood, strong habits, physical development, athletic measurement growth, recovery, and resilience.
- Smart: on pace for academic growth, with a target of roughly two grade levels of progress per year when appropriate, learning how to learn.
- Rich: growth in enterprising, marketable, practical, and communication skills.
Parents help define what success looks like for their student, and the coach helps turn that into visible goals, evidence, and regular feedback.
Key Responsibilities
- Own the daily student experience inside an ISP location.
- Create a safe, high-energy, high-accountability environment.
- Help students stay focused during software-supported academic blocks.
- Lead morning kickoffs, afternoon development blocks, and end-of-day reflections.
- Help each student set clear goals with parent alignment.
- Hold weekly student check-ins and complete student reviews.
- Send regular parent progress updates.
- Plan or coordinate activities around sport, training, leadership, projects, life skills, nutrition, recruiting, NIL/financial literacy, communication, identity, and resilience.
- Maintain the day-to-day relationship with the host facility.
- Escalate safety, behavior, academic, or parent concerns through ISP systems.
Success Metrics
Student Success Coaches are measured by student outcomes, parent trust, and location culture.
Possible success evidence:
- Student attendance and engagement.
- Academic progress toward personalized targets.
- Physical or athletic measurement growth.
- Student mood, confidence, reflection quality, and habit consistency.
- Completed projects, marketable skills, or entrepreneurial output.
- Parent satisfaction and referrals.
- Student retention.
Daily Rhythm
Morning Kickoff
5-15 minute high-energy start to the day. The coach selects and runs an activity from an ISP catalog of 100+ options. Kickoffs may focus on habits, motivation, goal setting, team culture, communication, leadership, gratitude, resilience, or practical life skills.
Academic Block
Students work through personalized software-based academics. The coach does not provide formal academic instruction. The coach manages the room, keeps students focused, helps them stay motivated, and makes sure students are using the tools and ISP support systems correctly.
Ambitions
The coach plans or coordinates afternoon activities around athletic development, sport-specific work, strength and mobility, recovery, nutrition, recruiting, NIL/financial literacy, identity, mental resilience, communication, leadership, projects, and practical life skills.
Afternoon Cooldown / Press Conference
5-15 minute group reflection at the end of the day. Students review what they did, what they learned, how they performed, and what they need to improve.
What This Role is Not
- Providing formal academic instruction.
- Handling legal school paperwork.
- Running compliance, enrollment, or state reporting.
- Managing building operations beyond the basic day-to-day facility relationship.
- Owning tedious administrative work that should be automated or handled centrally.
Strong Candidate Signals
- Former college athlete.
- Youth coaching, training, or mentoring experience.
- Strong communication with students and parents.
- Ability to create structure without making the environment feel like traditional school.
- Comfortable with software-based learning environments.
- High ownership and emotional maturity.
- Interest in athlete development beyond sport.
- Practical skills in leadership, recruiting, nutrition, strength, life skills, media, entrepreneurship, or financial literacy.
If this sounds interesting but you are not sure whether your background fits, feel free to reach out directly with questions.
Dallas Klein
Iowa Sports Prep
