If a person is coaching hs sports for the money then the chances are pretty good your not going to have a very good coach. The coaches I know that are good at what they do would do it for free. The fact is many of us lose money after it is all said and done by coaching. The last year I was a HC I got 3,500. If you want to maintain your field at a high level "like most good coaches do" many times you have to have things that the school simply will not pay for. If you want enough baseballs and other things like T's , batting cages , nets , L screens , etc etc the school is not going to pony up. We get 5,000 a year to run the baseball program. That includes paying the umpires , gate keepers , baseballs to practice with and game balls , etc etc.
We do have a dugout club to help us out. And we do have a concession stand as well. If a coach only runs his program from the start of the hs season to the end of the hs season the pay is probably not too bad. If you do it the right way and run your program year round what are you really getting paid as far as a salary goes? So the fact is the good ones are way underpaid as far as dollars go. And the not so good ones are fairly compensated as far as dollars go. If your doing it right and doing it for the right reasons your pay comes in other ways. And that can not have a price tag put on it.
All summer / fall and through the winter spending countless hours working on the field , strength agility and conditioning training , working with young men on the game - you are not paid in dollars. You get out of it what you put in it and so do the players. If you are doing it for the right reasons and doing it the right way you will never be paid in dollars an amount that is fair. And if that bothers you you are in it for the wrong reasons to start with imo.
You build a program by working 12 months out of the year just like players become players by working at the game 12 months out of the year. You do it not because your going to get paid to do it in dollars but because you love the game and those that play it. The ones that do it for the check are easy to spot. And they are over paid many times. jmho