Positive Youth Football Experience

Hey.....this is cool.....was just wondering the same thing, while reading and discussing other topics. I'll give it a shot.....#1.= they wanna do something fun and challenging(compete) with their buddies(besides play video games indoors)? #2.= their dad/parent made them go out for football(get outdoors, make some friends, get some exercise)? #3.= they wanna play cause, the older kids, brothers, etc... that they "look up to"....play or have played, maybe on their local hs team..get lots of attention, status around town, the girls like them....etc...and they want this too? #4.= Since they did come out to be part of a team and "learn" to "play" football.....they wanna "play".....not just watch from the sidelines......#5. = they're angry....mean....bully's.... that "love" to beat up other kids and push them around.....this gives them a legitimate place to do it, without negative repercussions from adults?.....ooops...wait ...that was my reason for playing, lol sorry... .....or the reverse, may be true......they're really pampered softy's or introverts and someone thinks the football experience will toughen them up? #6= the always popular....its looks like fun, watching it on TV?

We have done exit interviews with the kids to ask those that left, why.

Doing this exercise on the front end makes a lot of sense.

coachwarner -

Great thread and a great idea. I will start doing this with my teams. I have done season-end surveys before, but it never even occured to me to ask this question at the start of the season.

Anyway, I intended to respond to the original question, but I was out of town and just didn't get to it. Nonetheless, I probably would have said (from your list) #s 1,2,4,5, and 7. I'm not surprised 3 is on the list, but it would probably have been #6 on my list. I would have guessed that wanting to be like the stars they've seen on TV would have made the list (I guess it's kind of included in #5).

I'm not too surprised that no kid ever said "To Win" or "To Win a Championship," but I think it is a byproduct of having fun (or maybe the other way around) - for most kids winning is fun. For instance, when I played as a kid, I had a friend that was mildly interested in hearing about my football team, but when I started telling him every week about how we won the previous weekend, he started to get really excited about it and signed up to play the following season. I think that sort of thing happens fairly regularly. I'm sure if he had been asked, he would have said he was playing to have fun or to be part of a team, but wanting to be a winner was a big part of it for him. Everyone wants to be part of a successful, winning organization, be it sports, or business, or whatever. I don't want to overemphasize the point (believe me, winning is far from my #1 priority), but it is also dangerous to underemphasize it - kids don't have to win every game to have fun, but they do need to be competitive or it's no fun for anyone.

JMHO

What coach Doug is trying to say I think ( is consistent throughout all his posts) is that 'Having Fun" the #1 reason is difficult to do in most kids minds if their team is not competitive.

Ive never done this exercise, but we have done exit interviews with loads of kids and their #2 reason for quiting or not returning for the next season was because their teams were not competitive. They didnt use those exact words, we got hundreds of renditions of "not competitive" using a variety of words and phrases. There was almost always a reasonably high correlation of wins to drops and retention to the following season. Thats why in many leagues you see a downwarding spiral of teams that start off with 25 kids, get blown out a bunch of times and end the season with 15 kids etc or even in extreme cases have to forfeit a game. I think Brophy had 2 teams forfeit last year against him.

The #1 reason for drops in the exit interviews we did was "poor coaching" and that of course could include a " non competitive" team component as well, a pretty broad category. Unfortunately we used open ended questioning to get people to honestly open up rather than try and box people in. Maybe that was the wrong approach.

Does 'being competitive" mean the same thing to kids as it does to adults?

If a kid is pushed to be better than he currently is, isn't that the same result as the coaches interpret "being competitive"?

Making them "work" without being drudgery, to the point where they develop confidence in their own abilities? Is that the ultimate goal.....isn't that what builds "competitors", the appreciation of working toward a goal (championship,etc)?

I dunno, I'm guessing my 5 reasons would be;
1. excitement of being a part of something cool and studly
2. pal around with friends / make new friends
3. physically stimulating
4. being proud of accomplishments, create identity
5. work for public acknowledgement (family,friends,peers)

I hesitated to even bring up the point about the importance of being competitive because I didn't want to start this argument, but I think it's important. In general, I agree that more coaches make the mistake of over-emphasizing winning, and winning probably is more important to the adults involved than it is to the kids. However, I know some new coaches read this board and I think it's important that they understand that an attitude of "make it all fun, all the time," while not as common, is just as bad, or even worse.

I've seen some "win-at-all-costs" type of coaches get enlightened and tone it down over time and become really good influences for the kids. OTOH, I've never seen a coach that errs in the other direction ever make it to a second season (and most of his players won't either), let alone eventually become a really good youth coach.

In my experience, when coaches focus on nothing but "having fun," they tend to not enforce discipline, let everyone play QB or RB, give everyone close to equal playing time, only do "fun" drills in practice with lots of live hitting like scrimmaging, and a lot of practice ends up looking like a sandlot game with full pads. The end result is that the kids don't learn much about football, don't learn much about the values of sportsmanship, hard work, discipline, etc, no one learns any one position really well, there is no incentive to work harder or even come to practice (since everyone plays the same amount anyway), and the team is just not very good. Consequently, they lose most or all of their games badly and it's no fun for the players, the coaches, the parents, or even their opponents. The good players don't come back the next year because there was no recognition of or reward for their talent or hard work and it was no fun getting their butts whipped when no one else seemed to care about getting better. The weak kids don't come back because instead of being brought along slowly and protected so he could think, "Man, I know I could play more - I just need a chance to show what I can do," he has rather been put in a position he wasn't ready for, and his weaknesses have been exposed, and now all he can think is, "Man, I suck, this team sucks, and I'm never doing this again." The coach doesn't come back the next year and neither do most of the players and the team probably never recovers. I've seen this happen dozens of times over the years and I've never seen play out differently.

At the beginning of every season I spell out for the players and their parents what my goals and objectives are for the season. It may vary a little bit by age group, but it generally goes something like this (in order):

1. Have Fun. This is absolutely the number one objective, but we will rarely actually actively focus on having fun during practice. Having fun will be a natural byproduct of doing everything else well.
2. Learn Values. Sportsmanship, Discipline, Hard Work, Conditioning/Physical Fitness, Perseverance, Integrity, Commitment. These things we will actively try to teach and instill in the kids on a daily basis.
3. Be Competitive. Winning is not the most important thing, but we are playing a competitive game and the object of the game is to win. We don't have to win all the time to be successful, but we do have to try to win to accomplish our goals and objectives. That's the important distinction - it's the will to win, the desire to win, rather than the actual outcome of winning that's important.
4. Develop of Understanding of and Love for the Game of Football. We love the game and we want to share that love with the players. Even if they never play a down at the next level, if they learn the game and appreciate it as a fan, then we've accomplished this goal.
5. Prepare for the next level. This doesn't apply to all the players - I'm well aware of the stats about how few youth players ever play in HS. Well, I think about 2/3 or more of our players play in HS (at least at the Frosh/JV level), and it's probably in part because we do take seriously our role in helping them prepare. We don't run the HS's schemes or anything like that, but we try to make sure we are teaching proper techniques and terminology so they can hit the ground running when they get to HS.

So, getting back to the issue of being competitive. Again, it doesn't mean you have to win a championship. I was part of a team that went 2-6 or 3-5, but the kids had a great time and almost the entire team was back the next season. They weren't very big or athletic, so they were playing about well as they could more. Even though they lost, most of the games were close (scores were like 8-6, 14-6, 7-0). They won big a couple times and lost big a couple times, but all the rest of the games were close. They were competitive - they saw that they were close and if they could just improve a little, they could maybe get to the playoffs. That's all I mean be being competitive.

Sorry so long - I just wanted to clarify my position as clearly as possible.

I think you hit the nail on the head! Great thread & great discussion.

Coach,
Despite what many think you can have fun, play everyone, teach great fundamentals, have off the chart retention and attendance numbers and do the evil horrible thing ( win) too, they arent mutually exclusive in any way. You can interject fun into many of the things you do without giving up anything. Fun is your friend, be creative, and you will get more out of your kids. Is it harder to design a practice that has "fun" as a major goal? Yes, but the kids will effort better and actually give you more focused attention when you do get down to brass tacks. And yes, it's more fun for them when they play well than when they play poorly and get trounced every week, that is true.

My retention numbers are off the charts and I think it has to do with the fact we have fun and play well.

I must have missed the post that said winning and fun can't be done in the same practice.

We actually don't do a lot extra "fun" things in practice. We just make sure the kids know that they are more than a vehicle for our program's success. We take a vested intrest in the player and what is good for him and the team.

For instance I have two kids that were equal QB's last season. Both wanted to be and both can be good HS QBs. We rotated them. That isn't always the best situation for the team, because in our system, continuity of the QB makes a big difference in team success, but it was best for the players because they both got experience. In the end we didn't average 40 points per game, but we were able to win 8 of 11 games.

In my opinion, youth football is first and foremost about the player's experience. I could rack up 100 trophies, awards, and be a well respected coach by my peers, but it would be meaningless to me if my players didn't become better football players/human beings in the process.

It is a difference of opinion that I share with many coaches (especially most every youth coach), but I want to prepare my kids for their future in football. Sure there next coach can train them, but the more prepared you already are, the more they can do. If I don't train my players properly or with the right techniques, then a coach has to retrain them and it is a waste of my player's time and all of his efforts.

Now granted, I am in a completely different place then someone coaching an 6-12 year old kid. Most of my players do go on to high school. I openly admit that is a major factor in my motivations. I want and expect my players to go on and play at the next level. We don't suffer the 70% drop rate that I have often seen quoted, but never linked to an actual article.

I have had the kids write these pre-season letters for about 15 years. They are awesome for getting to know your players. The kids like it when you show a general interest in them as individulals. We use the information we get from the letters to start conversations off with the kids and build a relatinship whith them. I ask the kids to include something they would like to share about themselves that is not related to football in addition to asking them: Why they signed up for football? What positions they would like to try out for on Offense, Defense and Special Teams? What positions they played on previous teams? I also ask them to include a personal goal and what they think the teams goal should be?

No, not at all. read the post again. We conciously interject fun into each drill and set aside practice time every day to do pure fun type activities.

No most of the youth practices I see (Ive watched about 120-150 different youth teams practice ) I dont see what we do being done to the extent we do at all. Ive never seen many of the fun games and drills we do in any of these practices.
Ive spoken to over 1000 ( very conservative estimate) or e-mails etc of guys that swtiched to our practice methodology and most stated it was a 'total 180 culture switch" from what they were doing before.

My guess is it has to do a lot with why our retention and attendance figures are so high.

But I guess everyone is already doing all these exact things with the exception of the video examples in the other thread

Even the teams with the 30-40-% drop rates too, or the teams where they have to beg kids to come to practice and games. Im sure everyone is doing all those things.

sorry if it came out wrong.....I wasn't trying to simplify anything there.

I guess what I was asking was if there was something "different"with the formula.

Most guys that are "coaches" (? maybe I'm severely misguided?) I would think they have a format or systematic approach to do these things......

the horrible practices / bad coaches really aren't much mroe than fans with whistles and could care less about any of that stuff (they are just gonna do what their junior high coach did....have the kids do a bunch of movements and holler at them), so when they actually do "get a clue" they'd just be doing what everyone else (real coaches) is doing.

These guys don't have any foundation to draw from, so ANY insight to the purpose of coaching would be an improvement (?no?).


I was trying to figure out how one does that.
What makes Jim's form-fit drill, better than Ted's form-fit drill? How come Jim's drill is 'fun', but the same drill done with Ted isn't fun?

I was trying to comprehend the magic ingredient.

what makes a "positive youth experience"?

My limited knowledge would say, "whatever each kid can go home and say, 'that (playing,practicing, efforting,etc) was worth it'..."

They all aren't going to be all-pro, champions, DI-blue chip, starters, or great players.....but if they can come away feeling better about themselves, I would think it was a good experience.

How do you get each kid to that level? I dunno....take genuine interest in each kid and his well-being? Might be a good be-all-end-all.

If they can come away with, "Coach so-and-so taught me how to 'never give up', or 'not take any crap', or 'live up to my responsibiliities'..." or whatever, I would think that would make it worthwhile.

If they win every game that doesn't necessarily guarantee it will be a great experience (probably won't hurt).

If they lose every game, that doesn't necessarily guarantee it will be a horrible experience (probably won't help).

If they become the best trap-blocking guard in the district or most unstoppable receiver, doesn't necessarily guarantee they will be satisfied with what football can do for them.


I dunno....


thanks for the clarification....

sounds like the key to making it fun is keep it COMPETITIVE.....

isn't that what I asked?

When the guys was killed in your practice, did you do your drills around the body, or over him?

Making fun of a murdered 17 year old, a new low Barik David Hernandez Omaha World Herald 10/25/98, page 3-9- pic our practice our team- his body

Point beingn even with a murderd bystander we had 32 of 36 with perfect attendance,

How were your attendance, drop and retention numbers last season
I thought you raised that as a problem area last year as you chronicled your season.