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Post by justryn2 on Apr 23, 2008 13:08:05 GMT -6
I would like to know how you coaches determine player positions. I've been a youth football coach for 7 years, 5 as an assistant and 2 more as a head coach. When I was an assistant what usually happened is that the head coach showed up after the first or second day of practice with a depth chart and then told the players and other coaches who was playing where.
That never seemed right to me so when I became a head coach, I asked the players what position(s) they wanted to play, then got input from all of the other coaches and then created a depth chart. However, I think I may have done the team a disservice by not necessarily having players in positions where they could best contribute. Not to mention the fact that I needed a lot more offensive linemen than I had players that wanted to play there and had a lot more players wanting to play defenisve line than I had defensive line positions to hand out.
How do you decide which players play what positions?
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Post by davecisar on Apr 23, 2008 14:08:29 GMT -6
Step 1) Determine a detailed position description and requirements for each position, the speed, quickness, strength, attitude, mental aptitiude, physical toughness, athleticism etc. required ot play that position. Step 2) Design drills, contests, or in our case fun competitive games that have measureable results that expose the above abilities in each player. Step 3) Score the players in each contest/ game/ drill. Step 4) Measure the players scores to the base requirements for each position developed in Step 1 Step 5) Match up the scores to the requirements while doing a best guess shuffling of chess pieces to maximize team effectiveness and playing time.
We have fun games without pads that measure true football playing traits. 40 yard dash times really miss the mark IMHO. We use those games to score for each specific trait we are measuring for. We put numbers to it and plug it into excel and make our decisions. Used to have to do it this way before we knew what we were looking for, now it is very simple to do, running the same games, looking for the same measurements but doing by eye-ball. Has been very effective, very very little position switching after the first week in pads and very little that week as well.
You need to know what you are lookng for and how to teast and measure for it, withouth wasting a bunch of time or being monotonous. Football is a team game we put players in a place we feel thay haev a reasonable chance to succeed and whats best for the team.
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lbdad
Freshmen Member
Posts: 97
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Post by lbdad on Apr 23, 2008 14:30:59 GMT -6
everything dave said,in the first week of conditioning we have a 2 hand touch game 2 sides 10-13 to a side no stop watch.you can see who will play what postion.kids and dads think there a qb or a wideout at 7-10 yrs old.at youth they should have a off and def postion.remember kids chenge in 2 years you 3rd string wr could be your starting running back.
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Post by coachdoug on Apr 23, 2008 14:56:27 GMT -6
I do it similarly. During conditioning week we test every player in a number of categories - some are timed with stop-watches, some are eye-balled, but all are objective and measurable (such as how many balls caught out of how many attempts). I like to have objective, quantifibable data because assistant coaches are not always as objective as I would like them to be, and also so that I have something more concrete than "I don't think your son would be a good receiver," when I have to explain to a disgruntled parent why his son isn't playing his preferred position. Just letting the parents know that the decisions are made based on objective data seems to cut down on those conversations.
We tell the kids what the requirements are for each position and ask them what they would like to play. We'll tell them that they better be in the top half of the team speed-wise if they want to be a running back. I'll let anyone who wants a to try out for QB (or any other position) have a shot at it. I can usually eliminate most pretenders in one practice and have most kids in the right positions by the end of conditioning week. The kids seem to appreciate having been given the opportunity to try out for a position even if they didn't make it. In the end, we end up putting them all where we think they'll help the team the most.
We do end up doing some position switching throughout August, so I guess this is an area where we could improve. Since Dave seems to have excellent results in this area, I would be interested to know more details of exactly how he does it (what are the position requirements, what games/drills are run, what is measured, etc.).
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Post by rathernot on Apr 25, 2008 8:17:25 GMT -6
Coach Cisar, havbe you made the details of how you evaluate your players and position requirements available on the download section or in another thread?
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Post by davecisar on Apr 25, 2008 9:34:23 GMT -6
Coach R, The position requirements would be different, each scheme would has different requirements. In the Single Wing the requirements I have for fullback would be much different than for an "I" formation team. While we do use some of the "games" many are familiar with here to do evals like Sumo, Deer Hunter and others, each drill is able to help us evaluate each trait we are looking for. What you are looking for in each player or the traits important to you may be different than what we think is important. IE we are not big believers in straight line speed evaluations. We use a bunch of others we came up with on our own like towel games, rabbit chases and "slam dunk" to help us make those decisions. They all can easily be given numericial values to and matched up to the requirements. Example; We rarely have many athltetic linemen, they are always in short supply. The position description for our center says that while he doesnt have to be much of an athlete or even be a big hitter, he has to have some resiliency and willingness to compete to go along with his happy go lucky demeanor and smarts. In our towel game we will see how well he competes and how resilient he is as well as how he responds to pressure with all the team around watching the 3 in the ring go at it. We of course go in count out format and keep moving the groups around until we determine which percentile each player lands in. It isnt perfect, a 80% percentile kid maybe sometimes could be 60, but in the end it seems to be pretty darn accurate. A 80% percentile kid gets 80 points for that one. Now at the end we look to our linemen candidates, we dont want to "waste" a top scorer at the center position, but he has to be in that 60% in the towel game and hopefully over 40% in Sumo, we dont care how he did in Rabbit, Deerhunter, or Slam Dunk. He also needs to be 9 or 10. We also weight for age and weight. AGE IS HUGE in youth football, you will always see in the Pop Warner National Championships the top teams are all right at the top of the age brackets. Our league pres did a study and there was a significant correlation between average weight and the top and worst teams. Weight was a lesser factor. For example age 8-10, a 10 year old would get 90 points a 9 year olds would get 45 points and an 8 year old would get zero points etc etc. In the end we look at total score, but we also look at specific scores on specific games to help us make the decision. Example: our WB candidate may have an overall score of 280, but he scored an 80 on deerhunter and a 40 on towel, just what we are looking for. If you look deep enough you can probably find some of it buried in here:
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Post by davecisar on Apr 25, 2008 10:35:06 GMT -6
Couldnt chaneg the post, I meant to say our leage Pres did a study and there was a major correlation of average AGE to wins and losses.
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CoachJ
Junior Member
Posts: 307
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Post by CoachJ on Apr 25, 2008 11:24:16 GMT -6
How do you decide which players play what positions? I think having a general concept of what you need for positions is good. I would caution being to systematic with things because then you might just miss a couple of guys who don't meet measurables, but are just football players.
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Post by los on Apr 25, 2008 21:20:55 GMT -6
I always liked the "county fair" or station drills system during the 1st week of practice.....each station had a coach teaching some basic football skill, agility or drill(alternating daily).....covering the basics of most every position.....the kids split into as many small groups as there were stations, according to size/skill level......this more or less, gave the kids a tryout at every skill set and all the coach's an opportunity to evaluate them performing different football related tasks......we also did a punt/kick competition to narrow down the list of specialists in this area(including long snaps)......a pass route/coverage drill segment(including center prospects), let us evaluate possible QB's/centers/recievers/DB's........we only ran sprints during this 1st week of practice...30-40 yd...untimed.....just to breakdown into two flights(fast and "not" fast)......flights ran as groups after that.....object of the game being to find the fastest 10-12 kids......usually during the 2nd week sometime.....we started our "live" full contact 1 on 1's or small group stuff and this generally turned the tide on who could do what? We used many different "competitive drills" but the favorites were the okie drills = great for finding your better blockers, toughest running backs, best tacklers, best block shedding down defenders, instictive linebacker types....as always during practice, the groups were divided by size/skill level, not only for safety reasons but so the kids could get the most out of each drill, while having a chance to succeed I've really never asked a kid "what position, he wanted to play".......I've had kids ask me to play something = answer = "if you can do the job better than the guy we put there, its all yours"......There are so many variables with kids its hard to determine(100% of the time), early in the pre-season, and really an ongoing process, till you get to know them, throughout the year?
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Post by coachlu on Apr 25, 2008 21:53:43 GMT -6
How much do returning players/starters and or players coming up to the next level affect your decisions. By next level i mean a 6th grader coming up to the 7th and 8th grade team.
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Post by los on Apr 25, 2008 22:13:39 GMT -6
We didn't have any 8th graders coachlu.....if the question was for me? Had 2 groups 8-10 and 11-12's(some might be 13 at the end of the season)....but far as a new crop of 11 yr olds....coming up to play with the returning 12 yr olds.....didn't make any difference to me....the best man got the job..... granted this didn't happen very often.....but occasionally an 11 yr old would win a starting role over an older returning starter on something.....there's a definite "pecking order" with this age of kids and for most of ours.....playing with the "big kids" , the first season was an intimidating challenge.... lol.....Oh....and we only had (1) 10 yr old "ever play" with the older guys ....he was big, fast and strong for his age and his mama demanded he play with his older cousins for transportation reasons, he was pretty good too, but moved away the next year?
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CoachJ
Junior Member
Posts: 307
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Post by CoachJ on Apr 26, 2008 7:10:18 GMT -6
How much do returning players/starters and or players coming up to the next level affect your decisions. By next level i mean a 6th grader coming up to the 7th and 8th grade team. We have some of this. Each year stands on its own. If last year a coach decided you were a guard, that is good info to have but doesn't mean you cant try something else.
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