Post by justryn2 on Sept 22, 2008 10:04:25 GMT -6
I'm looking for advice so any help or words of wisdom from the coaches on this board would be much appreciated. I am the head coach for a select team 13 year old team. We won our first two games but yesterday everything came apart. The team we played was smaller but faster. We scored first but missed the PAT. Then they scored three unanswered touchdowns. With their PATs and one safety, we found ourselves down 24 - 6. That's when is seems like the team went into meltdown.
One of my better and most aggressive players began taking cheap shots; another player got us an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for talking back to an official. On every offensive play we had players out of position with two penalties in a row for illegal formation (didn't have seven players on the LOS). One of those nullified a long gain that would have given us a first down inside the opponents 25.
To top all of this off, one of my assistant coaches went ballistic on one of the players because he thought he overheard the player bad mouth a teammate. In reality the player in question was criticizing his own performance. As if all of that were not enough, numerous players, at various times in the game, came to the sidelines frustrated and threw their helmets on the ground while others were cautioned repeatedly by the officials about their language on the field. All of which has the organization authorities asking me for explanations for my players behavior.
I take full responsibility for my players actions. While I don't coach this kind of behavior, obviously I haven't done enough coaching to prevent it. That's something we'll be working on this week. In the immediate aftermath of this fiasco, I wanted to suspend two of my players; the cheap shot guy and the USC penalty guy. However, I'm not sure now if that's the right thing to do or not. My assistant thinks the player he had his run-in with should be suspended but this kid really didn't do anything wrong. And if I suspend every player that threw a helmet on the sideline I may not have enough players to even field a team in the next game.
I've been coaching a few years now. I believe that my mistake here, or at least one of them, was getting the players too emotional during the week leading up to this game. When we fell behind, for the first time this season, we lost all composure. I really want to bounce back from this. We have a lot of talent and these players deserve another chance at a good football season. Any advice you have on what to do and how to handle this would be most appreciated.
One of my better and most aggressive players began taking cheap shots; another player got us an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for talking back to an official. On every offensive play we had players out of position with two penalties in a row for illegal formation (didn't have seven players on the LOS). One of those nullified a long gain that would have given us a first down inside the opponents 25.
To top all of this off, one of my assistant coaches went ballistic on one of the players because he thought he overheard the player bad mouth a teammate. In reality the player in question was criticizing his own performance. As if all of that were not enough, numerous players, at various times in the game, came to the sidelines frustrated and threw their helmets on the ground while others were cautioned repeatedly by the officials about their language on the field. All of which has the organization authorities asking me for explanations for my players behavior.
I take full responsibility for my players actions. While I don't coach this kind of behavior, obviously I haven't done enough coaching to prevent it. That's something we'll be working on this week. In the immediate aftermath of this fiasco, I wanted to suspend two of my players; the cheap shot guy and the USC penalty guy. However, I'm not sure now if that's the right thing to do or not. My assistant thinks the player he had his run-in with should be suspended but this kid really didn't do anything wrong. And if I suspend every player that threw a helmet on the sideline I may not have enough players to even field a team in the next game.
I've been coaching a few years now. I believe that my mistake here, or at least one of them, was getting the players too emotional during the week leading up to this game. When we fell behind, for the first time this season, we lost all composure. I really want to bounce back from this. We have a lot of talent and these players deserve another chance at a good football season. Any advice you have on what to do and how to handle this would be most appreciated.
