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Post by davecisar on Jul 30, 2009 16:10:37 GMT -6
I’m a task master when it comes to eliminating dead or wasted practice time in youth football. While we have been able to eliminate or reduce every time wasting activity known to man in our practices, we still seem to find a few overlooked areas from time to time. While you may think wasting a few minutes here or there in every practice isn’t a big deal, it all adds up. Have kids take a 5 minute water break with zero instruction during it, you loose 20 minutes a practice when you take 4 water breaks. Over the course of a 14 week season, you would have wasted 14 full hours or 7 entire practices. Wasting time getting your kids attention? Do that 10 times a practice, wasting 2 minutes each time and you’ve lost 20 minutes of perfectly good practice time. Do that over the course of 14 weeks and you’ve wasted 7 full practices again. Of course we solved those issues many moons ago. When we do fit and freeze reps vs a “Scout Defense” or scrimmage or do a “compete” session, the players have to be outfitted in scrimmage vests so we can tell the opposing units apart. It takes us 5 minutes to get these vests on and another 5 minutes to get them off when we are finished. Invariably we have 1 or 2 players that can never seem to get the darn vests on or off well and you end up having to take their helmets off or they get tangled up in the shoulder pads some how. I know several of you coaches reading this right now are gritting your teeth remembering how time consuming and aggravating it is to get those darn vests on and off. We have gone to “scrimmage caps”. They are little colored caps that slip right over the top of the helmet. They cost about $4 each when you buy them in bulk. www.hitrunscore.com/hcc-adams-football-helmet-cap-cover.htmlNo more struggling to pull a poor fitting vest over the shoulder pad and helmet of one of your players. We save about 7 minutes a practice and LOTS of coach and player aggravation by switching to the helmet caps. Quite often the scrimmage vests don’t fit very well and you have players with a bunch of excess jersey hanging out. Have you ever had one of your scout running backs get tackled by or swung around by a player grabbing that excess jersey to tackle? I once had a defensive player break a finger because he got his fingers tangled up in the excess fabric in a scout running backs scrimmage vest. Just think how easy it would be to horse collar a player in a loose fitting scrimmage vest? We all know what damage horse collar tackles can do. Another thing about scrimmage vests are, they stink. Players sweat through them and they have to be washed often, who has time for that? The helmet caps don’t get sweaty and they require far less room in your equipment bag. Scrimmage caps, a no-brainer when coaching youth football and they are the same or less money than scrimmage vests. |
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Post by coachdoug on Jul 30, 2009 16:22:45 GMT -6
We switched to the helmet caps 2 or 3 years ago - way better than scrimmage vests. Wish we had done it sooner. We also try to hand out the caps during whatever preceeds the scrimmage so the kids can put them on then rather than hold everything up to put them on (although it really only takes a few seconds to put them on - the more time consuming item is handing them out).
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Post by jhanawa on Jul 30, 2009 18:03:34 GMT -6
We've had the caps for several years now. Scrimmage Vests are a PITA.
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shawnm
Freshmen Member
Posts: 99
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Post by shawnm on Jul 30, 2009 18:59:35 GMT -6
Caps are the way. I was lucky and picked orange caps last year.
The kids love the hunters orange for the "Deer Hunter" game, especially up here in Montana where hunting is bigger than Football.
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Post by coachguy83 on Jul 30, 2009 21:54:28 GMT -6
I wish I was lucky enough to have the caps. I just got scrimmage vests today because I bummed a few old ones off of the high school.
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binny
Sophomore Member
Posts: 110
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Post by binny on Jul 31, 2009 7:02:25 GMT -6
Scrimmage caps are the only way to go. They can be had for around $5 a piece, making them pretty reasonable as well.
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tflsw
Probationary Member
Posts: 8 
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Post by tflsw on Jul 31, 2009 9:20:32 GMT -6
I guess I am cheaper than all of you... I just took shower caps from hotels, spray painted them a uniform color and they work great!
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Post by captainpp on Jul 31, 2009 9:21:55 GMT -6
Way back when, heck over 20 years now, we would use masking tape on our blocking dummies and mark the opponents def. linemen # ers on them when we did our run thou.
We were able to do this because we did have scouting reports because all the games were played on one field on Sunday's... First and like third Sunday of the season, we scouted all day. This did seem to help our boy's out a bit, smacking that same number all week and then taking it to the field on Sunday. Just saying if you do this kind of practicing maybe there's a usefulness for those vest in some way...
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Post by coachorr on Aug 2, 2009 8:49:58 GMT -6
Water breaks may not always be a bad thing.
Sometimes a transition to water and regroup is not time wasted. I used to be exactly the same way only to find that I was always behind in my practice schedule. To that point, however, I still really struggle with putting the words "water break" on the schedule, because I feel exactly the same way as you do. So, at times I will end a 15 or 20 minute session three minutes early to transition into the next segment. Moreover, I try to keep segments of time no longer than 15 minutes.
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Post by ramsfootball on Aug 4, 2009 7:24:54 GMT -6
Just bought a set of scrimmage caps last week! This is a no brainer. When you have kids that wear any or multiple color practice jerseys, you've got to have a way to cordinate them and without wasting to much time. Last season I bought T shirts for scrimmages, cost $200.00, Scrimmage caps $65.00!
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