Ready......Focus

I made it "word of the day", varying the sign & countersign each practice so they'd pay att'n from the beginning. And I could then slip the word into any sentence.

We use "EYES", they say "CLICK"....great way to get quick attention and focus. This is an important and often overlooked aspect of coaching that I feel is the secret to our success.....discipline and focus.

Some other related things we do:
We have a "get lined up together quickly" call, It's called "11 across", everybody sprints into formation quickly and stands quietly at attention, then we give a "be seated" command and they quickly sit down.
We do our team conditioning as an entire team rather than in groups. We alternate between defensive pursuit/mental toughness drills and offensive candence drills.
Defensive Pursuit conditioning: Team is in lines of 11 between the hashes, coach is in front. We give feet call, all kids feet buzz, then we yell ball, entire team does an up down and sprints to the direction that the coach throws the ball (to another coach). Entire team sprints to that sideline and huddles up. One player is called out, they step out and lead team chant/breakdown, entire team sprints back to their original position with feet buzzing. We do this 4 Times then get into ready position (tackling position, legs bent, eyes up). We then do our "Focus Drill" where a team member jumps out front and gives a hit call while touching his ears or a hit,hit call while slapping his thigh pads. The player will go through several calls varying his calls. By this point the team is tired and must dig to focus. If any kid flinches or messes up, the entire team does 10 up downs. At the end of this session (First Quarter), the team does pushups. We do 4 quarters of these. We vary the end of quarter exercise between pushups, jumping jacks, leg raises, etc. The most updowns we've done during this drill last year as a result of mess ups was 90. I remember that day as well as the kids do....LOL
The offensive cadence drill is this, starting line on left has with QB and backs behind, 2nd line on right hash, slots in between the hashes and WR's on left and right numbers....whole team at once. Cadence (we have 5) is signaled, cadence is called and we sprint 20 yards. Anybody flinches or messes up, whole team backs up 20 yards behind the original LOS and does 10 updowns. Our target is 200 yards if they don't mess up. When we first started this we ran for a LONG, LONG ways, but it pays off.
Those are a few of our main team/focus/conditioning drills......additionally, Burma Roads are great for conditioning/pursuit....

Simple things like this seem ridiculous to the outside eye, heck, maybe it seems ridiculous to fellow coaches, but when dealing with the type of RAW kids we get from the area we get them from, its critically important to the process of developing team & individual discipline & accountability. Trust me, they show up with zero discipline & accountability.
Lastly, keep in mind this is with 8th graders and freshmen football, not the real little guys.

^{I just fire a few rounds into the air...they hit the dirt,}

We've had some kids who might shoot back.....LOL, just kidding, they are good kids just new to football and whats required, now the parents, that's another matter....