How is your team looking?

Last year we played 14 eleven year olds in an 11-13 year old division. Needless to say we took our lumps, but now we return 13 players (4 thirteen year olds, 9 twelve year olds) and got a quarterback transfer from another team. We were 0-7 last year, but this year I feel we can be a good 4-3, maybe 5-2 if we get the right bounce.

Out of curiosity - why are Pop Warner-youth teams starting practice in July?

We're a HS team. First practice isn't until August 6, first game August 23.

Pop Warner, by rule, cannot start until Aug. 1st.

This is why I asked about youth teams starting in July.

We started conditioning practice on Monday and next Week Monday the real practices start. Our first game is August 25th. The main reason we start so soon is coaching Youth takes sometime to teach fundamentals these are not High School players who typically lift and have 7 on 7 and football classes year round.

So each year you must in many cases teach the basics to 50% of the team each year unless you have a program built that runs the same stuff on every level and you are blessed to get the majority of players returning and moving up each year.

Yet still I won't have my full team in practice until 1 week and a half prior to the first game due to Travel Baseball, Family Vacations and kids at Summer Camps. On average out of the 5 weeks prior to the first game we might average 12 days/per player of actual practice prior to game 1 and in that timeframe you must install offense, defense, special teams and teach fundamentals to everyone.

We play in a highly competitive league and found out the hard way last year in our first year that you better be on top of your game as coaches and players otherwise you will get pounded.

He had plenty athletes last year and thought we would be pretty decent even in our first year, but we had no clue how competitive this league was. Many of the teams feed very good High School Programs and are very well coached.

Although we had the athletes last year we had 75% 1st time players and they were shell shocked. This year we are pretty loaded with experienced players and only about 35% first year guys. We were lucky to get an infusion of players from a catholic middle school that ended their football programs as well as a few kids from surrounding teams came over to us as well.

I will be highly surprised if we don't don't make the playoffs this year!

Huge pointer when drafting, if you don't know the kid draft the oldest kids. Birthdates on draft day are priceless. Sounds like you are primed for a great year!

Your Pop Warner team has offseason weights? WTF?

Dang, what team/city is that?

We started on July 9th. Way too early in my opinion. I asked the league president why we start so early but I never got a good answer. The first game is not until August 25th. Most of my kids are still out of town at grandma's house. Which at this time of summer they should be.

No clue why any youth team has to start practices before the 2nd week in August. Starting before that is crazy. This is youth football, not high school.