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Post by kylem56 on May 14, 2015 13:45:56 GMT -6
Hey guys I am entering my first year as a varsity Head Football Coach and my first year at this high school. One of the fundraisers/projects we will be doing this summer is a Youth Football Camp for all kids entering the 3rd through 8th grade. I was thinking of charging $25.00 for 2 days, 3 hours each day. That $25 would also include a t-shirt, a chance at camp awards, and a ticket for a 2015 home game.
To give you a little background about this school/program: They are currently on an 11 game losing streak dating back to October 2014. The school is solid in almost all boys sports, and has been a state champ or runner up in wrestling every year for the past 13 years. They last made the playoffs in 2012 for football. To give you an idea of our demographics; it is a middle to upper class community, mostly with blue collar type kids (it is a rural area slowly transitioning to a more suburban type area). Needless to say its not a perennial bottom dweller of a situation but their football program has never been truly elite like football. I know that building a championship program is not an overnight process but I do believe that one of the key components of that is by building excitement at the youth levels.
I have already made postcards, flyers, facebook posts & tweets about our Youth Camp and just various program promotions as well...
My question for you all is, what have you done to promote your youth football camps? or What have you done to promote your program amongst the youth in your area?
Thank you for taking the time to read this....Kyle |
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CoachL
Freshmen Member
Posts: 24
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Post by CoachL on May 14, 2015 14:01:04 GMT -6
We always schedule our youth camp after the 4th of July that way we can have our program be a part of the local parade. We have players walk in the parade with posters handing out flyers/brochures out to families that are interested. It has been a great way to get the word out.
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smcauliffe54
Sophomore Member
Wisconsin 2018 Division 4 State Champions 14-0
Posts: 188 
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Post by smcauliffe54 on May 15, 2015 6:17:44 GMT -6
Put fliers in the middle schools before they leave for summer break. put it on facebook. go to your youth coaches or coaches that coached last year and ask for the rosters and email those parents. go to baseball games soccer games that are going on now and hand out fliers.
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Post by blb on May 15, 2015 6:23:27 GMT -6
Have youth coaches give each player camp flyer when they sign up.
Have youth coaches call them once or twice to remind them to sign up-attend.
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Post by WingTheT on May 15, 2015 6:48:38 GMT -6
If you have any feeder schools or the area parks that have a football team associated with your school, make sure to contact these coaches/parentals so they know about this camp.
Last few years, I was at a school that always ran a youth YMCA football camp at the local park as well as having a youth camp at the school and anyone could attend both. Promoted both the school (private school) to both students and parents in the surrounding community.
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Post by fcboiler87 on May 15, 2015 10:41:35 GMT -6
I am also a first year HC. I am taking off two days next week to go and visit the local elementary and middle schools. I will speak with every student (in a group) and talk about the camp and the game. I have fliers that are sorted out in groups 30 stacks of 25 or whatever the school requested. That way, you make it easy on them to pass out. Every kid in grades K-7 will get our fliers, and that will be over 1200 kids. In addition, I will push it on social media as well as the local newspaper.
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Post by CoachWeitz on May 16, 2015 16:45:58 GMT -6
This is something I've taken over for our program and am a big believer in the importance of this. We mainly focused on Middle Schools but are in the process of branching out to our elementary. There's a couple of things we do, we are in a very different setting though, large city school, but I think there's a few good things we do.
The first thing we do, and we are incredibly lucky to be able to do this, is have the middle school teams over for a visit on the last day of the first semester. This gives us a chance to get their information and have them meet our administration and see our facilities.
The major component of what we do is what we call our Middle School Academy. Currently this is 2 days a week for 90 mins. We spend about 45 mins on change of direction and lifting technique (we use stations) and then 45 minutes with a position group, one day offense one day defense.
The middle school academy culminates with out Middle School Camp which is two weeks (last two weeks of the school year) of on field practice. These run like a team camp, one week offense, one week defense. These are amazing, best thing we do by far. We are able to get the varsity coaches out to help with the freshman coaches and we try to get as many youth/middle school coaches as we can to be there to see the drills.
We've added a few things this year that have huge potential. The first thing we did is have a combine at every middle school right after school in the gym. We have them run the 40, do a sled push that sort of thing. These have been great even though they sound ridiculous when you say you're having a Middle School Combine. We also added a Coaches Clinic into our Middle School Academy and once a week we discuss a different topic before the middle school academy and then they will help a position coach with their drills.
If you've got any questions feel free to PM me, I'm more than happy to help.
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Post by bluboy on May 16, 2015 17:42:02 GMT -6
Here is what we do (in no particular order):
1 - Hold clinics for youth coaches and use our kids as demonstrators. When we do this, we specifically ask them what they want us to talk about.
2- Take time during pre-season camp and have our kids (who once played for the youth program) run the youth practice. Our kids do all the coaching (we tell them what they should be doing).
3- Have a night where we honor the entire youth program (all levels of football and cheerleaders). After pre-game warm-up, each youth team is announced and these kids walk onto the field and shake the hand of every player and coach. All youth kids get into game for free if they wear their game jersey.
4- In the spring, we run a free passing clinic for kids in grades 5-8 . It's one night a week for about 1 1/2 hours. Kids get coached up on offensive and defensive positions (QB, WR, DB) and then play a game of 2-hand touch.
5-We award a camp scholarship to two youth players (from every level) to attend our summer football camp.
6-One of us (head coach or assistant) will speak at all the youth level end-of-season banquets.
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Post by seanie12 on May 17, 2015 9:22:02 GMT -6
Coach Kylem56,
I'm on the other side of the coin, a youth coach and the Football Director for our Youth Football Program. The one thing I wanted to suggest is for your high school to allow free admission to any youth player or youth cheerleader (from your feeder program or programs that is) who wears their jersey free admission into all home games. You could also consider two ball boys for each home game from the 8th grade level youth team. Our H.S. is conducting a coaches clinic for us youth coaches next month and they allowed us to host a 6 week skills and drills spring camp in their indoor practice facility. They are hosting a youth camp later next month of which we are promoting via website, social media, etc in addition to a couple of coaches will be helping as well. Also, we were able to get a break on our uniforms this season with Riddell, (our uniforms are going to mirror the high schools) by taking advantage of the discount. The key is as you turn around the program, you only want your program to be what the kids and more importantly the parents consider, not other programs swooping in cherry picking your talented youth players before they make it to high school.
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Post by kylem56 on May 17, 2015 18:03:20 GMT -6
Coach Kylem56, I'm on the other side of the coin, a youth coach and the Football Director for our Youth Football Program. The one thing I wanted to suggest is for your high school to allow free admission to any youth player or youth cheerleader (from your feeder program or programs that is) who wears their jersey free admission into all home games. You could also consider two ball boys for each home game from the 8th grade level youth team. Our H.S. is conducting a coaches clinic for us youth coaches next month and they allowed us to host a 6 week skills and drills spring camp in their indoor practice facility. They are hosting a youth camp later next month of which we are promoting via website, social media, etc in addition to a couple of coaches will be helping as well. Also, we were able to get a break on our uniforms this season with Riddell, (our uniforms are going to mirror the high schools) by taking advantage of the discount. The key is as you turn around the program, you only want your program to be what the kids and more importantly the parents consider, not other programs swooping in cherry picking your talented youth players before they make it to high school. Sean I like your thoughts on letting those kids into any home game free as long as they were their jersey. Our AD (also my DC) alread suggested that as long as they have their jersey on, they can come on the field an be apart of the tunnel. We have already done a coaches clinic which not many of them took advantage of but we did it in early January. I actually bought yard signs yesterday to put on school property and around town to promote the camp. Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated |
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Post by coachtua on May 18, 2015 1:28:21 GMT -6
If you have an alumni that are currently in the league or recently retired, have him as the "guest coach". Vikings youth camp with special coach "Joe Smith". We have done this the past three years. Also we team up with the local Pop Warner league. We have a free chalk talk with the coaches in the morning, prior to the camp starting. Philosophy, Q&A about offensive/defensive scheme, conditioning, etc. Then the boys come and we put them through a mini practice. We usually host it right before they start their fall league.
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