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Post by coachwoodall on Jun 16, 2015 20:05:53 GMT -6
I know that there can be great deal difference based on where you are and your state association rules, and also the size of your school in relation the division you compete. Here is our deal:
We are in the largest classification in the state. We have had a varsity/JV and a freshman team.
We had been allowed to let kids play 8 quarters per week. So all my backups could play JV on Thursday and still dress on varsity Friday, just in case. Also we could dress a freshman as a reward if we had any extra jerseys. We didn't abuse this rule, but others may have......
It was great that I could get my 'next year guy' ready by getting his reps Thursday night, but still was protected from losing him from Friday night if I needed him if I was in a bind.
Regardless, we are having to go back to a strict varsity and JV system next year (yeah, the puds in the suits are scar-ed chytless over the concussion cray-ap)
We are mid size for our classification, so our numbers are good just not great compared to the top teams we play. We are having to try figure how to spread the kids. If a kid dresses on JV, then he is out for Friday. The JV kid can move up the next week if needed. Basically, you get to play 1 game per calender week.
So so do I take my #3 Sophomore CB and hold him just in case for Friday night, or do I let him get reps each week on Thursday during JV, and cross my fingers I never have to use my #5 senior CB?
What is a JV guy for you? Anyone that isn't a senior? Anyone who can't start? The guys who wait to come out in the fall? Can seniors be JV if they aren't the starters? I know this isn't a difficult question per se, but we've been having the best of both worlds so long that we're drawing a blank; plus we're not as blessed numbers wise as our competition.
Thanks in in advance to the wisdom of the board.
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Post by coachd5085 on Jun 16, 2015 20:53:50 GMT -6
Coach, is there anyway you can talk to your district/conference/league..whatever...and play JV on Saturday instead of Thursday?
JV to me (in a non limited or at least 8 quarter system) would be anyone that doesn't start. However if there was a Senior who wasn't starting,his JV playing time would be mitigated by several factors (would it stunt other's development, is he not starting due to lack of work ethic, is he in the rotation on Fridays etc.)
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Post by wolverine55 on Jun 16, 2015 20:54:11 GMT -6
For us, JV is for sophomores and juniors who don't start on the varsity team. Last year, we had a couple freshmen dress the last few JV games, but that was a combination of reward for them and very little DL depth on varsity, which led to even less DL depth on JV. We did also play two seniors last year in JV, but they were kids who had never been on the team before and weren't that good so they weren't going to get much if any varsity PT.
Our state's rule is a kid can play in 14 games and a single play counts as a game played. However, there are two big caveats to that rule. If a kid plays only special teams, that doesn't count as a game played. And, we have a 35 point running clock mercy rule. If a kid doesn't play until after the running clock has been established, that doesn't count as a game played either.
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Post by fantom on Jun 16, 2015 21:59:47 GMT -6
We don't have a freshman team. JV's for us are 8-10th graders who don't play significant minutes in varsity games (8th graders aren't eligible for varsity).
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Post by coachtua on Jun 16, 2015 22:54:42 GMT -6
California coach here. Our section is one where you can only play JV or Varsity week to week, not both. This hurts when we play out of section teams that send their back ups down to JV and we have to abide by our section rules but the opponent doesnt.
For us, all sophomores, unless absolute studs, play JV. Juniors that might help us as seniors but are not quite ready play JV. Frosh only play Frosh, during playoffs some get brought up for depth and to see them compete against Varsity guys if we think they might help the following season.
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Post by coachbdud on Jun 16, 2015 23:00:00 GMT -6
For us in Cali
We have all 3 levels.
Freshman
JV
Varsity
(Some areas play just 2 levels... Frosh/soph only and varsity )
Just about everyone who is at least decent has 3 levels, at least in our area. I can't think off the top of my head of a solid program year in and out that doesn't have 3 levels
Anyway JV for us is mostly sophomores... But it can be for anyone who is not a senior
So on an average year we have 1-2 stud freshman up (kids we KNOW will be on varsity as sophomores, we've had a run of little brothers of solid varsity players for us, and these kids have often played up )
And a few really bad juniors ... I don't put juniors down for playing time, I'd way rather a sophomore start on JV than a junior (more time to develop him)
Usually we have 3-5 juniors down on JV who are in most cases there so they won't get hurt
Or they are kids who came out late and have never played football before (a safety concern on varsity )
A lot of schools are like ha, predominantly a sophomore team with a few freshman and juniors sprinkled in
I know of a few schools who play a ton of juniors down on JV, I've never figured out why... I can think of a few schools who do really well on JV every year and then don't really do very well at the varsity level
Kids get 1 game a week
Can slide them up or down, we pull kids up when necessary
But they can't play 6 quarters, or multiple games a week or anything like that like I know you can in some states
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Post by 3rdandlong on Jun 17, 2015 1:04:31 GMT -6
We've played with lots of juniors at the JV level because it was a time for them to get some reps. And guess what, by the time they became seniors they helped out a lot at the Varsity level.
Now, in response to the OP, if I had a JV starter who was also a valuable Special Teams and emergency backup only player on a Friday night, I'd keep him at the Varsity level because the head coach doesn't get fired for W-L record on Thursday afternoons but he can be fired for his W-L record on Fridays.
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Post by dubber on Jun 17, 2015 2:39:11 GMT -6
IN Indiana the rule is 5 quarters.
A single play of offense or defense counts as a quarter played.
If a guy gets 2 quarters on Friday night, he can get 3 on Monday (when we play our JV games).
This means we do not sub in non-varsity players until the 4th quarter, regardless of the situation.
Last season, we had 22 varsity players on a 34 man roster. Which means we had 12 for JV, and they NEVER got PT until the 4th
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Post by realdawg on Jun 17, 2015 3:34:23 GMT -6
NC as far as I know still has the 8 qtr rule. Before we went to it, we were in same boat as coachwoodall. We played our backups up in that situation.
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Post by coachwoodall on Jun 17, 2015 6:48:51 GMT -6
3rd
One of the things we are worried about is how well the JV does because we don't want with to play skeleton group and have them get drilled every week, then have no confidence. We're committed to keeping the freshmen together so they can develop as a class, so we're not going to play them up to JV. Some of our region rivals have significant numbers advantage over us. Our big rival has over 3300 kids in the school, we have half that.
We've just started turning our program back around and don't want to lose those kids that need that development. I'm not all that worried about the wins/loses per se, I'm worried about them getting drilled and losing hope and giving up on the game.
Another issue is the varsity depth. If we play kids down, that V/JV tweener doesn't get any Friday night reps.
I don't mean to sound like a negative Nellie. Our numbers are pretty good, it's just a comparative thing to our opponents. Plus for the kids its image thing. In the past a kid wasn't a 'JV' because once you moved up the freshman team you practiced with the varsity and at least got to dress out on Friday, we'll have some juniors that will be 'demoted'.
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Post by wingtol on Jun 17, 2015 6:49:44 GMT -6
Jv for us idealy is 9/10 graders. Occasionally a Jr. or two who aren't very good and even in rare cases a Sr. who would get killed in a varsity game. We are a small school and some times struggle to fill out the Jv team as do others in our region. We had to pull the plug on a few jv games this year due to our numbers or the other teams numbers. We try our best to have a Jv team every year as it is critical to get them game experience. As far as I know there is no rule on how many qtrs a kid can play in a week.
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Post by hsrose on Jun 17, 2015 8:36:15 GMT -6
I'm in northern CA. Before my current school we always had 3 levels. Frosh played on Thursdays, JV played before the varsity game on Friday nights. Players get 1 game per week, 10 games per season. We have 10 games in 11 weeks so we have a bye week. It was possible for a player to play 10 frosh games and get pulled up to JV the week of the Frosh bye if the frosh weren't on the same schedule as the JV/varsity, so the 10 game limitation prevents that.
JV were Soph's & some Jr's. At one school the coach used the JV for the 2nd team varsity guys, especially the skills guys. He went with the Jr's getting reps at the JV level so they would be able to step in at the varsity if the starter went down. His starting JV QB was always the #2 varsity QB. If the varsity QB got hurt in a game he'd figure he'd get through the game with the #3 handing the ball off and then next week bring in the #2 who had been getting reps all season as a JV starter.
At the other schools the JV were mostly Soph's and occasional Jr that was too weak/new to play varsity. Here the new/never played Sophs can play Frosh, but generally don't. Juniors can't play JV here so the levels should probably really be called Frosh, Frosh/Soph, and varsity.
At my current school we've had all 3 levels up to this last season. This year will be a mix with the Frosh getting the 1st 3 games by themselves before they are combined with the JV. When that happens there will be 4-6 Sophs that are pulled up to varsity. It's a scheduling thing mostly, there are only 2 frosh programs in our 7-team league so trying to find games is problematic. Other schools, larger schools that should have all 3 levels, are dropping their frosh programs because they can't get good, qualified coaches at that level. Plus we're in the hills so teams don't want to come up here so we have to travel a lot. What hits the Frosh programs here is numbers at the upper levels. Get some injuries and the teams pull from the lower levels. So the Frosh often end up with too few players so they cancel games. Makes the schedule very difficult to work, can play the same team a couple of times because there is nobody else available.
The JV schedule is the same as the varsity schedule. There was 1 game last year where the opposing team didn't have a JV team so we tried to find another team to play, didn't work out.
JV players can play varsity and bounce between levels, until we reach league. Once a JV plays varsity in league he has to stay up for the rest of the season. They can always come up, but they can't always go back down.
My goal is to return to the 3 levels but we have to get some wins so we get the numbers up.
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Post by rcole on Jun 17, 2015 9:01:31 GMT -6
Coach Woodall, I could have written that same post. Everybody I've talked to is scrambling to figure the same thing out. This is going to be difficult for most of our state schools that do not have crazy numbers. We had made a big deal in the community about starting a 9th grade team and now we have pretty much had to scrap that. If we field a 9th grade team, we would have to drop JV. And actually, one of our bigger schools in the county is doing just that, dropping JV so that they can keep freshmen together and play 10th graders up for depth on Friday night.I coached for years under the 4 quarter rule before we went to 8 quarters and we seemed fine. I think we actually had higher participation back then (nationally participation is down at least 12%). I think we will be fine a year or two into this, but this year it is a difficult transition. When we went to the 8 quarter rule many of our schools began to two platoon.I can tell you this, once I coached for 4 years at a school that two platooned, and then had to work at a school that did not, it was like I couldn't figure out how to get everything done. Two-platooning spoiled me big time. Coaching OL on a 2 platoon allowed me about an hour and a half of indi work. All positions got crazy reps everyday, 2 hours a day. I think we are going to see most schools have to drop the two platoon model, and most likely simplify some of what they are doing. Ironically, I think this rule will significantly increase the number of head collisions for the best 15 or so players, having the opposite of the intended affect. Let me know if you figure out the best answer because we are STRUGGLING to figure it out too.
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Post by coachd5085 on Jun 17, 2015 9:07:30 GMT -6
rcole That is a very interesting perspective on the situation--how decreasing the playing opportunities in GAMES will actually decrease the available players in the future and therefore INCREASE the amount of plays each player plays (and therefore the hits he takes) That might be an avenue of change--if the coaches (and I can't see why they wouldn't be) are against this rule. Have the coaches association start to compare the amount of plays players participate in by the week (not games, but plays) and you might have some ammo to get the rule changed.
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Post by rcole on Jun 17, 2015 10:01:49 GMT -6
I was looking at it myself and if you think about it, a kid in a two platoon system is playing 50-100 snaps. You make him play both ways and special teams because you no longer have those JV guys to play ST. It would seem to me you would double the number of snaps for the best 15 players. You would also significantly decrease playing time for many other kids, who will probably just drop out of football. What is best for the sport and best for the kids is a system based on snaps played or quarter played. That is too hard to regulate. If you dress, then you played, which is stupid. The new rule being a way to reduce head collisions, also ill conceived and poorly thought out by people who don't actually understand what we are doing.
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Post by bluboy on Jun 17, 2015 10:22:09 GMT -6
We field a frosh, soph, jv, and varsity team. Frosh is frosh only. We will bring up the better freshmen to jv only for the last jv game (after the frosh season has ended). The JV team is for juniors and better sophs. We will sometimes play a first year (first year playing football) senior in jv games. Not all sophs play in jv; if they don't, they will play in the soph games.
Who plays in jv game is always a great debate among our staff. We realize that a kid won't get better if he doesn't play, and that nothing teaches the game like playing the game. We have had a number of experiences where the soph or junior RB(who did not play much in a close varsity game) goes to the jv game and ends up injured (becasue he carried the ball a gazillion times).
What we started doing the last two years is sending all the kids (soph and jr) to jv games. The HC instructs the jv coach that certain kids would only play a half (and only on one side of the ball and no special teams) and then be done.
We view this as the best of the worst in that our young kids will get to play in a game, but will not get beat up (theoretically). Overall, this has worked for us.
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Post by rsmith627 on Jun 17, 2015 10:30:26 GMT -6
I have coached in three different states and it has been different in each one.
Utah: They can play in all 3 games if we want. (We would never do this)
Most schools here have 3 levels. A sophomore team (we don't do freshman because 9th graders are in junior high in most districts. The sophomore team is composed of 9th/10th graders. JV can be anybody 9-12. At the two schools I have been at JV was guys who were on the varsity but weren't going to see much time on Friday night. Sometimes we would use it to get guys some game reps if they were coming back from an injury. We also used it to develop some of our juniors who weren't contributing on Friday.
North Carolina: We had 3 levels. Frosh, JV, Varsity.
JV consisted of mostly 10th graders but we would pull up a few stud 9th graders as well. Occasionally we would move a junior down to develop him for his senior year. We also had 8 quarter rule here.
Michigan: 3 levels again; Frosh, JV, Varsity.
JV was all 10th graders for us. We were a two platoon team on all 3 levels so we didn't move players around, up or down. We occasionally would pull a younger guy up to varsity if he were going to make a huge contribution, but to do that a kid really had to be the man. We kept our 10 graders together on JV. In Michigan you can only play in one game per week.
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Post by fantom on Jun 17, 2015 11:09:10 GMT -6
We don't have a freshman team. JV's for us are 8-10th graders who don't play significant minutes in varsity games (8th graders aren't eligible for varsity). I forgot to mention our game limits. In Virginia a player is allowed to play 40 quarters per season, equivalent to 10 full games, with one play in a quarter counting as a full quarter. It's unenforceable unless you do something really stupid like sending full time varsity starters down to play JV games. |
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Post by bigmoot on Jun 17, 2015 12:57:33 GMT -6
For us, we have varsity and jv. Jv is 9th and a few 10th. In Georgia a kid can play six quarters a week. Several years ago, the rules were changed and the quarter count now starts on friday. So you do what you have to on Fridays and then cut and paste for jv games.
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Post by spos21ram on Jun 17, 2015 14:25:11 GMT -6
Our school has Freshmen, JV, and Varsity teams. Our JV is comprised of all Sophomores and Juniors that don't start or get significant varsity playing time. Some exceptions for example, our sophomore starting RB for varsity needs some reps at linebacker which he projects to be a varsity starter his junior year so he plays linebacker only for JV.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using proboards
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Post by sidelinetosideline on Jun 24, 2015 9:05:28 GMT -6
I'm from Canada so probably not applicable to a lot of you but ... in Canada almost every school has 2 levels, Junior (Gr 9 and 10) and Senior (Gr 11, 12 and 13 if applicable) with some small schools only having Senior for Gr 9-12. In my school very, very occasionally and under extenuating circumstances a Gr 9 or 10 will move up from Junior to play at Senior (only happened once in my school in my 4 years and it was due to a rash of injuries) but for the most part you play at your age level and that's that. Its not the type of thing where if you play really well you might get moved up, its more like 2 completely separate teams.
No play time limits for anyone and the concept of a freshmen team was completely new to me before I found this site.
Also worth noting that the HS football in my area is very much 2nd tier to the community summer teams.
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Post by Chris Clement on Jun 24, 2015 21:42:55 GMT -6
I'm from Canada so probably not applicable to a lot of you but ... in Canada almost every school has 2 levels, Junior (Gr 9 and 10) and Senior (Gr 11, 12 and 13 if applicable) with some small schools only having Senior for Gr 9-12. In my school very, very occasionally and under extenuating circumstances a Gr 9 or 10 will move up from Junior to play at Senior (only happened once in my school in my 4 years and it was due to a rash of injuries) but for the most part you play at your age level and that's that. Its not the type of thing where if you play really well you might get moved up, its more like 2 completely separate teams. No play time limits for anyone and the concept of a freshmen team was completely new to me before I found this site. Also worth noting that the HS football in my area is very much 2nd tier to the community summer teams. There used to be midget leagues for all sports in Ontario, this would have ended around 2004-ish, maybe a little later, but just after the double cohort. I find it surprising the club teams are better than the (good) HS teams in an area, I find that to rarely be the case. |
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Post by rpetrie on Jun 25, 2015 7:58:02 GMT -6
In our area of NY (Long Island)...We play most games on Saturdays unfortunately. JV is at 9AM...Varsity is typically @ 1 or 2PM. If a kid plays 1 down in a JV game they are ineligible for Varsity. If we have a Varsity game on a Friday we can dress them and if they do not play then they are eligible for the full JV game Saturday. Nothing associated with quarters as far as I know...just total number of games per week/per season.
That being said I only bring up the JV kid if we are in a bind due to an injury. If we feel we need him we'll snatch him on Mon/Tue so he gets the week of practice. Except for QB's...I'll wait. I've only had to do that 2x in 15yrs.
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Post by coachd5085 on Jun 25, 2015 8:55:42 GMT -6
In our area of NY (Long Island)...We play most games on Saturdays unfortunately. JV is at 9AM...Varsity is typically @ 1 or 2PM. If a kid plays 1 down in a JV game they are ineligible for Varsity. If we have a Varsity game on a Friday we can dress them and if they do not play then they are eligible for the full JV game Saturday. Nothing associated with quarters as far as I know...just total number of games per week/per season. That being said I only bring up the JV kid if we are in a bind due to an injury. If we feel we need him we'll snatch him on Mon/Tue so he gets the week of practice. Except for QB's...I'll wait. I've only had to do that 2x in 15yrs. Coach, you are using terms like "playing down" and "snatching up" -- is it safe to assume you have a program with delineated JV and Varsity teams that may even practice separately as opposed to the "anyone not starting on Varsity is JV" type model? |
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Post by rpetrie on Jun 25, 2015 9:00:26 GMT -6
Yes..we are pretty much separate regarding practice. We will bring over a group of JV skills for 7v7 stuff, but otherwise we do not practice together. JV has 3 coaches and they create their own practice schedule. Varsity kids never on JV squad...and I've never had an 11th grader participate on JV either. Not that I'm necessarily against it but that model doesn't work for us here.
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