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Post by jared10227 on Apr 24, 2016 21:20:05 GMT -6
Put this in the wrong thread to begin with....
This is my first head coaching job in football (been a baseball head coach before). This is a middle school gig, as I volunteered to take over our disastrous middle school program after being at the varsity level for five years. I have 72 guys that have shown interest in coming out for our program, as opposed to 19 that played last year. I have a pretty good idea who my LT and QB are, but after that me and my assistants (2 at the MS level....this is gonna be fun. Read: tough) have no clue about most of the other kids.
What would you guys suggest doing the first 2-3 days of spring practice to find out who our dudes are?
Should I teach them our stretching routine that we will go through daily and then let them play powerball to get a Guage of who can do what? Or just start piecing it together, put my LT and QB in their spots and start installing the offense right away, moving guys as we see where they best fit. What are your thoughts?
I have never been in this situation as the places I have been, coaches were already on staff that knew most of the kids and their abilities.
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Post by coachbdud on Apr 24, 2016 21:45:14 GMT -6
Have the fat kids go with your OL coach
Skinny kids go with your wr coach
Buff kids go with RB coach
Best looking kid goes with qb Coach
Start working O, and shuffle kids around over next few days as you see which talents a kid has
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Post by fantom on Apr 24, 2016 22:14:00 GMT -6
Put this in the wrong thread to begin with.... This is my first head coaching job in football (been a baseball head coach before). This is a middle school gig, as I volunteered to take over our disastrous middle school program after being at the varsity level for five years. I have 72 guys that have shown interest in coming out for our program, as opposed to 19 that played last year. I have a pretty good idea who my LT and QB are, but after that me and my assistants (2 at the MS level....this is gonna be fun. Read: tough) have no clue about most of the other kids. What would you guys suggest doing the first 2-3 days of spring practice to find out who our dudes are? Should I teach them our stretching routine that we will go through daily and then let them play powerball to get a Guage of who can do what? Or just start piecing it together, put my LT and QB in their spots and start installing the offense right away, moving guys as we see where they best fit. What are your thoughts? I have never been in this situation as the places I have been, coaches were already on staff that knew most of the kids and their abilities. If you have no objections I'm going to move this to the Youth board. This sounds like what youth coaches do all the time. |
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Post by jrk5150 on Apr 25, 2016 8:25:34 GMT -6
There is a lot of documentation out there for evaluating kids for position placement at the youth level, which includes MS. Dave Cisar has some material on that. Others do as well, off the top of my head can't remember who.
That is a LOT of kids. One team? Or can you break them into two or even three teams? If you can only have one team and you have 50+ kids, you run the risk of losing a TON of them going into HS. That's just too many kids to give a meaningful experience to. If you dole out the playing time to try to help develop the most kids, then the good ones get p*ssed they aren't playing, and the "bad" ones don't get enough work to see any progress or hope for progress. If you just play the top 25 kids (which by the way will be hard enough to do), you'll barely develop them, and you lose the rest. It's just a flat-out lose-lose situation.
Not sure what your local situation is, but I would highly recommend trying to figure out a way to break that team up into units that are no more than 25-30 kids. See if you can enter multiple teams into your MS league. Talk to the other MS programs and maybe arrange to play 5 or 6 quarter games with the extra quarters being the equivalent of your "JV" (I've seen youth leagues do that). Or try to find a youth program to partner with where the younger ages can play with them and have your team being just the 8th grade kids or something like that. Or create a little 3 team internal program and have actual games against each other regularly with a "travel squad" or something.
As for figuring out what you have - run lots of skill/drill stations and take note of who is doing what. It's the same way we do it at youth when we get new kids every year. You'll start to see the kids that can move, and have the coordination, and have some aggression, etc. And while you won't know for sure, the kids that are mauling the dummies/bags are LIKELY, not definitely, kids that will maul each other when the pads go on. What will be harder to do is find the kids who are willing to turn into players but don't have the experience (yet) to show it. That's why you really need to break that big group up into more manageable groups to give them meaningful reps with meaningful individualized coaching.
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Post by 33coach on Apr 28, 2016 9:15:08 GMT -6
Have the fat kids go with your OL coach Skinny kids go with your wr coach Buff kids go with RB coach Best looking kid goes with qb Coach Start working O, and shuffle kids around over next few days as you see which talents a kid has this is pretty much a standard, BUT its tough at the MS level because none of them are buff LOL. so typically what we will do for the first practice is what we like to call "position discovery" with our skinny kids - each position coach runs them through their fundamental EDD's for 10 minutes (SE/RB/QB) circuit style. after that your coaches should have a good idea of who can probably play there...with some adjustments throughout the week...and only takes 30 minutes. |
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Post by 33coach on Apr 28, 2016 9:15:58 GMT -6
also...what MS program has 75 kids?!?!?!?!?!??! are you hiring?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 28, 2016 20:28:21 GMT -6
With that many, the 1st thing you need to find out about it is not their skills, but who really wants it. The kids can see how many of them there are, they know it's going to be competitive, so it should be obvious from the start that how badly each of them wants to play is going to be a big factor. There are lots of contests you can do that can help you tell, such as 3-way tug of war (although not with the towel, because that's rigged to favor the one in the middle). But you're not testing their strength, you're testing their will, so score accordingly. Also, give them some instructions where they have to listen carefully to tell what you want, and then by their actions see who was paying att'n, and who wasn't. Make clear to them that whoever pays the most att'n to you, and shows the competitive will, will be paid the most att'n by you. Have them understand that regardless of where their skill level starts, you'll pay the most att'n to developing those players' skills, but not invest as much on players who don't seem to care.
Not unless the powers that be make you.
My correspondent in Houston says it's like that there. Unfortunately that makes the great majority of them minimum-play, who just make token appearances at WR & CB, and often are sorted into those spots prematurely, maybe via "politics". I hope our original poster's in a better situation than there.
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Post by IronmanFootball on May 4, 2016 6:21:03 GMT -6
Put this in the wrong thread to begin with.... This is my first head coaching job in football (been a baseball head coach before). This is a middle school gig, as I volunteered to take over our disastrous middle school program after being at the varsity level for five years. I have 72 guys that have shown interest in coming out for our program, as opposed to 19 that played last year. I have a pretty good idea who my LT and QB are, but after that me and my assistants (2 at the MS level....this is gonna be fun. Read: tough) have no clue about most of the other kids. What would you guys suggest doing the first 2-3 days of spring practice to find out who our dudes are? Should I teach them our stretching routine that we will go through daily and then let them play powerball to get a Guage of who can do what? Or just start piecing it together, put my LT and QB in their spots and start installing the offense right away, moving guys as we see where they best fit. What are your thoughts? I have never been in this situation as the places I have been, coaches were already on staff that knew most of the kids and their abilities. Every January I give everyone a chance to be Odell (or Ordell as one of my kids said) or Barry Sanders. We do our warm-up, if a guy looks a little clunky we make a note that he looks like OL/DL. Then they run routes (cones out) and catch passes, take a handoff and make cuts (use cones), and throw the football (just let them warm up like QB and see). I feel like catching a football is natural, you can get a little better, but you either can catch or you can't (I can't). Throwing is the same, you can have some things fixed but you either can throw or can't (I can't). Speed can be improved but not usually an 8.2 40 down to a 4.5. A 5.1 to a 4.6 sure (I'm also slow). So if you can't throw, catch, take a handoff, or run- you play OT/C here. If you can kinda run but can't throw, catch, or take a handoff you're a guard. You can see from here. |
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Post by coachdoug on May 4, 2016 8:22:01 GMT -6
I feel like catching a football is natural, you can get a little better, but you either can catch or you can't (I can't). Throwing is the same, you can have some things fixed but you either can throw or can't (I can't). Sorry to go off on a tangent here, but I felt I had to address the quoted statement. That is completely untrue - catching and throwing are skills and if you can teach and drill the proper mechanics for those skills you can and will see dramatic improvements in the player's ability. Now, of course, there are limits - if a kid has no arms he is probably never going to be able to catch or throw effectively, but within whatever range of natural ability a kid has, coaching can move the kid to the upper limits of that range, and the range for most kids is probably a lot bigger than you can imagine. Having said that, I get your point - look at how the kids perform naturally and work with the kids that appear to have the best natural skill sets for each position. That is just common sense and I think that is what most coaches do in some manner or another. |
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Post by jared10227 on May 4, 2016 8:57:54 GMT -6
also...what MS program has 75 kids?!?!?!?!?!??! are you hiring? I was as surprised as you are that 75 kids said they wanted to play. However, we have only consistency had 52 at practice. But thats still a large step up from less than the 20 that they had last year |
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Post by IronmanFootball on May 4, 2016 9:26:09 GMT -6
I feel like catching a football is natural, you can get a little better, but you either can catch or you can't (I can't). Throwing is the same, you can have some things fixed but you either can throw or can't (I can't). Sorry to go off on a tangent here, but I felt I had to address the quoted statement. That is completely untrue - catching and throwing are skills and if you can teach and drill the proper mechanics for those skills you can and will see dramatic improvements in the player's ability. Now, of course, there are limits - if a kid has no arms he is probably never going to be able to catch or throw effectively, but within whatever range of natural ability a kid has, coaching can move the kid to the upper limits of that range, and the range for most kids is probably a lot bigger than you can imagine. Having said that, I get your point - look at how the kids perform naturally and work with the kids that appear to have the best natural skill sets for each position. That is just common sense and I think that is what most coaches do in some manner or another. We're saying the same thing- I'm saying if some ability is there, you can improve it, but some kids CANT throw (me) and some CANT catch (I have a wingback with maybe 1 reception and 3 drops / practice up from not catching a ball for almost 3 years)- we rep tennis ball drills, routes without the ball, routes with the ball, handoff drills, speed camp, agility drills, an intensive S&C program that includes bilateral and unilateral days... CANT CATCH. |
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Post by 53 on May 29, 2016 15:41:26 GMT -6
You need to be running them through drills, practice routine and structure before your first official practice in full pads, if at all possible.
I'd also have a pretty strict attendance policy with that many players instead of letting them come and go as they please. This will save you a lot of headaches down the road anyways.
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