VENTING....Spring Football Week 1

Spring can be frustrating.... Spring sports players not being there is biggest reason. Well that and you putting players into the fire some for the first time. I always try to tell myself during spring to remember that you arent preparing for a playoff game on Friday. As Aaron Rodgers would say... R-E-L-A-X... Try to remember, that anything you get accomplished in spring is a bonus. You don't have to be maxed out ready to play a real game. Test things out, see if kids can handle certain things. I try to always remember this quote..."Things are never as GOOD as they seem, but they are never as BAD as they seem either."

Real talk. I'd jump at the chance to actually get some install done right now, regardless of quality.

What is this spring football you speak of?

Ours is going pretty well. There are a few frustrations.

1-We are a 1A school and our baseball team is playing in the state championship Saturday so we are missing multiple players from that. Including our starting QB. But hoping him not being there will help us prepare the next man up because the starter has played every game the last two years so having a back up plan will be nice.

2-We have a math teacher that loves math like all of us love football. He is give players 300 problems a week (in addition to normal classwork) they have to complete for a grad and he will only help kids on them during that tutoring session.

Other than those minor set backs, ours is going pretty smoothly. Our DC was going to install a 3 man front defense for next year and then he took a new job the day before we started and I got moved up. I am not completely familiar with the defense but it's actually really cool learning how things work in real practice setting without the pressure of a game on Friday.

I have to disagree.  Having spent many years without it, it's a great help to have it.  We're limited--helmets, shoulder pads, no body to body contact and we only go 10 days.  However, we get a lot done in terms of install and positions and our kids work hard.  They love being out there in the spring and we do as well.  By the time we hit August, we'll know who we have, we'll know what they can do (other than there may be one or two we're not sure of how they'll hit), and we'll have the basic stuff installed.  We can then use the first few weeks of practice to tune things up rather than starting from scratch.  How the kids work and how intense they are has a lot to do with how you approach practice.  And, BTW, I've got very few complaints at this point.  By this late in the spring, we've got almost everyone of our players out there and they're getting after it.  Three days in and I'm pretty pleased with what I see--way ahead of a year ago.

Our spring practices is going good as well. Our first week he had guys missing for track and baseball and the second week the same, but this week we have the track guys back. We have the young guys working technic against pads and doing a lot of install and getting them use to the speed and tempo of practice.

you know what...that makes a ton of sense really
we get 18 practices, so of course everybody is going to use all 18, but I bet it doesn't really start getting repetitive/boring until that last week or so. 10 practices, maybe less, is probably the sweet spot

the part about spring ball that really kills me is how it turns into a d--- measuring contest between the coordinators because we are only going against each other.....I have sat in a meeting at 8pm on a tuesday trying to anticipate what our offense might do during the scrimmage tomorrow and what we are going to do about, even installing new stuff that we'll never use again just to try and gain an advantage over our own guys. 

"oh so that's how it is we're gonna bring a bunch of pressures on our first day of spring?"
"what are we supposed to do just sit back and let you sling it around"
"crap coach we're trying to work on timing"
"well we need to work on pressures"
"phuk you!"
"phuk you!"

later in the defensive meeting room..

"boys...check this chit out, we're gonna call it G8 summit because we're bringing 8 freaking dudes"

Gotta love that logic.

Hey Johnny, why didn't you do my homework last night?
Der...I hate Spanish coach, you know that.
Well, you must really love Spanish 2 to want to have to take it twice...

i swear someone goes around to the middle schools and tells all the kids freshman year doesn't count/matter 

i am not joking... a dozen+ kids a year really tell me that

Glad we don't have spring ball, I like to enjoy my summer and not worry about football till August. If we had spring ball I would be staring at the ceiling during the night all summer with what we have coming back this year...

Do you guys not have anything during the summer either?

I used to complain about being small, weak and slow and then I looked inward and realized my S&C program sucked. Made drastic changes to it and we were small, powerful, and quick 

I've been there. Had a team a few years back that of say 25 kids I think 18 were 9th/10th and 7 were 11th/12th (2 seniors) It sucked. We played a bunch of teams that had 25-30 upperclassmen. Finished 2-8 about 4 TD's from 5-5. Next year we were 7-4 after maturing but also changing up the S&C 

We have Spring Ball in PA no live contact. For us alot of times we may not have the kids we are counting on due to conflicts with other sports. This allows the younger kids to get a lot of reps and really get to learn the system. I find it to be valuable. Allows us to install all our BASE stuff without the pressure of preparing for a game. In the summer we work the kids on INDY all summer and some team work. Once the season starts we have one scrimmage and we start our season. So we really only have one week of DOUBLE sessions a scrimmage and one week to prep for the first game. Without all of the SPRING and SUMMER work there is no way we would be prepared for the season. One other caveat we have had kids come out to give football a try in SPRING that have decided it was for them and have helped us.