els36
Sophomore Member
Posts: 240 
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Post by els36 on Mar 13, 2024 8:41:35 GMT -6
How do you get your young guys reps? We are a small school and have 55 on our roster grades 9-12 and all practice together. In the past we have done it where the young guys have a block of 15 mins at the end of each practice to get their team reps (they still get indy reps with their position coach). To keep the young guys more engaged, I was looking at having 5 mins at the end of run period, 5 mins at the end of 7v7, 7 mins at the end of team for the young guys. I feel this would keep them more engaged throughout practice and see the older guys rep it, then follow them. Mondays- young guy reps a the end since its more of our install day, Tuesdays- offensive reps for young guys, Wednesday- defensive reps for young guys, Thursdays- both sides of the ball. How do you guys do it? I know some may have the ability to divide the staff, it would be very difficult for us. Thanks!
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Post by powercounterandjet on Mar 13, 2024 8:48:49 GMT -6
The best way I've seen and will do this year is to script it in. For example, if you've got 12 plays of team, go:
6 - 1s
3 - 2s
3 - 1s
or however you want to split it up. For you at only 55 players it should be easy to get most the young guys you want reps in with the 2s as you probably have guys playing both ways, have 3s fill in. If you have extra time in the period you can get the 3s a rep or two as well. It "sucks losing" reps for the 1s but the 2s need reps as well (one play away) and it lets you coach those 1s more during those 3 plays during the 2s if needed and keep things flowing. If you're already adding extra time at the end, just bake that into all of practice and now get more reps.
But I wouldn't have an old-young section as the old guys will goof off/become disinterested during the young period and vice-versa when ideally you have everyone locked in the whole time.
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Post by MICoach on Mar 13, 2024 9:03:48 GMT -6
How do you get your young guys reps? We are a small school and have 55 on our roster grades 9-12 and all practice together. In the past we have done it where the young guys have a block of 15 mins at the end of each practice to get their team reps (they still get indy reps with their position coach). To keep the young guys more engaged, I was looking at having 5 mins at the end of run period, 5 mins at the end of 7v7, 7 mins at the end of team for the young guys. I feel this would keep them more engaged throughout practice and see the older guys rep it, then follow them. Mondays- young guy reps a the end since its more of our install day, Tuesdays- offensive reps for young guys, Wednesday- defensive reps for young guys, Thursdays- both sides of the ball. How do you guys do it? I know some may have the ability to divide the staff, it would be very difficult for us. Thanks! We've done 5 at the end...I am starting to think 5 at the beginning would be better. I also think if you're using young guys as a scout team that you need to gas them up and sell them on being tough and making things hard for the 1's. If you can take your scout reps and translate them to your own language (e.g. everybody runs power) then that helps too. We had some years where we almost never drew scout cards for our scout defense because we could show the same thing from our own system, and then the young guys and d specialists are learning their normal responsibilities. |
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Post by chi5hi on Mar 13, 2024 9:59:09 GMT -6
How many coaches on staff?
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els36
Sophomore Member
Posts: 240
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Post by els36 on Mar 13, 2024 10:23:04 GMT -6
How many coaches on staff? 7 coaches including myself. |
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Post by irishdog on Mar 13, 2024 10:27:24 GMT -6
How many coaches on staff? My question too. Always coached in small schools (small numbers). Had to be creative. Had 5 coaches on the staff. When I had the older guys in the classroom film/study hall before practice I had my younger guys in the weight room or on the field (depending upon the day) with three of my assistant coaches. They would cover their fundamentals, alignments, assignments etc. Same stuff we taught the older guys. When the older guys went into a "team" session (7 on 7, or actual "team" period) we would give the young bucks an 8 play script. Not ideal but under the circumstances our young guys stayed engaged. |
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Post by coachwoodall on Mar 14, 2024 7:31:12 GMT -6
Don't think minutes, think reps. Another thing to think about is GAME reps. The practice reps should reflect the amount of game reps.
If you want to do minutes, then schedule it that way.
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Post by Defcord on Mar 14, 2024 7:55:59 GMT -6
Get them on the scout teams as much as possible and put a couple of coaches over there that are going to coach the heck out of the fundamentals. Regardless of scheme your fundamentals will be applicable. I am the head coach and defensive coordinator and I coach our defensive scout team. I have a guy run the card and set up and I am coaching fundamentals like crazy. I coach it just like if it were an actual defensive period. I get as many guys in there as well.
If you have young kids that would just get killed during team periods by being on the scout team, I would have one coach take them and work with them. That leaves you six coaches to keep the regular practice working. Defensively you can work block destruction and tackling with every kid regardless of position. Offensively you can work blocking with every kid regardless of position and I would even throw the big kids a ball some.
I don't ever want kids standing around for an extended period of time so they are going in on the scout team or they are going and working with a coach on the side. Even it if it is not a perfect fit in that side group, it's got to be better than them standing around. Kids play football to PLAY football.
We only have 6 coaches and 35-40 on our roster so we have had to figure some of this out before.
Other ideas would be to use them on scout team in untraditional ways. For example if we play a press man team, we will never have a kid who is good enough to cover our best receiver(s) so we might take a young DB presssed on the receiver and have him work the press to disrupt the release and then have a second DB pick up the receiver after he clears the press guy. That gets two young guys working coverage techniques and gives the offense a little better look. There's some other things like this we have done as well. Just trying to steal reps any way we can. Sometimes it is a shitshow but a lot of times we find ways that work.
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Post by MICoach on Mar 14, 2024 8:34:13 GMT -6
Utilizing multiple huddles can be helpful too
During screen/ROA/skelly periods offensively we will have the JV huddle go right after the varsity huddle running the exact same play. Once you've done it for a while it becomes a quick operation, one group running the play while the other is huddling to figure out their next call. If it's against a scout team the scout team knows they'll run the same scout card two times in a row.
Using multiple scout huddles is something we've done a bit too...obviously you're actually getting less reps per kid, but it's an organized way to make sure everyone is actually getting reps. And because they know they're only in for 1-2 plays then off for 1-2 plays, they tend to give a better effort.
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Post by veerwego on Mar 14, 2024 11:42:20 GMT -6
We did this a while back:
Monday night football. Add 10 minutes of the JV guys scrimmaging at the end of practice on Mondays. Have the varsity surrounding them, hooping and hollering. Make a big deal about it. Good stuff.
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Post by agap on Mar 14, 2024 17:54:18 GMT -6
JV/9th grade is separate during Team. I don't believe in taking away varsity reps for JV/9th grade. I also don't think JV/9th should have to play scout team so that's why they're separate. Like my college coach told me, if you have to go to your 2nd or 3rd best player at a position, you're going to lose anyways.
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Post by MICoach on Mar 15, 2024 8:22:55 GMT -6
JV/9th grade is separate during Team. I don't believe in taking away varsity reps for JV/9th grade. I also don't think JV/9th should have to play scout team so that's why they're separate. Like my college coach told me, if you have to go to your 2nd or 3rd best player at a position, you're going to lose anyways. This is a good point...I've always preferred having 9th and JV practice together and have them split time/reps as needed more than having JV and Varsity. For the last four years our HC has been firm on freshmen being independent and JV with the varsity so we do what we can with that. |
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Post by agap on Mar 15, 2024 9:00:01 GMT -6
JV/9th grade is separate during Team. I don't believe in taking away varsity reps for JV/9th grade. I also don't think JV/9th should have to play scout team so that's why they're separate. Like my college coach told me, if you have to go to your 2nd or 3rd best player at a position, you're going to lose anyways. This is a good point...I've always preferred having 9th and JV practice together and have them split time/reps as needed more than having JV and Varsity. For the last four years our HC has been firm on freshmen being independent and JV with the varsity so we do what we can with that. Obviously if it's a small school, JV/9th might have to be with varsity just because of numbers. The school I was at last year used JV as scout offense/defense every day and barely got reps themselves, and they complained about it every day the second half of the season. Then they wouldn't give much effort on scout which just hurts varsity. Let JV/9th practice on the other end of the field. Take just enough JV guys if you need them to fill out a scout. A couple schools I was at let the guys who rotated in stand around doing nothing. Make those guys play scout and when they rotate in, they switch jerseys with whoever they're replacing. This helps to let JV/9th practice separate during team. |
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Post by MICoach on Mar 15, 2024 9:37:25 GMT -6
Obviously if it's a small school, JV/9th might have to be with varsity just because of numbers. The school I was at last year used JV as scout offense/defense every day and barely got reps themselves, and they complained about it every day the second half of the season. Then they wouldn't give much effort on scout which just hurts varsity. Let JV/9th practice on the other end of the field. Take just enough JV guys if you need them to fill out a scout. A couple schools I was at let the guys who rotated in stand around doing nothing. Make those guys play scout and when they rotate in, they switch jerseys with whoever they're replacing. This helps to let JV/9th practice separate during team. We had the same issues with our JV last year...even with some built in time for them, it just never felt like they were getting enough real reps. Your second paragraph describes what we did at a previous school and it worked out great for our JV kids because they were constantly going back and forth between playing against better competition as varsity scouts and the freshmen which gave them chances to work on technique and such. |
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Post by Defcord on Mar 15, 2024 9:55:24 GMT -6
This is a good point...I've always preferred having 9th and JV practice together and have them split time/reps as needed more than having JV and Varsity. For the last four years our HC has been firm on freshmen being independent and JV with the varsity so we do what we can with that. Obviously if it's a small school, JV/9th might have to be with varsity just because of numbers. The school I was at last year used JV as scout offense/defense every day and barely got reps themselves, and they complained about it every day the second half of the season. Then they wouldn't give much effort on scout which just hurts varsity. Let JV/9th practice on the other end of the field. Take just enough JV guys if you need them to fill out a scout. A couple schools I was at let the guys who rotated in stand around doing nothing. Make those guys play scout and when they rotate in, they switch jerseys with whoever they're replacing. This helps to let JV/9th practice separate during team. At a small school if those rotation guys are standing around, it's valuable time wasted. I always tell people the challenge is at a small school is you have to teach kids twice as much in half the time because you are teaching them both sides of the ball and splitting practice in half. As a defensive coordinator I noted up the fundamentals of our defensive rotation guys while they were on scout D. Have to find ways to steal reps at a small school and coaching the scout team to get better at the fundamentals is a way to do that. I think the issue with smalls schools splitting the freshmen and jv out is that there's not enough numbers for those guys to go do a team period at the other end. Could do fundamentals though. We only have 35 kids on our roster and two are soccer plays that kick. That means we need 25-26 guys during team period. That leaves 8 at the other end. We do some inside and passing stuff where we can split into an old and young group though, which is the same concept and it's really beneficial for us. |
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