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Post by coachdoug on Mar 20, 2009 11:56:49 GMT -6
I am a HS coaches son, I watched my dad coach for over 35 years. He coached me and now I coach my kids in there sporting activities not just football. I know for a fact that in my case there isn't any favoritism going on. I am harder on my kid, almost to hard. Last year I should have played him more but because I didn't want it to look like I was favoring him. I didn't play him as much as I should have. We as a coaching staff have take each others kids when it comes to discipline and encouragement so they don't feel it is just a parent thing. They seem to listen to the other coach than there overbearing dad/coach. It has helped in our relationship as fathers and sons. Now I am not saying it doesn't happen. I have been a parent and an assistant on teams where it is prevalent. I don't know how you combat that. Some parents as well as coaches are star struck and cant take the blinders off. they think there kid is the next Brett Farve or Barry Sanders. there will always be those out there. So if we eliminate the dad/coaches who will coach? I doubt that you will have enough volunteers out there at the youth level to coach with out a kid in the program. You say that you know for a fact that there isn't any favoritism going on your team with you son, but then you also say that you're harder on him than the other kids. So, by your own admission you hold your own kid to a different (albeit higher) standard than the other players. You demand more from him and push him harder. That'll probably make him a better player, don't you think? Favoritism has many faces - it's not always just handing out undeserved playing time. If you treat any kid differently than the others just because of what family he is from, there is some type of favoritism going on. So, by your own admission, there is absolutely favoritism going on on your team, whether you choose to recognize it or not. In any event, it's besides the point - the OP didn't say that a Dad coach cannot eliminate favoritism, it said that he cannot eliminate the PERCEPTION of favoritism. Again, your own statements seem to back this up. You said, "I should have played him more but because I didn't want it to look like I was favoring him." So, you treated a player differently than an unbiased third party would have specifically to deal with the PERCEPTION that you might be favoring him. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with Dad coaches. On our staff last year, I was the only non-Dad coach (well, there was one other non-Dad coach, but he only showed up about once every two weeks). Without Dad coaches, it would be next to impossible to fill all the coaching positions and many Dads are excellent coaches. If someone is a good coach, he's a good coach - having a kid doesn't suddenly turn a good coach into a moron. However, I have heard your argument before and felt that I should point the obvious flaws in the logic. The only time I have a real problem with a Dad coach is when he cannot see the reality of his kid's ability (as you said, he thinks his kid is the next Barry Sanders or Brett Favre), and plays his kid in a position or to an extent that no one else would. Fortunately, though, in my experience, those types are fairly rare - or perhpas we just do a better job than most of keeping them out of our program. As an example of what I think is best, on our team our Head Coach's kid is our QB. He never gets singled out for unfair criticism and his dad doesn't treat him any harder or softer than any other player, at least not that I can tell. IMHO he gets exactly as much playing time as he would if I or anyone else was the head coach instead of his dad. I haven't heard any complaints about favoritism. Of course, it helps that our QB is a rare talent - he's not a phenon, but he's probably in the top 5 or so that I've seen at his age in the 15 years I've been coaching. You would be hard pressed to find an objective observer who wouldn't agree that he should take pretty much all the snaps at QB (other than to keep a backup ready in case of an injury). I'm sure our head coach hasn't always handled it perfectly, but I think by basically treating his son exactly like he treats every other player, he is being a lot more fair to everyone than going overboard being tough on his son to combat the perception. Again, JMHO.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 12, 2009 10:14:36 GMT -6
We pretty much just play Federation rules. There are only a few special youth rules in our league: - The youngest tackle group (8-9s) must declare punt on 4th down & then there is no defensive rush, nor can the offense fake. The return is live, though, and all other age groups play standard rules on punts.
- Standard youth 2 pt PAT for kicking, 1 pt for running or passing it in (except in the youngest, 8-9, group, which also gets 2 pts for passing it in).
- Weight - every age/weight division has a max weight & the kids weigh in & do an equipment check before each game. No special weight for ball carriers and no older/lighters.
- Mercy rules kick in at a 30-pt differential. Leading team gets no more points for additional scores; no more PATs or kickoffs - other team just gets the ball 1-10 on opponent's 40; no running clock; no restriction on plays except leading team can't run "trick" plays.
I generally agree with Dave - the fewer special rules, the better. Just play football.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 11, 2009 11:24:55 GMT -6
Rams - I think I misunderstood something. Who is this all-star team going to play? I was under the impression that you were going to divide your league in half (red-blue, north-south, east-west, or whatever) and have the "Red" all-stars play the "Blue" all-stars. If that's the case, then each all-star team would be getting players from 4 or 5 teams. If they took 7 players from each (or 6 if they're pulling from 5 teams), then they'd have a roster of 28 (30 if pulling from 5 teams). Then each player would have a position on both offense and defense, so the two platoons would cover 22 players - so you would need a few rotations at various positions to cover all 28 (30) players.
If you're planning on only creating one all-star team from the entire 9-team league to go out and play against other league's all-stars, then you'd only pick 3 from each team for a roster of 27 (or if one team doesn't participate, you'd pick 4 from each team for a roster of 32). If the roster starts getting into the 30s, you could set up 3 full platoons.
I would think that the first scenario is a much better idea - more kids will be involved and they'll all be playing under the same rules - when you go up against other leagues with different rules, it can create problems. JMHO.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 10, 2009 18:13:36 GMT -6
Yeah, that's another reason we never tried the all star idea again. We have rules against singling out players for recognition (no helmet decals or mvp awards, etc.), so it was actually a little surprising to me that we even tried an all star game at all.
Nonetheless, if you are going to do an all star game, I would definitely just have the head coach of each team designate their top players with the requirement that at least half of them be an interior (offensive) lineman - so a RB that also plays DE doesn't count towards that requirement. Also, one of the linemen should be a center. Most coaches couldn't tell you much about other team's personnel beyond their 1-2 best skill players, so I would be strongly in favor of having each team's HC designate them. So, if you have 9 teams and one doesn't participate (assuming your champion will be going on to a regional tournament - if not, adjust the numbers accordingly for whichever team picks from 5 teams), then it will be 4 on 4. If each team designates 7 players, then each all star team will have a roster of 28, which should be very workable. Of the 7 players designated, 3 or more have to be offensive linemen, 1 of which is a center (could be a starting guard that is also a center - you just want to make sure you have some centers to work with).
It's probably also a good idea to give the coaches some guidelines about playing time, if not an actual MPR rule. Creating a "red" and a "blue" offense and defense on each team and rotating those squads throughout the game pretty evenly is a good way to do it. Yeah, there will be a few kids you'll have to rotate, but in an all star setting, you don't want to have a bunch of kids just getting 6 plays and then watching the rest of the game from the bench.
I hope that helps.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 10, 2009 16:31:27 GMT -6
We only did it one year (2000) and it was a lot of fun and the games were very well played. However, logistically, it was very difficult, which is why we never tried it again. Also it interferes with any postseason travel, so any teams that want to travel won't be able to participate. Here's what we did (if my memory serves me correctly): - Conference champions went on to regional tournaments and did not participate in the all star game.
- All other teams had their head coach designate 5 or 6 players (I think they shot for teams of about 30 players and then divided by the number of teams involved - so if six teams were sending players, they would send 5 each). It was solely up to the head coach's discretion who he sent, except that at least half of the players had to be interior linemen.
- The all star game took place two weeks (it might have been 3 weeks - I'm not sure) after our conference championship game, so everyone had enough time to practice.
- Conference runner-up coaches were given the first opportunity to coach the all star teams. If they declined, the postitions were offered to other playoff teams until someone accepted. In several cases, coaches from other staffs offered to help the head coach, and that help was generally accepted, leading to staffs of coaches from different teams.
- Practices were held wherever fields could be found. This lead to some logistical problems as kids sometimes had to be driven 45 minutes or more to and from practice.
- Kids used their own gear for practices, but were given game jerseys to keep. I don't remember if they wore their own pants or if the league got a donation for pants just for that game. The kids wore their own helmets. BTW, when I say "their own," I mean the equipment they received and used during the season with their teams.
- Anthony Davis (star USC tailback from the 70s) showed up and signed autographs.
- I don't think there was any formal MPR requirement for the game, but the coaches were strongly advised to give all players roughly equal playing time, which I believe they all did. Most created platoons, with 2 full units on both offense and defense.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 9, 2009 19:47:44 GMT -6
I should probably clarify that my kids are a little older (12-13), so you would probably want to spend a little more time working on blocking and tackling than we do, but as Rams pointed out, keep the sessions short - 5 to 10 minutes at a time is probably best or they'll lose focus and you'll get behavioral problems. Rotating stations like we do is also a good way to keep practice moving without the kids losing focus.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 9, 2009 18:38:02 GMT -6
Even without the midwest & further, I would think you'd be able to find plenty enough teams to make it solid tournament just looking to Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico and maybe even Colorado. Teams from all those areas (except maybe Colorado) are within driving distance or a very short flight, so cost shoudln't be prohibitive. I'll mention it to the powers that be here, but since we host the California tournament in early December that you mentioned, I'm not sure how much interest there will be in going somewhere else the week before. Good luck.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 9, 2009 18:00:28 GMT -6
We do about 10-15 minutes of tackling every day - we generally split up into 4 stations, each with a different drill and rotate roughly every 3 minutes until everyone has been through all 4 stations. Blocking tends to vary by position, so that generally gets handled by each position group when we break up for indys. Ideally, everyone should get another 10 minutes or so of blocking every day, but even if it doesn't happen as a stand alone drill, most of the drills we do involve blocking, so it's gets repped and coached up then.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 9, 2009 13:19:19 GMT -6
[quote author=sneakyben board=generalyouth thread=21883 post=265140 time=1236621804(side issue... you should only get to call foul for unsafe tactics in football if EVERY TIME one of your players lays a 'woo-lick' on someone else with their head you don't whoop n holler you bench their {censored} and teach them to tackle safely... I am willing to generalise here, but in my experience nearly 100% of coaches practically wet themselves with excitment over unsafe big hits) [/quote] Not my staff - we have one kid that has a tendency to lower his head on big hits despite repeated warnings from us (note - he doesn't do it much anymore, but we haven't completely broken his habit). Every time it happens in a game we know we're at least going to get a warning if not a flag from the officials, and pretty much the whole staff is yelling at him to keep his head up before the refs can say anything.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 6, 2009 11:41:55 GMT -6
There is some politics going on here that you are unfamiliar with. You won't learn of the particulars until you are recognized as a Veteran coach (One that has been doing it in that league for 8 or more years). Bear in mind, these political favors are extended all the way to the refs. I had a situation of the opponent (won the ship for 3 straight yrs) using an illegal player and pointed out to the ref with evidence and by laws in hand during the game. The ref pointed me to a white bldg off to the right of the concession stand and said I'd have to see a guy in there. I thought why would the league not give the ref the authority to enforce its own rules and by laws. Then it dawned on me. The ref knew who won the ship the last 3 seasons. He was not about to do anything to jeapordize that. Besides, he was meeting the coach for beers later. Travesty. While I don't doubt the veracity of this story (although I do wonder why you would stay involved with this organization if it is true - there are plenty of leagues out there that do things properly), I'm not sure it's appropriate to call out the ref. In general, it is the league's administration's duty to determine the rules by which players will be eligible to participate and then to certify that the players on the field have met those requirements. I don't know of any league anywhere that puts this responsibility on the game officials. The game officials' job is to enforce the rules of play during the game, and that's pretty much it. If I was officiating (and I never had, so take anything I say on the subject with a grain of salt), I would probably do the exact same thing - tell the coach to take it up with his league's administration. Of course, this opens up a whole other conversation - how does your league certifiy it's players? In our league, before each game, every player must be weighed in and their equipment checked by a league commissioner - coaches are not allowed to be anywhere near the vicinity of this process. Each team has a ring of laminated photo ID cards, and at the weigh-in, the league commissioners check the players against those photos. The photo ID cards are only released once the player has submitted all the required paperwork (original birth certificate, report card, proof of residence, signed contract, etc.) before the season begins. Even with all that, some renegade coaches will still try to slip through illegal players. Getting back to the refs, though, once the league commissioners have certified that the players on the field are eligible and legal to play, why would the refs have any reason to question it?
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 4, 2009 23:02:41 GMT -6
One of the key things to being a great youth coach is being able to make practice fun and disciplined at the same time. It is also important for the kids to understand that they are doing something that is developing them for life...of course this depends on how old your kids are. I find it works well for 6th grade and up. Get a great FREE report on football practice at: Here you can get 5 Football Practice Secrets Revealed from some great coaches: www.knowledgefootball.com/footballpracticesecretsrevealed.htmlI am doing some research with youth coaches, and I would appreciate your help to take a couple of minutes and fill out a survey. Your info will help a lot of coaches with the challenges they face on a day to day basis with kids. To fill out survey please click on link: www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7NTb_2fyFrucwlWcvmRvJC_2bQ_3d_3dI really appreciate your help and your answers will help families and coaches provide the best football experience possible for our players and children. Chris: Good to see you here. Are you still working with Rex? Feel free to shot me a PM or call me (I'm at the same number you had a while back). I'll be happy to help you with any youth coaching project you're working on. This site is a great resource - there are a bunch of really excellent coaches here that are willing to share their knowledge. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Doug Brown Redondo Beach
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 4, 2009 11:44:42 GMT -6
rams - it's becoming pretty clear that the problem is with your board. They seriously need to grow some cajones. It is ridiculous to change the draft rules every year. If they won't get their act together, you should consider getting on the board yourself to get things done right or consider moving on to another program that is better organized.
I have my opinions on what the best way to handle a draft is, but ultimately is doesn't really matter that much how it's done as long as it's handled fairly and consistently. If I was coming on to that board I would insist that we come up with a system that everyone can live with and then stick to it. The way they stick to it is by passing a resolution (or even a change to the Bylaws if the draft is addressed there) stating that the draft process will be followed without exceptions or changes unless agreed to by a unanimous vote of the board. This allows for changes and/or exceptions for truly extraordinary circumstances, but will put an end to silly exceptions to satisfy crybaby parents. Then, they have to stick to their guns and let a few parents pull their kids from the program. Once that happens, the other parents will see that you mean business and the BS will stop. You're going to continue having problems, though, until your board starts doing their job.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 3, 2009 19:15:34 GMT -6
I can see the logic in your process. I think you summed it up in the final sentence, Can the board make a system work? Whats you take on board members that are active coaches seated on the board? Conflict of interest? I think it's potentially a conflict of interest in that particular situation (running the draft), but in general I don't think it's a big deal. Heck, I was on our board for nine years (including 2 as president) and I coached the whole time (except for one of the years as president) and I don't recall ever being in a conflict of interest situation because of it. When I was president there were a couple of times that I recused myself from voting on a particular topic because it involved my team or something like that, but that was about it. The problem comes when coaches try to get on the board (or get their cronies on the board) specifically to push their own team's agenda rather than to help the overall program. That kind of selfish, political gamesmanship has severely hampered and crippled many a program.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 3, 2009 17:07:40 GMT -6
I don't have a lot of experience with this as I've never had to deal with a draft. However, I think it would primarily be a matter of your Board or administration laying down the law and then sticking to their guns. I guess the following formula would address most of your concerns:
Head Coaches are identified and their children are held out of the draft. For any head coaches that don't have a child playing on their team, they can identify any one player that will automatically go to their team. This would give some disadvantage to coaches with a child playing, but that's a reasonable price for getting to coach to your son, IMHO.
Alternative A: The Head Coach does not get to put together his staff until the teams are picked, so there is no concern about head coaches making the dad of the best athlete an figurehead "assistant coach" just to get his kid on the team.
Alternative B: The Head Coach can name 2 assistant coaches as his staff prior to the draft, and then can only fill out the rest of the staff after the teams have been chosen. All children of these coaches are held out of the draft, but any teams with fewer coach's kids, get their pick of any available players until all teams have the same number of players prior to the draft. For instance is Teams A, B, anc C have 3 coach's kids each, and Teams D and E have 2 coach's kids each, and Team F has none, then (based on some rotation), Teams D and E can each pick any one player and Team F can pick any three players prior to the general draft.
With the remaining players all coaches and administrators create however many teams they'll have (6 in our example) as evenly as possible, since no one knows which team they'll be assigned to.
As far as parents that want their kid to play for a certain coach, it's up to your board or administration to make it clear up front how it works and that their child will be assigned to a team randomly, and that the parents have absolutely no say in the matter. Fees must be collected prior to the draft and after the draft there should be absolutely no refunds, so there would be a large disincentive to pull out and play in another league if they don't get assigned to the coach they want.
I don't know how realistic that is, but that's what I would try to do. I guess the biggest question is whether or not your board is strong enough to make a system like that work.
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Post by coachdoug on Mar 3, 2009 14:34:20 GMT -6
In our league, each association (i.e. city) has geographical boundaries and generally takes kids on a first-come, first-served basis, so there is no need for a draft. However, there are a handful of associations that field more than one team in each age division, so they do have to address this.
My feeling is that existing teams should be kept intact and only new players should be assigned to teams. If you are adding a new team to an age division where an existing team already competes, existing players should be given the option to go to the new team (most won't, but some 2nd stringers might move for the opportunity to start on the new team), and then the new team should get to pick from the new players until they have an equal size roster.
If you're going to have a complete draft of all players each year, the best way to do this is to have the coaches compile however many teams with as equal talent as possible. After the teams are complete, the coaches then pull names from a hat to see which team they are assigned to (this gives a pretty strong incentive to make the teams even, since they don't know which group they'll be getting). Of course, you have to pull the coach's kids out of the draft (and any kidless coach could then choose any player(s) to match the player(s) that the other coaches get automatically). And you have to guard against manipulation - kids mysteriously showing up after the draft and requesting to be placed on my friend's team or whatever - any anomolies like that have to be assigned to teams randomly or in some fashion that discourages unethical parents & coaches from trying that crap again in the future.
JMHO.
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Post by coachdoug on Jan 30, 2009 17:04:15 GMT -6
khalfie - i didn't mean to come across as argumentative, or even in strong opposition to your idea, as you put it. I just don't think that this is that big of an issue that it justifies a rule change.
I coached mostly 7th graders this past year and I'll have mostly 8th graders next season. Our only special kick rule is 2 pts for a kicked PAT (the punt rule is only for the 8-9 yr olds - 3rd & 4th graders). In our league we see a lot more onsides than you do in college or the NFL, but it is hardly an all the time thing, although I don't have any problem with the teams that do onside all the time. I'd estimate that about 20-25% of all kickoffs are onsides in our league - maybe less. My team generally kicked deep (I think we kicked onsides maybe 5 or 6 times all season out of about 50 kickoffs), although as someone pointed out, not all the kicks actually went deep. My kicker was pretty inconsistent, so probably another 10 or so looked like onsides, but he was trying to kick deep. LOL. On our deep kickoffs, we just told our kicker to keep it away from their stud, which he usually did, but not always. The average starting field position on our deep kicks was the 38 vs. the 48-50 if we didn't recover an onsides. One did get returned for a TD, but otherwise, that extra 12 yards or so was enough for us to justify continuing to kick deep. I wasn't the one making the deep kick/onsides decision - I probably would have kicked onsides a lot more often.
Frankly, I doubt that moving the line up to the 50 would have any impact on our kicking game, although I'm sure it would for some teams. I would have a problem, though, with bringing the ball back to the 50 for a failed onsides kick - as I said, we had more deep kicks that looked like onsides than we had actual onsides kicks this past year - I wouldn't want to get penalized for that.
The bottom line is that I wouldn't really be that opposed to your rule, but I don't really see a need for it, so don't fix something that isn't broken. If everyone else agreed that it was needed, though, I wouldn't make a big stink about it.
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Post by coachdoug on Jan 30, 2009 11:25:49 GMT -6
We also kick off from the 40 and I see no reason nor any benefit to changing that rule. I wouldn't be opposed, though, to having the younger kids play on a smaller field, as Mike indicated his league does. The field size makes a much bigger difference than the line for the KO, in my opinion.
We have no special rules for any kicks, except that kicked PATs count for 2 points, and the youngest (8 yrs old and below) have special provisions for punts (no rushing, no fakes, etc.).
You said that the coverage will be on the stud returner faster if you move the kickoff line up to the 40. How do figure that? Assuming the kicker can't reach the endzone from either 40, I would expect the coverage to be identical regardless of the line for the KO.
Also, you made the remark that alterations have been made for other levels WRT to the KO line. However, it should be noted that the lower levels have never moved the line up (as you're advocating here), only the upper levels have moved it back. Until the 70's all levels (HS, College & NFL) kicked off from the 40. Then the NFL moved their line back to the 35 and the NCAA shortly thereafter followed suit. Sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, the NFL moved their line back again to the 30. The NFL moved their line back both times to reduce the number of touchbacks, and to increase scoring (i.e. to make the game more exciting for fans). Those moves had nothing to do with anything you're talking about here.
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Post by coachdoug on Jan 9, 2009 21:48:39 GMT -6
Coach Doug you said: "If they came to us and demanded that we run their system, I would have a hard time taking them seriously." Actually Doug, if I were to come to you after 20 some years of experience, it wouldn't be to force a system on you, it would be to ask what you do and why. Reason? Because if you can do something successfully with kids who are very short on football experience, you must know something that I want to know. Then I would say, here is what we run what do you like about it and why and what would you change and why. Now if you were here in Idaho, where all of your kids you coach come through my program, I would then ask how can we streamline what the two of us do to make it as similar as possible? I understand coach and I agree with you. I was just pointing out that what you can reasonably expect to do with your local youth program will largely be dependent on your level of involvment with that program. If you are intimately involved with them, then you will have a lot more ability to direct (or at least suggest) how they do things. I was simply pointing out that in our situation (our high school is only one of several that our kids go to, and all they really do for us is allow us to pay them to use their field), a mandate from the high school coaches would probably not be received well. One thing I forgot to mention earlier is that it is an excellent idea to get all levels of the youth program using the same terminology. Some DW or Wing-T systems (and others) have specific number schemes and such, but if you can get the entire youth program using the same terminology and numbering (as much as possible, anyway), it would be a very good idea. I know how frustrating it is to learn one thing, and then get to another team and have that same thing mean something else entirely.
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Post by coachdoug on Jan 6, 2009 20:25:33 GMT -6
Coach Doug Thank you for the quality feedback. Like you I have coached youth ball many years but always in an unlimited weight league. So forgive my ignorance. If I may… Why did your organization change from PW To AYF? I have been seriously investigating each and I don’t see a big difference if you choose to follow the AYF national format. AYF seems to really stress good rates on insurance, for example. I have owned an adult semi pro team before and we use Sadler Insurance also. They had the best rates in the country and it broke down to about $6 per player. This is the about same rate that Sadler gives AYF…yes I called my rep and asked. Our semi pro league is nothing special as far as numbers, 10 teams, and probably more of a liability when you figure adults playing verses children since we can serve alcohol. So you can see why I am asking why. I understand that AYF allows an organization to be “independent” of a national board but if you want to be a part of the national championship you have to follow their national guidelines. Nothing wrong with that at all…if you want to compete on a national level you must have national guidelines…but these guidelines are ever so close to the PW guidelines. So why move like so many organizations are beginning to do? Is being able to complete at the national level that important to you and your associates in your league? That’s a heck of a financial commitment for anyone right before the holidays if their son / daughter were to make it to Florida. I have put together 5 or 6 trips to the Youth Nationals in Las Vegas for my teams over the years and it is expensive…and not every player on the team makes the trip. You would be making a cross-country trip. Do you have issues with a 10 year old possibly playing with a 13 year old? That is the part I am struggling with regardless if they weigh nearly the same. I cant imagine a kid that may be hitting puberty and noticing girls playing with a butterfly watcher who can hardly wait to finish his Diorama once he gets home from practice. Do you experience this at all? I figured that an existing weight restricted league would not open up their hearts and minds to my idea of an unlimited weight program at all. I figured the exact opposite would be the case so I am expecting nothing but grief from the local chapters. Appreciate your feedback. Coach Mike Mike: I wasn't really involved with decisions to switch from Pop Warner to AYF and then from AYF to indepedent, but I do know some of the reasons. We left Pop Warner for AYF in 2001 (or maybe 2002). This wasn't even a program decision - this decision was made by the entire conference. This was right after Pop Warner mandated that every player must wear a PW patch on the uniform that had to be purchased from PW at about $1 a piece (these patches clearly cost no more than about 10 cents to produce). They were also in the process of certifying certain suppliers as PW approved and were then going to require that all PW programs only purchase from PW approved vendors - obviously at greater cost to individual programs - I don't know if this ever actually happened, but it sounded like it was fait acompli at the time. I also seem to recall hearing that PW had officially changed their tax status from non-profilt to for-profit - that may not have been true, but it was consistent with their behavior at the time. So, in a nutshell, our entire conference moved from PW because PW was just getting too greedy financially and wasn't really providing anything in return. We were with AYF for about 3-4 years, but, from what I heard, AYF started getting a little greedy, too, so the decision was made (at the conference level, again) to drop the national affiliation and just go independent, which happened in 2006 or 2007. I really don't know anything about the insurance issues. Competing nationally is not a big deal to us - even when we were in PW and AYF, we (as in our conference) rarely participated in FL - opting instead to just have regional championships in the Southwestern US and Hawaii. Hell, our conference is at a major disadvantage when we play nationally since we don't allow older-lighters, so obviously national competition is not our biggest priority. As far as having kids 4 years apart playing together, it really doesn't come up that much. First of all, since we don't allow older-lighters, most of our age divisions only cover 2-3 years (Mitey Mite is 8-9, Jr Pee Wee is 8-10, Pee Wee is 9-11, Jr Midget is 10-12, and Midget is 11-14), so we would never have a 10 yr old playing with a 13 yr old (unless someone had a birthday duriing the season). On my team last year (10-12 age group), we didn't have any 10 yr olds, and only about 4-5 11 yr olds, with the other 28-29 players all being 12. Of course, I have seen parents leave sign ups when they realized that their chubby, immature 9 yr-old would have to play on a team of almost all 11 yr-olds because of his weight. I think, as you alluded to, most parents will just put their kid into some other sport rather than have him play with kids that are much older and more mature. However, when we did allow older-lighters (we disallowed them starting in 2003 or so), this was an issue. Theoretically, it was possible to have a kid who just turned 9 in July playing on the same team as a kid playing as an older-lighter who turned 13 in August. While that didn't happen too often, we certainly did have 10 year olds playing with kids that turned 13 during the season, and I agree with you, regardless of weight, it was a huge mismatch. I suspect you are correct - existing programs probably won't embrace what you are doing, but if you do it properly and really market your league to the kids that aren't being serviced by the existing leagues, you should be succesful without getting too much grief from those existing leagues. Especially if you're in a big city. For instance, when Snoop Dogg started his league here in L.A., there were already football programs in most of the areas where he had teams, but he largely attracted players that weren't already in those other programs (or at least tried to). I know that a couple programs did get decimated by Snoop defections, but for the most part, Snoop's league hasn't really had much of an effect on the other existing programs in the area. Again, I wish you the best of luck. Feel free to shoot me a message any time if I can help you in any way.
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Post by coachdoug on Jan 6, 2009 13:49:42 GMT -6
Mike:
I've always (15 years) coached in full weight-restricted leagues like Pop Warner and AYF - in fact our league was affiliated with Pop Warner for most of my time, and then we moved to AYF. We've been independent now for a couple years, but we've kept the weight limitation rules.
While it is hasn't been a huge issue, it is a little frustrating when you see kids get turned away because they're too big. Also, most of the kids who play line for us end up getting moved to TE, FB or LB in HS because they're just not big enough for line at that level. Most of the kids that end up playing line in HS just don't play in our youth league. An unlimited weight league with ball carrier weight restrictions sounds like a pretty good idea.
However, if you start a new league like this where you already have Pop Warner / AYF leagues, you aren't going to get individual coaches and teams to move. The entire program will either move or not move. For instance, in our program in Redondo Beach, we have Flag, Mitey Mite, Jr Pee Wee, Pee Wee, Jr Midget, Midget and All-American (our one unlimited weight group, for 7th & 8th graders), all of which are overseen by our Board of Directors. No one team would be able to move on its own. So, you're going to have to make your pitch to the BOD of the various programs. It would be a good idea to sell the coaches so that you have some grassroots support, but the BOD will make the decision.
If this came up here, I doubt very much that our program would make the move. I think you would get an attitude of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." We're not getting a lot of complaints about bigger kids not being able to play and our one unlimited weight team generally has trouble getting enough kids to field a team.
My guess is, unless there are a lot of people in your area complaining about the issue of big kids being turned away, you are going to have a difficult time persuading existing programs to move to the new league. You'll probably end up having to start new programs that compete with the existing programs for players. You may be able to find some underserved areas, but I suspect you'll end up going after a lot of the same players. I'm not saying that is necessarily a bad thing, I'm just trying to address your question.
I hope that helps and I wish you the best of luck whatever you decide to do.
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Post by coachdoug on Jan 6, 2009 13:29:40 GMT -6
Coach - sounds like you're on the right track. I agree that your #1 priority should be practice organization - you don't want any wasted time and you want to make your drills competitive and fun. Search posts by Dave Cisar - he has a lot of great info on organizing and planning practices. Also, Brophy has posted some practice plans in the past as well. In a nutshell, if you have 2 hr practices, I would shoot for something like:
> 5-10 Minutes - Dynamic Warmup (try to make the warmup something football related) - don't go any longer than this.
> 10-15 Minutes - Blocking & Tackling
> 45-60 Minutes - Indy Sessions. If you only have one other competent coach, just split into line and backs. If you have more, you can split it up further. Work on fundies, installations and review assignments. Later on, you do more involved things like 7-on-7.
> 5 Minutes - Water Break
> 10-15 Minutes - Team Installations/Assignment Review/Run Plays vs. Air
> 15-20 Minutes - Scrimmage.
> 10-15 Minutes - Team Building/Competitive Excercises - This should be fun stuff that gets the competitive juices flowing. You can do things like relay races, but stuff that's more directly football related is better like fumble recover contests, blocking contests (whoever moves their opponent off the mark wins), etc.
If you run your practice at an up-tempo pace and don't have a lot of standing around time listening to coaches talk or waiting in line, the entire practice will be conditioning and there will be no need to waste time running sprints, doing up-downs, etc. ...
Participation will take care of itself once the word gets around that playing on your team is fun - and if you have some success on the field it will happen that much faster.
Finding good assistant coaches is always a challenge. You have the right idea, though - if you can find enthusiastic, dedicated guys, you can coach them, and having the high school staff help will be a big benefit.
I wouldn't worry too much about athletic ability. Put your kids in the best scheme to take advantage of their skill set, coach em up, and you'll have success - you may not win a championship, but you'll win your share of games.
Good luck to you coach.
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Post by coachdoug on Dec 29, 2008 17:11:24 GMT -6
Coach – sorry I didn’t get in this conversation sooner, I was away for the holiday. Anyway, I think it’s great that you and your staff are trying to be helpful and supportive of your local youth program. I agree with a lot of the comments that have already been posted such as keeping the coaching clinic to a single day and the players’ camp to a 2 or 3 day weekend; and not forcing the HS playbook and schemes on the youth program. What you can do will vary greatly depending on the nature of your school’s involvement with the youth program. For instance, if you are providing uniforms, equipment, practice and game fields, officials, etc., then you can and should have a lot more say in what the youth program does than if you simply allow the youth program to rent your field for games for a fee. The latter is our relationship with our high school, and we actually send almost as many players to our other local high school (I’ve actually sent kids to over 20 different high schools here in greater Los Angeles over the years), so we don’t exactly have a super tight relationship with the high school. If they came to us and demanded that we run their system, I would have a hard time taking them seriously. A few things that I would suggest you cover include: - Practice Organization. This is probably the single biggest issue I see with most youth programs. The majority of youth coaches I see get together while the team is stretching and discuss what they’re going to do that practice, and then they have the kids standing around watching for 10 minutes while they set up drills. And, it’s not just planning each individual practice, but planning out the entire preseason – the coach should know when he’ll be installing each piece of his offense, defense and special teams. Showing coaches how to plan and set up practices to waste as little time as possible would be the single biggest benefit you could provide.
- Game Planning. Most youth coaches just have a play sheet (if that) and make play calling decisions on the fly. Share your game planning materials with the youth coaches and show them how to plan in advance for what plays to run in various situations (2nd and long, 3rd & short, goalline, 2-minute offense, etc.).
- Time Management. Most youth coaches don’t have a clue about to how to use their timeouts and how to prepare their team for a 2-minute drill situation.
- Fundamentals. Let the youth coaches know what skills are most beneficial for the kids to have as they enter HS. Obviously, blocking and tackling are at the top of the list, but you’ll also want to go in to detail about what kinds of blocks they should know (for instance, drive blocking, combo blocking, trap blocking and kick out blocking in the run game are important, but logging may not be realistic), and how you teach proper form on tackling. Likewise, details on footwork for running backs and receivers would be helpful. On the flip side, be aware of some things that seem like no brainers, but aren’t realistic – for instance, a lot of high school coaches express shock that youth coaches can’t teach their players a proper stance. The reality is that for a lot of kids, prior to puberty, they just cannot comfortably get into a proper stance. I’ve seen coaches waste an inordinate amount of time trying to fix a kid’s bad stance to no avail. But when that same kid goes through puberty and his muscles mature a bit, he usually fixes his stance on his own in about 10 minutes. After learning the hard way, now I teach all the kids a proper stance, and try to fix bad ones a few times, but as long as a kid is comfortable and can reasonably get into his assignments, I won’t waste a lot of time on it.
- Developing Schemes. As mentioned above, I wouldn’t force your scheme (or any other scheme) on the youth coaches, but you can tell them what ingredients are necessary for a sound scheme on either side of the ball (for instance, any sound defense should have gap integrity, force, inside-out pursuit, alley coverage, deep coverage and protection against gadget plays).This will at least provide them with a framework to make sure that what they are doing is sound.
- Creating Plays. Most schemes come with a set of built-in plays, but a lot of coaches want to create some on their own. You can try to discourage them, but if they’re going to do it anyway, give them some tools. For instance, review the concept of series in the run game so that any new play isn’t just a random event, but part of a coherent plan that takes advantage of how the defense reacts to some other play in the series. Or, in the passing game, review some basic concepts like mesh, shallow cross, flood, etc., and explain how those concepts are designed to get a receiver open against various coverages (keeping in mind that 90% of youth defenses play either Man Free, Cover-3, or Cover-2, in that order). Youth coaches often just draw up a bunch of random patterns and tell the QB to find the open receiver.
Some other things that would be great to see, but that a HS staff may not be particularly qualified to speak on include: - Managing the Minimum Play Rule (MPR). This assumes that your youth league has an MPR, but even if they don’t, at the youth level, the coaches should have a policy that guarantees every player on the team a certain amount of playing time provided they come to practice and such. Most rookie coaches make bad mistakes in this area. Since high schools don’t have to deal with these rules, your staff may not be able to help much in this area.
- Dealing with Parents. All levels (except maybe the NFL) have to deal with parents, but the issues faced by youth coaches are a bit different from what the HS coach faces. OTOH, the basic process of setting expectations and communicating philosophy and policy may not be so different. If you have a preseason letter or handout that you send to parents, you should share that with your youth coaches.
A few things to do, not do, and to keep in mind: - Plan this well in advance and shoot for some time in July before the youth practices start. Get feedback from the youth organization on what dates would be good and then communicate the dates as far in advance as possible. Once our local high school tried to set something up on the weekend following July 4th and made the announcement in mid June. Well, most of the youth coaches already had plans to be out of town over that weekend, so they canceled it because not enough coaches were coming. Then they gave us an attitude of, “Hey, we tried to help you, but none of you were very interested …”
- Use your varsity players (or J.V. players) to demonstrate drills and concepts at your clinic. This will allow the coaches to see what the drill looks like when run properly. Make sure to focus on the coaching points for each drill. Running the drills PROPERLY will yield dramatically better results than simply running the drills. Also, always keep in mind maximizing reps and limiting down time – if it’s a 2-player drill and there are 30 guys that have to go through it, have at least 4-5 stations going simultaneously so that don't have 28 guys watching 2.
- Don’t plan either the clinic or the camp any earlier than July, or you will likely have conflicts with other sports. A lot of sports families take their family vacations during July so they don’t have to miss any practice, so again, plenty of advance notice is a good idea.
- Make you and your staff available to answer questions afterwards – not just after the clinic for a few minutes, but via telephone and email over the course of the season. This is especially important for coaches that want to have more in-depth discussions about the details and coaching points for various schemes or techniques.
- Involve the youth coaches in the camp so that you can coach the coaches on how to run various drills as you are putting the players through them.
- Be aware that very few youth linemen will be HS linemen. Most HS linemen are too big to play youth ball. Most youth linemen end up either not playing in HS or getting moved to TE, FB or LB.
- Provide both the players and the youth coaches with resources to get additional information and training. Give the coaches links to this site as well as other coaching boards & sites and other local clinics that may be of value. Give both players and coaches info on other local camps, especially position specific camps (such as for QBs, receivers, or kickers), where they will get much more in-depth instruction than you can provide in a 2-day general camp.
- To continue developing your relationship with the youth program, grant all youth players wearing their jerseys free admission to your games; invite them to your locker room at least once or twice a year to see and hear you pre-game preparation; allow youth players to be your ball boys; have the HS coaches conspicuously watch at least some of the youth games; and have the HS coaches visit a few youth practices and address the players.
I hope that helps. I wish you the best of luck and I hope your local youth program appreciates the help you are trying to give them.
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Post by coachdoug on Nov 27, 2008 12:12:26 GMT -6
Very nice - impressive execution considering that you didn't even start practices until after Labor Day. This is a good example of how a good spread package can really open up the run game.
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Post by coachdoug on Nov 18, 2008 11:53:38 GMT -6
They wanted the commitmanet for next season this past weekend, I told them I'm going to stay.. Coach - sorry I didn't reply earlier. From the time they offer the position until you accept it is the timeframe when you have the most leverage, so you should take advantage of that. I know you already told them you would stay, but it may not be too late to put some conditions on it. I'm not suggesting that you ask for anything outrageous, but I know you had some problems in the past with the board and/or coach's from other age groups interfering with your team. I would write up something simple that outlines how you expect to be treated - no pulling players off your team and moving them to another team without your approval; no forcing unwanted assistant coaches on you; etc. (I don't recall what all the exact issues you had were, but you get the idea) - and have them sign it. Then, if they start doing improper things again, you can pull out the letter agreement with their signatures on it to remind them that they agreed not to do those things. If the shenanigans continue at that point, then I think you'd have little choice but to move on to another organization. At that point they would have made it clear that they don't really value having you as a coach. However, I think it is much more likely that by having them sign a written document, they will take you seriously and abide by the agreement. JMHO.
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Post by coachdoug on Nov 10, 2008 19:18:02 GMT -6
If you feel you need to go this route, your best bet is to talk to your players and ask them who the best athletes are in the other sports they play. Especially sports like bssketball, lacrosse, hockey, wrestling, and even soccer - players that excel in those sports generally do well in football (maybe not so much with soccer, but it is a great place to find a kicker, lol). Baseball has a looser correlation, but is still a good place to look for talent. Focus on speed and overall athleticsm (rather than size). Have your players or their parents try to get those kids interested in football and then offer to talk to them if they show any interest.
Flyers at the local schools is a good idea - I'm surprised that your league is not already doing this for you. Be careful with the free clinics - just check your local league's rules - that would be considered illegal practice here unless you met some pretty stringent criteria (like carrying general liability insurance and advertising outside of your own team's territory). Coaching in an off-season flag league sounds like a good idea.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 27, 2008 20:48:41 GMT -6
This is all hind sight my season is over my record 3-4 i"m wondering if i built my team the right way. This is what i had to work with 75lb developmental i had five players that were pretty good football players and i put them all at a skill position QB,FB,HB,WB,TE which left me young an unathletic on the offensive line on defense i kind of like did the same my two best players were at safety and the other three played DE and DT my question would be how do you as a coach start the building of your team to be sucessfull? First off, let me say that I agree with the others that suggested you focus on fundamentals first and foremost. Having said that, here is how I generally position my talent: On Defense: Best all-around athletes at CB and OLB (with the larger ones at OLB and the smaller, shiftier ones at CB). Disciplined players at DE (some size helps, but not really required). Studly, strong type at MLB - doesn't require the same speed as the OLBs, but speed always helps. MPPs at the interior line positions, although if you can work in at least one stud in one of those positions, it really helps. S should be a disciplined kid with decent speed. I question why you're running a 2-deep scheme - if your weight limit is only 75 lbs, I assume you have 7-8 yr-olds, so passing shouldn't be a major concern. Better to load up the box with 8 or even 9 - you really don't need any safety at that level, but I can't imagine why you would have more than one. On Offense: This is really going to vary depending on your scheme, but in general at your level, I put my best overall athletes at RB. I want a smart kid that can run the huddle and recognize if the team is lined up properly at QB (of course, some abillity to throw the ball is nice). If you have a QB that can throw, having decent hands at the receiver positions is a good idea, if not you can load up with MPPs at the WR positions. TE and T are where I put my best blockers (I really, really want to establish the off-tackle play, so this might be different if you run a different scheme). I want a smart, disciplined kid at C. You can hide weaker kids at G, but if you have some athletic linemen that can pull and you put them at G, it really expands what you can run. We actually have two very athletic guards this year and we pull them regularly, getting us an extra body at the point of attack - it helps a lot.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2008 17:58:40 GMT -6
The first one (13-12) was to a team running the SW - similar to Dave's, but I don't think it was quite his version. We were prepared for it, but on their first possession our guys lost track of the ball and gave up a 60-yd TD run. We had a drive stopped on 4th down at the one yard line - we had a major coaching error on 2nd down - we called a play to the left, but all the personnel we needed to run the play successfully were on the right. Stupid on our part. We did manage to score in the second quarter using our best gadget play - from shotgun we send the QB in motion out wide, the RB takes the snap, steps forward then throws (backward pass) to the QB out in the flat. The QB then throws deep to the WR, who is wide open. The safety did come over and got his hands on our receiver, but he broke the tackle and scored. 6-6 at halftime. In the 3rd quarter, we drove 57 yards in 11 plays - we scored on a 15 yard pass. We're up 12-6. They drove about 50 yards to start the 4th quarter. This time they went for one - their QB scrambled for a while before finally hitting their receiver in the end zone. That put them ahead 13-12. We had one more drive in the 4th quarter - we made it down to their 25. We threw a long pass that hit our receiver in the hands at the 4, but he couldn't hang on. It was a tough catch, but if he makes it, we almost certainly win the game. Then we came up about half a yard short on 4th down. Missing the PATs just killed us.
Yesterday we should have won easily. We should have been up 3 TDs to nothing at the half, but turnovers killed us. We put the ball on the ground SIX times in the first half and lost half of them. Our first drive started on our own 1 after a tremendous punt by them - we drove over 60 yards before losing our first fumble. Our defense was stopping them cold, but right before halftime, they connected on two long passes, the second one of which score a TD with 15 seconds left in the half. In the second half we continued moving the ball, but came up short on a 4th down inside their 20 on our first drive. Then our defense let them get a bunch of first downs before finally getting a turnover inside our 10, but they chewed up the clock. There was less than 6 minutes left in the game when we got the ball back. We drove from our own 8 to about their 30 before we were facing a 4th & 10. We called our last timeout to run the same gadget play - QB motion, throw to QB in the flat who throw deep. There was a ton of wind in our face and with the timeout, I didn't think there was a chance in the world that it would work. It did - we scored. Our PAT kick missed, but we got another chance when they roughed, so we ran it in from the 1 and a half. With 2:53 left, we were up 7-6. On the kickoff, the ball bounced around with 3 of our guys around it - I have no idea how we didn't recover it. A few plays later one of our DBs stepped in front of a receiver and had the pass hit him in the hands at this chest, but he dropped it. We had them 4th and long around the 30, but for some reason we didn't put any pressure on the passer who took forever to find a receiver before finally finding a receiver who was being loosely covered by the corner and was right where our safety should have been - I'll have to see the video to see what happened to our safety. Anyway, they scored with 26 seconds left to win 12-7. Uuugggghhh!!!
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2008 14:50:18 GMT -6
That's an early season. You lost a game 2-0? I lost by that score once in high school - that's a tough way to lose one. Y'all have had a great turnaround. Good luck in the playoffs - I think you'll do well.
My team is 3-3 after six games. It looks like we'll still make the playoffs, but we have underachieved so far. Our scores have been W 12-0, L 28-6, W 29-16, L 13-12, W 28-8, L 12-7. We really should be 5-1 - we lost on late scores in both of our close losses. Yesterday we gave up the winning score with 26 seconds left in the game. Uggghh.
We'll get a rematch with one or more of the teams we lost to in the playoffs - I like our chances in any of those matchups. We'll see what happens.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2008 14:02:30 GMT -6
Wow - even with 12 minute quarters, getting 75 plays off a game is phenomenal. So, you've played 10 games so far then? When did your season start? How did y'all do in the 4 games you didn't give us scores for?
In any event, it sounds like you're doing a great job. Congrats again, coach.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2008 12:44:55 GMT -6
Congratulations, coach - it sounds like you've found a formula that works for you and your team. I am a little curious, though, about your stats - they don't add up. You have one receiver with 7 catches for 95 yards, but your entire team has only 5 catches for 115 yards? You only mentioned the scores to 6 games, and this was just the sixth week of the season, so I assume that you've only played 6 games (with a 3-3 record), and you state that you've rushed for 300+ yards in every game since implementing the SW, but you also state 6,000 rushing yards for the season, or an implausible 1,000 yards per game (including the two games before the SW). If you use the 300+ yards per game stat you reference, that would imply you've played about 20 games so far, which is a longer season than any league I'm aware of. Also, the four position stats only add up to a little over 4,000 yards on about 460 carries. Again, if that's in 6 games, that's an average of about 80 carries per game, which is implausible - and if it did happen should result in over 50 or 60 points per game, but your team only averaged about 25 points in the 4 games you mentioned since implementing the SW.
I'm not doubting your success, but it would be helpful if you filled in the missing blanks so that your stats make a little more sense.
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