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Post by coachdoug on Nov 6, 2011 22:31:44 GMT -6
Congratulations, coach. Well done.
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Post by coachdoug on Nov 5, 2011 8:12:42 GMT -6
Good luck coach. Stick with what has worked for you so far and go get 'em!!
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Post by coachdoug on Nov 3, 2011 11:26:41 GMT -6
While I agree that you should continuing doing what you do, you should also do some extra homework with regard to self scouting. Put yourself in your opponent's shoes and prepare a game plan against yourself as if you were coaching your opponent. This should give you a pretty good idea of what they are likely to do against you. Then, make sure you have answers for whatever they throw at you.
I remember a few years back, a team in my organization went 11-0 through the regular season and playoffs up to the championship game. They were playing a team that they beat 16-6 during the regular season. I asked the coach if was making any adjustments or putting anything special in for the championship game and he said no, they were just going to stick with what had been working for them. Well, they got smoked 20-0 in the championship, and I remember watching the game thinking that there were a few obvious adjustments that could have been made on the fly, but certainly should have been addressed beforehand during practice.
Anyway, I guess my point is that you should stick to what you do, but don't be arrogant about it - self scout and make sure you have some adjustments ready for what your opponent is likely to do.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 30, 2011 9:41:02 GMT -6
First of all, you have to have a mandatory pre-season parents meeting where you go over all your team rules, your coaching philosophy, etc. This is where you let them know that it's not okay to get in your face immediately after a game (24-hr rule), that you won't discuss playing time or positions with them, other than to explain on a macro level how decisions are made and what the rules & policies of the league/program/ and team are. I will also tell a parent what a kid needs to do to improve if he wants a shot at a particular position next year.
Other than that, you need to understand that second guessing coaches is just human nature - it's what fans do and parents can't generally turn that off just becuase it's a kids' game (in fact, that natural tendency usually gets amplified because their kid is involved). Next time you go to a game, listen to the banter in the stands (including your own, most likely), and you'll see that regardless of level, a lot of the chatter about the game is ongoing critical critiquing of the coaching decisions. It doesn't mean all the fans are "haters" - it's just how most fans enjoy the game. Most of them don't really mean anything by it, although on occasion it does get taken too far. Once you recognize this for what it is, it is much easier to just ignore it.
Good luck, coach.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 17, 2011 7:10:12 GMT -6
Dave - congratulations. It sounds like you did great things with your boys. The 5-6th grade team has plenty to be proud of. Good luck with the 7-8th grade team the rest of the way through the playoffs - keep it rolling!!
My team won its first round (quarterfinal) playoff game against a team we defeated earlier in the season 39-0. We reached the mercy rule about midway through the first quarter then coasted from there, scoring a couple defensive TDs and allowing a couple meaningless TDs by them for a final score of 42-13. Our overall record is now 6-1. Next up is the team we beat 6-2 four or five weeks ago - it was really our only competitive game all year. It should be a good matchup - we're fairly evenly matched, so it should be a good, close game. I'm sure they feel like they should have won the first game as they had 4 turnovers. Of course, we feel like we can play a whole lot better than we did, so I expect a hard fought, but tight game. I think we should win, but I won't be shocked if we don't.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 16, 2011 22:50:25 GMT -6
Dave - congratulations. Keep up the good work. Good luck with next week's opponents - I'll be interested to hear how that goes.
Bob - JMHO, but I don't think it's ever really very effective or appropriate to punish a team immediately following a game, regardless of the outcome, their effort, or the level. All it does is embarrass them in front of their parents/fans, and probably creates a lot of tension, bad feelings, and mistrust towards the coaches by the players. I think it is lot better for everyone, and is much more effective to let them know briefly that you're disappointed with their effort (or attitude or whatever it was) immediately following the game and that it will be addressed at the next practice and then go about your normal post-game rituals. The threat will be in the back of their minds, hanging over them until the next practice, and then you can address the situation at the next practice properly without publicly humiliating them.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2011 23:04:56 GMT -6
Matt - they scored on a 45-yd play and still ended up with negative yards of total offense?? Wow, your defense must be totally dominating. What scheme are you running? Sometimes it is. Its Joes 44 I thought that might be it. I think I'm going to try that out next year. What has been your experience with it? Most importantly, what are the pitfalls to look out for? BTW, if you haven't talked to Joe in a while, you should reach out to him - he's feeling a little down. The HS varsity team for which he is the OC (which he does in his spare time after he's through being the HC of the JH team for the same private school) lost last Friday to a powerhouse 34-29 in the final seconds. I think that is only the second time any team he's coached has lost in the past 5 or 6 years. For us mere mortals, losses are just part of the game, but Joe isn't used to losing ever, so I think he's taking it pretty hard. BTW, his star player is Ray Lewis's son (actually I think one son is the varsity tailback and two other sons are on the JH team).
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2011 18:14:51 GMT -6
IMHO Coach Slack is the best out there as far as teaching QB mechanics. I also agree with mahonz - send your kid to a Slack camp in addition to getting the DVDs. There are any number of QB gurus out there and I'm sure most of them are good as well, but Slack really breaks everything down to biomechanics and explains why each part of the motion should be done a certain way - a lot of other coaches just tell the players how to throw, but Slack makes sure they know why so they can recognize what went wrong with a throw and self-correct.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 12, 2011 6:59:16 GMT -6
Matt - they scored on a 45-yd play and still ended up with negative yards of total offense?? Wow, your defense must be totally dominating. What scheme are you running?
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 11, 2011 11:48:42 GMT -6
I wasn't really sure what to expect - I knew we were facing a pretty good team, and I still don't think my team is really very good, so I wasn't very optimistic. However, the other team's #1 QB was out with an injury and there best player didn't show up (don't know why), and their next best player got pretty well beat up during the game and was limping noticeably throughout the second half. It was pretty close through halftime - we had a 13-6 lead at the break, but they scored right away in the 3rd qtr to pull within 13-12, but then we broke away from there and won pretty easily 34-12. I'm not sure we could have hung with them if they had been at full strength, but that's part of the game, and we had some guys out hurt, too, so I'll gladly take the win.
With that we finished the regular season 5-1 and are the 2nd seed for the playoffs. We'll play the last place team (it's an 8-team tournament, but we only have 7 teams in our age division) and then get a rematch with the team we beat 6-2 a few weeks back. If we get past them we'll get a rematch with the team that destroyed us 31-7 earlier in the season. It should be interesting.
At 6 games, this is the shortest regular season I've ever coached. It's weird to be starting the playoffs in early October.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 11, 2011 11:18:39 GMT -6
It varies a lot from program to program, city to city, school to school, and even year to year. Back when I was president of my old program (99-00), I think we paid around $2000 to the city for the entire season for practice fields and lights for 5 tackle teams 1 or 2 flag teams, and 6 or 7 cheer squads. We also paid a few hundred dollars ($500-$600 is my recollection) per home date to the high school for the field and lights. In other years, we were given all those facilities for free, but in some years the costs were higher - it kind of depended on who was in the positions at the city/schools making the decisions. As I recall, it costs (actual costs, not a price including any markup) about $40 per hour to run the field lights (it sounded high to me, but I checked with several sources at the time and they all confirmed it, so I think it's pretty accurate), so even at $2000 for the season, we weren't even paying for the actual cost to run the lights. Anyone who gets lights for less than that is probably getting a pretty good deal.
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Post by coachdoug on Oct 4, 2011 0:17:24 GMT -6
We won 29-0 against a less-than-stellar opponent. It was about what we expected. We had a lineman carry the ball for our last score and had all linemen carry on that drive. We substituted heavily from 16-0 on, but some of our other assistants still got upset about the running up the score issue. I understood where they were coming from earlier in the season, but I thought our header went pretty far above and beyond in keeping this game under control, so I'm not sure what they were complaining about this time.
Anyway, we have a pretty good challenge this week - we play a team that lost 8-0 to the team we beat 6-2 a few weeks ago - we should be pretty evenly matched. We have some guys out hurt, so I'm not really sure what to expect. We'll see.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 28, 2011 7:18:34 GMT -6
I've coached in both AYF and Pop Warner and greatly prefer AYF, although, frankly it has a lot more to do with the local league's management/leadership than anything else. AYF is not as heavy-handed as Pop Warner, allowing local leagues a fair amount of leeway as far as setting their own rules. We always had very clear rules wrt to minimum plays and weight limits, but again, those may well have been set by our local league. Of course, with AYF you also get the option to have an unlimited weight league, which I've come to believe makes a lot more sense.
Pop Warner just has a lot more, well, silly rules than AYF. For instance, the mercy rules in Pop Warner are just about as stupid as they could possibly be. We actually had an excellent mercy rule in my old league in L.A., which AYF allowed us to use, but once we went back to Pop Warner that rule had to be discarded in favor of PW's nonsensical mercy rules. PW also just seems to be much more interested in getting into their members' wallets than anything else - it seems like they have fees and charges for just about everything, right down to the requirement that everyone pay for PW patches that must be worn on everything and can only be purchased from PW. As I recall, the first year that we switched from PW to AYF (about 10 yrs ago), the league as a whole ended the year with about $15K more than they did the year before with similar overall numbers.
I'm always amused, though, that people make decisions like this based on the Championship game - chances are that will only affect one team out of probably 60-70 (if I understood the size of your league correctly) once every 3-5 years. And AYF's championships are also in Orlando (I think), or at least very nearby, so I'm not sure how much cheaper it could possibly be.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 26, 2011 17:06:14 GMT -6
That's not the point. Out of those 1200, I bet the majority DID play youth football. If you are going to COACH football, coach it right. 2 Pt stance on the O Line is not teaching the boys how to play the game correctly. You are in CA, I lived in OC for 13 yrs. Football is not as big of a deal in CA as it is in TX and especially in the rural areas. The study you are referring to was out of Michigan St. Michigan is a state that has a heavy hockey and lacrosse participation so that is not a very strong study either. Not saying it's 100%, I was trying to prove a point but I will bet you it is 50 - 60% of youth football players play in middle and high school. Relax - I was just having a little fun. Yes, the study was out of Michigan St, but I'm pretty sure the data was taken from national samples. More importantly, how is having the o-line in a 2-pt stance incorrect? It may be incorrect for your system, but it may be absolutely correct for another coach's system. Don't assume that your way of doing things is the only correct way. There is nothing inherently better or more correct about a 3-pt stance over a 2-pt. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but which one is "correct" depends on the system/scheme being employed and the coaches that are coaching it.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 26, 2011 0:32:46 GMT -6
If your in TX.... All of them. So 5A high schools in Texas have about 1200 or so kids on the football team? Wow, that's incredible ... Seriously, the national average is only about 30% of all youth players will ever set foot on a varsity football field in a game as a player. I doubt very much that those numbers are dramatically different in Texas.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 19, 2011 8:08:05 GMT -6
Sounds like you handled it just about as well as you could have. Well done, coach.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 18, 2011 23:06:30 GMT -6
As a former league president myself, I don't see our the president has any right to tell you how to deal with your own staff, especially if he's refusing to do anything himself. It's your team and your staff, and frankly your life - as a man, I'm sure you'd want to confront this situation head on regardless of your respective positions in a youth sports program. Have a discussion with this guy face to face and act appropriately based on what he has to say for himself. Unless you get an unconditional mea culpa, I would think that this guy has to go.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 18, 2011 9:33:10 GMT -6
Well, as I expected we ran into a buzz saw Saturday. We had some kids hurt, but that really didn't matter - the team we played was just much faster, more athletic, and just better than we were. Our kids did play hard and never gave up, but we just couldn't match up with them. They scored first to go up 6-0. Then we drove down inside their 10 before getting turned away empty handed. They scored one or two plays later. It was 18-0 at halftime. Final score was 31-7. We were the first team to score against them this year, so at least we got on the board. We'll probably see this team again in the playoffs, so we have a lot of work to improve if we even hope to be competitive. We get a bye week this week, so hopefully we can get our guys healthy.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 16, 2011 15:57:38 GMT -6
Well if we are talking about Daddy Ballers then you have to add the following sideline help: Hand Signaler - Will stay a few feet behind the coach and signal in his own calls to his son, can be an assistant, equipment manager, trainer or a parent that is not even on the staff. Knows exactly where to stand so that the coach thinks the player is listening to him while in fact the kid is receiving instruction from Daddy. An expert at remaining unseen during the game he usually can only be seen on game film signalling the blitz you didn't call or calling for the block on the DE that the fullback was supposed to make resulting in a blown play and causing the proverbial slap to the forehead as the coach realizes finnally why little Johnny decided all on his own to execute a backside corner blitz. Wow - really? I can't say that I'm surprised as I'm not surprised by anything parents do at this point, but thankfully I've never had to deal with this specific issue. If I ever saw a parent (whether an assistant coach, trainer, chain gang or whatever) signalling something to his kid in contradiction to what we're trying to do, I'm not sure exactly how I would react, but I'm pretty certain it wouldn't be pretty.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 16, 2011 15:53:10 GMT -6
Coachbuck - that (letting the kids make their own pregame routine) sounds like a pretty good idea. I'm not totally against the rah-rah stuff, I just can't do it myself anymore. I know the kids enjoy it even if it doesn't do much to improve their performance, so I find it helpful if there is another coach on the staff that wants to do it, or, even better, if the kids take the initiative to do it themselves. Like others have said, though, it has to be an "all-the-time" thing in terms of maintaining a high level of intensity - you can't expect the kids to chant a few things 10 minutes before kickoff have that somehow magically make them play better.
WRT helmet stickers, that's a bit of a double-edged sword. If only the stars are getting the awards, then you're really only motivating the kids that are already motivated. The weaker kids will feel left out and will likely believe that they have no chance to really earn the awards, so it can actually be de-motivating for them. If you try to make sure you give out the awards fairly evenly regardless of performance, then there probably isn't any incentive, so it's kind of pointless. I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad idea, but I think it's of limited value at the youth level, and it has the potential to be counter-productive, so proceed with caution if you decide to go that route.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 15, 2011 14:35:54 GMT -6
I agree with jrk5150. I think the pump-it-up motivational stuff is overrated. I used to do a lot of it when I first started coaching, but I quickly discovered that it has almost no impact on how well the kids play. In fact, it can be a negative wrt performance. Sometimes those clever little "pump-it-up" routines can require a bit of practice to get them right - practice time that could be much better spent working on fundamentals or play assignments or anything directly football related.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 15, 2011 14:31:34 GMT -6
Got a couple that I'm dealing with right now for you. I could type about 15 pages, but we have a limit on the posts..I'm dealing with each one of these right now. The Clapper: Incessantly claps his hands, repeatedly stating "Let's go" or "Alright". Often times makes a large semi-circle during practice, not staying at any one station long enough to relay one iota of coaching, instead relying on blanket phrases like "tackle him" or "catch the ball". No one knows what position he coaches. The Parrot: Will automatically be drawn to the most experienced of the coaching staff. Will shadow said experienced coach to the point of trying to crawl into his skin. Offers no unique coaching points, instead simply repeating what the more experienced coach states, usually more than once. Can be combined with The Clapper for a nerve-wracking treat. The Player: Probably the most dangerous. Attempts to relive his "glory days" (which can range from scoring the winning TD in the last game of the biddy league when he was 9 to playing mop-up duty on his high school team). Due to his awesomeness, he will not take any type of advice, instead relying on his extensive experience as a player to "get these kids mad and ready to kill somebody". Easily identifiable by the fact that he will normally give kids a 20 yard head start in tackling drills so that they'll be able to "hit harder". Incessantly brings up his past accomplishments (albeit imagined) in order to garner attention. Can often be seen running pass routes or playing running back on scout team to demonstrate his football skills-until he blows out a knee or pulls a hammy. The Screamer: Self-explanatory. Cannot effectively communicate to players, instead relying on constant screaming in an attempt to elect himself as the alpha male on staff. Dangerous only to moral of team due to the fact that when directly spoken to concerning his screaming, will often times simply stop showing up or move back to the stands where he belongs. The Professor: An all-knowing individual, who at any second, will immediately relay the fact that he has 1,234 plays installed out of 400 different formations in only 1 week of practice. His playbook, harder than Chinese Calculus, is his pride and joy, and will often times be seen stroking his playbook while giggling in between plays. The least dangerous of all Daddy Ballers, as his players will often times have not the foggiest idea where to line up, what to do, or what down it is because he has just signaled (yes I said signaled) into his 8-9 year old team, that they will run "Trips Right X Flex Y Bone 274 Z motion 367 Dive". Can immediately morph to The Screamer with no prior warning. Fun stuff this is, fun stuff. May I add the "Motivational Speaker"? This guy never says anything of substance, but simply spews out cliche after cliche - "We're gonna be the best conditioned team in the league," "We're gonna take it to 'em," "Know your assignments," "Fight for leverage," Get off on the ball," "Block somebody!!" "We're gonna do things the [insert team name] way!!" "We're gonna play as a team," etc. etc. Some of those are actually decent sayings, but the Motivational Speaker never explains them or even defines any of the terms - he just repeats the cliches over and over and then wonder why the team doesn't respond the way he expects. Combine him with the Clapper and the Parrot and you'll defintely need to get some ear muffs.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 11, 2011 11:11:10 GMT -6
As expected, things got a lot tougher for us. We managed to squeak out a tough 6-2 victory. It was a 0-0 tie at halftime. We got the ball just before the start of the 4th quarter and went on a very slow, extended drive (with a lot of our MPPs on the field due to poor planning). We finally scored on 4th and goal from about 6 inches out on a QB sneak with about 2:30 left in the game. We then gave up a couple long runs before they fumbled and we recovered around our own 15-20 with about 1:39 left. They had a timeout left, but our HC called a QB kneeldown for some reason. So, 2nd and 12 with about 1:34 and we gain about 4 yards, but get a penalty for an illegal formation (our wideout didn't check with the official, ughhh), which they smartly declined and it stopped the clock for a little bit (yes, it restarted on the ready, but that probably cost us 10 seconds). 3rd and 8 and about 1 minute left we bust around the corner for about 15 yards and a first down, but our RB goes out of bounds (ughhhh!!) and we get another flag for an illegal formation (same player ... ughhhh!!!). So, 3rd and 13 with about 50 seconds, we run up the middle for a few yards to get to 4th and 8ish with the clock running. We call timeout with 1 second left on the play clock to stop the clock with 11 seconds left. BTW, we have no scoreboard so the time is being kept on the field. We line up in punt formation (at about the 20) and have our punter run into the end zone, where he evades the first defender, then breaks a tackle and runs around some more before finally going down for the safety. We thought it took at least 15 seconds, but the officials said there was still one second left, so we had to kick off from our 20. I told the HC to onsides, but instead we squibbed, and it bounced straight through to the deep guys. Fortuntately, we tackled the guy and ended the game. Unfortunately, one of their guys got hurt on the play. Anyway, it was a very sloppy ending to an otherwise good game.
We have a lot of work to do - I thought we should have been able to score a bunch against this team - we have a lot more athleticism than they do, but they did a good job of game planning for us and shutting down the edges. They also moved the ball pretty well against our defense, but we forced 4 turnovers, which obviously made a big difference. I'm sure their coaches and players feel like they should have won the game.
Next up we play a very good team (they beat our last opponent 36-0) and I'm sure no one outside our team expects us to win. We're 3-0 now, but I'm still not sure if we're any good. This will be a good challenge for us, but I'm not sure if we're ready. We have a lot of things to fix. I just hope that we're competitive enough that our kids don't get discouraged and work to get better by playoff time. We'll see.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 10, 2011 22:24:45 GMT -6
I take offense to coachdoug about clueless parents. 1st off without we clueless parents you wouldnt have youth football...we provide the kids, we volunteer, we pay. We are here to get a clue!! Well, I didn't take your comment nearly as seriously as some of the others here did - I pretty much assumed you were kidding. But, just in case you weren't kidding, let me explain what I meant. I wasn't saying that ALL parents are clueless - I was saying that an online forum for parents would most likely attract that SUBGROUP of parents that are clueless and want to complain the most. For the more reasonable parents, of which there are many, coming to a board like this one would probably do them more good. I get, though, that there are a number of topics that are unlikely to come up here (as mentioned by several of the other posters), so maybe a sub-board for parents would possibly be a good idea, although I have no idea whether the people that run things here would be interested in such a thing. In any event, I hope that helps you to understand better what I was getting at.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 4, 2011 11:20:46 GMT -6
We won 39-0. Our biggest problem was trying the quell the dissention on the staff wrt keeping the score under control. Some of the assistants were vocal on the sideline in expressing their disapproval of the header's decisions. In fairness to the header he did make a reasonable effort this week to keep the score down, but he could do better. Anyway, the arguing on sideline in front of the kids and within earshot of the parents in the stands (which are right on top of the sideline at our field) was unprofessional and needs to be fixed.
We are 2-0 but haven't played anyone decent yet - our next two opponents should be pretty good tests, so we should find out if we're any good or not soon.
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Post by coachdoug on Sept 1, 2011 16:41:22 GMT -6
When I went thru this, I simply did Google searches on "dynamic stretching" "dynamic stretching vs. static stretching" "study dynamic stetching athletic performance" "study static stretching athletic performance" and so on. I found hundreds of articles and studies. Of course, it didn't help me much. I was accused of just pulling stuff off the Internet (like somehow finding a scientific study on the Internet somehow makes it less reliable). And there was some guy who had NFL experience from the 90s telling the board that I was wrong, and they went with the belief that I couldn't possibly know more about anything than someone who had walked on the hallowed land of an NFL field. Sheesh ....
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Post by coachdoug on Aug 28, 2011 23:34:06 GMT -6
A couple of caveats - only 18 players suited up for the game, so there was no way to sit all the starters. Also, the argument for playing 4 quarters really has nothing to do with being physically in shape, but rather being mentally prepared to stay focused and sharp for four full quarters. I'm not saying if I agree or disagree with either side at this point, I just want to make sure the points and counter-points are described and addressed accurately.
BTW, I am only an assistant on this team, and I've been given very little authority by the HC, so even though I'm part of this team, I'm mostly reporting what happened as an objective observer - I was not involved in any of the decisions about when and whom to substitute, what plays to call, etc, although I did offer my opinion when asked.
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Post by coachdoug on Aug 28, 2011 21:47:06 GMT -6
This past weekend our team won 53-22 and was up 53-14 at one point. We could have easily won 100-0 if we chose to. There was quite a bit of tension on the sideline, though, as some of our coaches thought we should take our foot off the pedal (as early as mid-1st quarter when we had a 23-0 lead) and others didn't want to let up at all. I understand both points of view - on the one hand, you certainly don't need or want to embarass or humiliate your opponent. Running up the score is unsportsmanlike, and really isn't the lesson we want to be teaching our kids. Certainly there are ways to keep the score reasonable (e.g. wholesale substituting, playing players out of position, etc) without telling your players to let up.
On the other hand, you don't want to send the message to your players that they don't have to work as hard or try as hard just because they are up by a few TDs. Also, if you have plans of playing for a championship, you want to keep your players focused and sharp, and you certainly don't want to get in the habit of getting sloppy against inferior competition. And, of course, if you are constantly pulling your starters out in the 2nd or 3rd quarter, how are they ever going to learn how to play a complete game or finish a game strong against the better competition they'll see in the playoffs or regionals?
Those of you who know me already know how I feel about this subject, but I wanted to present it as fairly and balanced as possible for discussion. Please share how you feel about this subject, and for those of you that feel it is your responsibility to keep to the score down, exactly how do you go about doing so?
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Post by coachdoug on Aug 28, 2011 21:22:25 GMT -6
In all the leagues I've coached in, it's four 10-minute quarters with a 10-15 minute halftime and about 1-2 minutes between quarters from Mitey Mite on up. Flag typically plays two 20-minute halves with a running clock.
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Post by coachdoug on Aug 28, 2011 10:21:27 GMT -6
We played our first game yesterday. I didn't really know what to expect. We hadn't really done any full live hitting prior to the game - didn't have any scrimmages and very little hitting in practice. We didn't do a single tackling drill where we took players to the ground. Our numbers are low (we suited 18 for the game) so our head coach is very wary about potentially getting players injured in practice.
We saw our opponent on scouting video, so I knew they weren't very good, but they did defeat their first opponent 31-8, so they weren't terrible. I wasn't sure we were any good, so I just didn't know what to expect.
Anyway, we returned the opening kickoff for a TD and they just couldn't keep up with our athletes in space. It was 23-0 midway through the first quarter. Our biggest problem was keeping out of mercy rules (which kick in at 28 points). The Head Coach got very upset when the DC, who is also our Assoc President, sub all our MPPs on defense and they scored a couple times. Despite the best efforts of the rest of the staff, we went into mercy rules mid-third quarter and after our last score we were up 53-14. Thankfully they scored on a long pass very near the end of the game (which also upset the header pretty good), to make a final score of 53-22.
I'm still not sure we're any good. That had to be the least fulfilling big win I've ever been a part of.
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