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Post by bobgoodman on May 1, 2011 11:44:29 GMT -6
I hope you won't be shocked that my rxn on reading just a little of it is to LOL loudly! Can't make up anything as wacky as real life, it seems.
Meanwhile...I got a hot tip on today's Little Miss May Day contest in Bloomfield, NJ. The favorite is taking a dive in the Crayolas competition. I ought to be able to parlay my winnings there into some big bucks from the 6th grade science fair. I need to recoup after the bundle I dropped on the spelling bee.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 30, 2011 12:12:01 GMT -6
No, gr. 7 is the start of HS, so they are SOL, and in HS, the teams are Gr 7, gr 8-9, gr 10-11, so you are pretty much SOL two straight years, you could play up with the 8-9's in gr 7, but I've never seen it. Wow. I could understand limiting the total number of years of eligibility, and even precluding the possibility of "red shirting", but if someone gets left back a grade in the wrong grade, they have to sit at least 2 seasons (unless they play waaay the heck up as you suggest)? Do the rules also carry into HS, so they lose eligibility in grade 12 too? What if they go to grade 13? I wrote "waaay the heck up" because usually there's so much growth in those years that a slightly overage grade 7 playing on the same field with 9th graders would probably be seriously small.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 29, 2011 22:49:05 GMT -6
It's a 9-man league for grades 5 and 6.... I lost 4 kids due to being too old (failing grades is pretty common here, Are they allowed to play up a grade, or are they out of luck? Too old for the grade 5-6 team, not allowed to play with grade 7?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 29, 2011 22:39:23 GMT -6
A youth football coach can learn from a great basketball, wrestling or even martial arts coaches when it comes to organizing, motivating and communicating effectively with kids. Not only that, but a few of the skills in some other sports are specifically applicable to football situations. I loved the "freeze" lessons bit. Have you or Mr. G ever done it "Simon Says" style, eliminating anybody who's caught breaking down & moving, until one is left?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 24, 2011 8:20:20 GMT -6
we usually have 6 coaches so when we get to Indie time it's usually 2 coaches per station. Some years we get by with 3(1 per station). The key is to have coaches who understand the system & the drills. If 2 coaches at a station each see things wrong, are they supposed to confer before one of them talks to the player(s)?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 23, 2011 19:22:16 GMT -6
That really varies depending on the drill & what we are working on. Some drills maybe 1/2 the team at a time, some maybe 1 player at a time. Wasted motion & players standing around are worse then a disease to me. Here is how I heard it described at a clinic & what I attempt to do every practice. It's important to get the maximum number of prefect reps per drill. As far as coaches go we work hard on teaching a coach to coach on the fly. It's an art, correcting a player without stopping practice, using choice words & phrases to communicate. When we break into Indie time there maybe 3-4 groups of players at a single time, each group is working on whatever we have planned. That means at any one time most players are in motion. Using a rapid pace practice we don't have to worry about conditioning, our players are being conditioned in drills. Ideally we are getting a rep every 15-20 seconds. I like that a lot. Assuming you have your avg. number of coaches when you're in indie, how many coaches per station is that?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 23, 2011 15:40:28 GMT -6
We plan out every minute, & try to squeeze in the most effective drills we can. We work on specific techniques, most importantly blocking & tackling. How many players would you usually have repping at one time?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 23, 2011 0:06:15 GMT -6
We have rules that pretty much clear everything up. First, no Daddy is ever allowed to coach his son. Son = Lineman Dad has to coach backs. Second only one coach other than the position coach can correct a player, & that is me(HC). Third, there is no such thing as Def Asst helper. He needs a position. Interesting. Very different from the way practices have been organized in the places I've been. I'm not sure whether that way would be better or worse. Rule #1 I like, but may not be feasible in a world where some coaches will give an effort only if coaching a relative is part of the package. Sometimes you have to give a little to get a lot. I could see rule #2 as a problem when drills are conducted in parallel or scrimmage style. Do a rep, and there are 4 players who need correcting. Why make each one wait for either the position coach or head coach to get to him? By the time the coach talked to the 2nd player who made a mistake, he's forgotten the mental image of the 3rd & 4th player's mistakes. It's faster and more reliable if 4 coaches each take one of them aside, while the coach in charge sets up the next rep with another platoon of players. But of course that's only if one coach on Tue. doesn't give a player instruction that's contradicted by another coach on Thurs. Rule 3 I would've liked as an assistant in 2007 or 2010. It's always easier to concentrate when you know your responsibility. Unfortunately on the team I was with in 2010, it was like we were all understudies for the HC, ready to stand in when he didn't show up on little or no notice. So we couldn't plan ahead.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 19, 2011 22:30:53 GMT -6
What's a college youth camp? A camp for youth football hosted by a college? Is that Husker as in Iowa U.?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 17, 2011 20:55:28 GMT -6
I got links to the video of a game of that Hurricanes team I mentioned above. They were the opponents of the Green Wave so it's posted in the thread at Offense Guru as part of the series of videos illustrating sidesaddle T: offenseguru.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=gotopost&board=youthfootball&thread=60&post=225Please note that they use some local variations in the rules, so you'll see some formations by both teams where players normally at end are in the backfield. The pistol team is in orange.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 16, 2011 21:05:05 GMT -6
Then it looks as if a baiting tactic could've worked if you'd tried it. I'm afraid to ask, but what exactly do you mean? What kind of baiting tactic are you suggesting? Making the other team think the weak player has a responsibility he doesn't, to draw a throw. I've read of bait coverages at higher levels of play, where it's not MPPs at issue.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 16, 2011 13:01:40 GMT -6
Anybody try using a weak player in the defensive secondary as bait? Yeah, my second or third year coaching I tried putting some weak kids in the secondary - not so much as bait, but just thinking I could hide them there since most teams rarely threw. The opposing sideline saw the substitution and just immediately yelled in an audible for a fade to the receiver covered by my MPP. After giving up 2 or 3 long TDs I got away from that strategy and never tried it again. At least I learned from my mistake ;D Then it looks as if a baiting tactic could've worked if you'd tried it.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 14, 2011 23:29:28 GMT -6
In my offense one of the best such hiding places is the snapper. With a balanced line in the wedge he's the apex and hardly has to move under his own power. He's not responsible for any push nor for either A gap. He needs only to learn the trick of snapping and absorbing impact.
Anybody try using a weak player in the defensive secondary as bait?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 14, 2011 14:40:57 GMT -6
When the short heavy set kid goes to play WR I just always feel bad for the kid. Would you feel bad if he rotated thru that position going in fly motion across the backfield?
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 6, 2011 22:15:17 GMT -6
Are you being sarcastic? It looks to me like legitimate subject matter for here, and not a bad way for coachadrian to break the ice, i.e. by introducing something he or someone else has worked on before coming here.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 3, 2011 21:38:11 GMT -6
in most youth leagues it's 2 for a kick, & 1 for a run. This is to promote the kicking game. It's a lot harder for the younger teams to kick. On the 8U team whose offense coach I'm advising, turns out they're playing in a league in Texas that gives 1 XP by run, 3XP by kick -- and the kick can be made without a rush! I'm guessing it's also 1 XP for a pass, but who knows -- to encourage passing, it's conceivable they'd give 2 pts for that. They don't allow BBW, but do allow the offensive ends to be in motion toward the other OL, or lined up with shoulders 45 degrees away from them, at the snap. The defense has to have anyone playing between the guards' noses at the snap play a yard off the ball, and they can't rush anyone farther outside than the outside shoulder of the last tight OL.
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Post by bobgoodman on Apr 1, 2011 12:30:19 GMT -6
Does anyone know of any camps in or around Louisiana for youth to middle school aged children? I am having a hard time finding these. Your help would be greatly appreciated. Maybe I'm just being compulsively thorough and asking a "duh" question, being this is a football coaching forum, but...do you mean just football, or even sports camps? Or are you just looking for a good general summer sleepaway or day camp, and figuring you might as well ask here as long as you're around? Not that I have an answer, but I like to help others by refining the question.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 31, 2011 13:45:46 GMT -6
I recently saw video of a game of 8Us where the team I posted a link to a previous video of played against a team called the Hurricane or Hurricanes (in Texas, not Staten Is.) wearing red uniforms. They used a pistol formation most of the game similar to the one Coach Tut described above but with only 1 WR split sort of wide-nasty and a slot or wing near him. Would you like me to try to track them down?
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 14, 2011 14:29:18 GMT -6
Most of the kids on the team can and will hit each other until practice stops. A few won't stop even then!
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 14, 2011 10:25:24 GMT -6
I think the worst practice to not have full equipment would be the last one before the game, if for no other reason than to make sure they still have & remember all their equipment! Mouth guards seem to be the hardest to remember.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 13, 2011 15:12:15 GMT -6
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 13, 2011 0:38:06 GMT -6
Well, Bob, the obvious answer is that dacoachmo has some coworkers who's kids play youth football and he's looking for a forum to direct them to. I would start by assuming that he means the most obvious thing (i.e. what I just said), and adjust if it turns out he meant something else. And, no, I do not know of any such forum, although I wouldn't be surprised if one exists. I'm not sure how much value there would be in such a board - just a bunch of clueless parents getting together to complain about stuff they really don't know about ... it doesn't sound very productive to me. Having those parents come to a coach's forum (like this or several others) would probably be a better education for those parents and ultimately do them a lot more good. Yeah, in retrospect, now that I'm more awake (but about to go to sleep), that seems the more likely meaning, just because I can't think of how a forum would help him in the other case! But let's not emphasize the cluelessness of parents in this case. Sure, this is a coaching forum, and the details we're most interested in are things most of the parents wouldn't know much about. But think about what this person's after like a forum for, say, parents of children undergoing medical or surgical treatment for some particular condition those family members share. They don't need to know enough to be medical doctors themselves, but they may have certain concerns regarding what to expect, etc. that wouldn't be likely to come up in a medical forum but that they could share among themselves. In that case, it could be useful to have a forum for football moms & dads, although I don't know where that might be. I would look for some threads in Usenet group misc.kids -- except that Usenet ain't what it used to be for traffic; misc.kids at one time was huge. Now everything's on the Web, and even though you can use Google Groups to access Usenet, Web boards have outstripped the old newsgroups. But that's the basic idea -- look for parenting forums with discussion threads on football, rather than football forums with threads on parenting, because you're not likely to find much use in the latter, as Doug notes. Let's not assume the parents' concerns are necessarily complaints. Maybe they are clueless about football and would like to know more. If the original poster is in an area like here, there's a fair likelihood the co-workers he's referring to are immigrants who didn't grow up with a familiarity with American football, or they could be women who've never had an interest in team sports. It's like one young lady I overheard talking about how she would tell her mother she was playing in a rugby tournament, and her mother would be all like, that's fine dear, and then wonder why her daughter's clothes came home so dirty -- thought maybe rugby was a card game or some such.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 12, 2011 13:57:50 GMT -6
Is there a good forum board for parents? Looking to help a few coworkers with youth players... I'm confused. Do you mean you want to help a few co-workers by supplying them with players whom you're a parent of? Or do you mean you want to help (How?) some co-workers who are parents of youth football players? Or something else?
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 11, 2011 14:38:49 GMT -6
First, he asked if it was realistic. To me, that means he's asking if it's a good idea. When someone asks me if something's realistic, it means they've already decided it's a good idea and want to know if it's feasible. Maybe it doesn't work that way in coach-speak.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 11, 2011 0:20:02 GMT -6
Well, if that's really all it is -- whether it would be a good thing and possible for kids that age to learn every position in one season, given sufficient time -- the answer is yes.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 7, 2011 18:49:12 GMT -6
I was just picking some of the coaches minds about the offense. I am a single wing guy but I am being "forced" to look at another offense with a "real qb." I am keeping my BLOCKING BACK THOUGH! Dartmouth V? H back? I? Crunch? DW with sniffer? Bull/bear?
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 5, 2011 15:27:18 GMT -6
We have here an odd situation where we need to calculate something, but the person asking hasn't supplied the data and the people trying to answer are bringing in factors that are peripheral at best to the question, which was whether, on a given team, to teach 7 YOs more than one football positions in a season, and if so, how many positions? Not whether it's a good or bad idea in gen'l, but whether this coach should attempt it this year with this team.
Given enough time and interest on the student's part, you can teach not only football, but baseball, judo, swimming, Spanish, knot tying, and the accordion. So let's look at the time and interest factors separately.
Given that the kids are interested enough to be taking up football at all, how much att'n will they devote to learning a 2nd, 3rd, etc. position? When I was coaching a bunch who were older and more sophisticated, they weren't too enthusiastic when I was rotating them all thru the role of passer when it was obvious So-And-So was their best passer. I tried to impress on them that in our offense the passing could come from many positions. But really, I didn't want So-And-So, who was a prima donna, to get the idea he had QB sewn up, and also we didn't have enough players attending practice to really divide up by position anyway.
7 YOs will be much less sophisticated, so their main motivation (or that of their families) in their learning the skill of a 2nd position will be whether it will get them more playing time. That's going to depend on how many players you have.
If your number of players is low, they will mostly go both ways, so they'll be learning at least 2 positions anyways, one on offense, one on defense. With 7 YOs chances are great that there'll be either no kicking allowed at all or that the kicking game will be very attenuated by rule, so we'll leave kicking downs out of consideration. If your game is significantly competitive, count on anywhere from 15% to 40% of your players as minimum play, i.e. those whose play you'll want to minimize so as to avoid messing up the whole team. That means you may have 13 to 18 players before getting more than 11 who you'd want to play both ways, so except for the need to fill in for injuries or absences, no player would gain playing time by learning a 2nd offensive or defensive position. You'd have to have 26 to 36 players before getting to the point where you'd have a solid 22 of primarily 1-way players where learning a 2nd position on offense or defense would likely give a player extra playing time. Between 18 and 26 players, you might not automatically coach them 2-way, and therefore learning a 2nd position might improve a player's chances of gaining playing time, mostly going from defense to offense & vice versa. Given the typical numbers of players on such teams and the fact that you might treat them as instructional more than competitive to begin with, meaning you would not minimize anyone's play time, you can usually rule out extra playing time as a motivator for learning a 2nd position.
But that's OK, because to most 7 YOs, practice is just about as much fun as games. Any way you look at it, they'll be just as glad to learn a 2nd, 3rd, etc. position as their 1st.
So that leaves time as the remaining determinant. When I teach a course, the first thing I need to know is the calendar that I have to work around. That's going to determine how much can be put into the course. As I wrote above, no number of extra coaches can increase their learning beyond a certain point in a given amount of hours.
It's possible to calculate how much time learning extra positions will take as a fraction of the time needed for learning one position (or as will likely be the case, 2 positions -- one on offense, one on defense). You have to look at how much different the positions are from each other. seagull73 already was categorizing football at that level into a small number of equivalent positions. I wouldn't say it's that simple, but that's the right idea. If you were to coach someone at one position and someone at the other, how much of the skills you'd be teaching would be identical?
That's going to be influenced in part by your choice of systems, especially the offense. If I wanted to be mostly competitive and only somewhat instructional with 7 YOs I'd be tempted to just install the beast offense and never teach handoffs, pitchouts or passes of any kind. That alone would simplify things enormously. It would be easier to spread the ball around by rotating players thru the RB posititon than it would be to coach ball exchanges; if I wanted to get really radical I might put in a snap to the closest blocking back and maybe a pass of some kind. The line would block first opponent away from the POA, and blocking backs take care of any defender left in the hole, so positions on the line other than snapper would be practically interchangeable. Much of OL skill would be interchangeable with DL skill, since a lot of it is getting off fast on the snap and keeping the right body position for leverage. Everyone on defense is going to need to know how to tackle and pursue and line up appropriately against the offense, but the line needs more skill at fighting off blocks.
So the point is that teaching an extra position to the same degree of proficiency as the first will take less time, and depending on your system can be made to take much less time, than teaching the first, and if your players are going both ways anyway (meaning they're already learning 2 positions), which they probably will be, the overlap in skill with a position they're already learning will be that much the greater.
But how much time is it going to take to learn even their primary position for 7 YO beginners? Let's assume it's actually going to be 2 primary positions because they'll need to play both ways. If they haven't had at least 12 suited-up practice sessions of 90 minutes each and won't have at least 10 more, regardless of where you are in the season or pre-season, I'd say you'd be hard pressed to teach a 3rd position. If you have enough players to play them 1 way, then I'd say the minimum number of sessions could be cut down to 8 before you would consider adding a 2nd position.
The number of "extra" practice sessions required for the added positions is greater than just the extra hours you'll need to teach the extra positions, because the players will still need to keep up their skills in their original positions, so it's not like they're going to just practice their secondary positions straight thru. Once the season starts, it may be difficult to fit in practice at an extra position given the frequency at which they'll still need to practice their previous position(s). So it's not just the hours but the frequency of sessions that matter.
The calendars/schedules and total time afforded for youth football vary enormously from one organiz'n to another, which is why it's vital to get this info.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 3, 2011 17:51:37 GMT -6
TWO footballs, ONE tee, ONE line and THREE "coaches" fetching balls. NO I AM NOT JOKING Well, that explains why it took an hour.
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Post by bobgoodman on Mar 3, 2011 14:37:58 GMT -6
Coach I think as long as you have one good blocking drill and one good tackling drill that everyone does everyday you should be great. The rest of the stuff really needs to be position specific. I hear you. My only concern is, if you saw the coaching going on in my league you might want to plan the WHOLE practice. One coach last year lined up the kids and had them all TRY to kick off a tee for an hour. How many coaches, footballs, and tees did he have -- and use?
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Post by bobgoodman on Feb 28, 2011 23:07:09 GMT -6
Someone has told you that you are in charge of eight Pop Warner teams and you decide that you want to implement FOUR drills that EVERY team will do EVERY practice. How often do they practice?
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