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Post by grouchy71 on Oct 17, 2011 23:05:44 GMT -6
fantom---pretty sure your sarcasm detector is broke on the above post. Yeah, probably. Boy, that sucks. Lol. Sarcasm detectors have a way of getting eroded during the course of a season. To show you I'm full of it, I'll give you a dumb thing I used to hear a lot from former head coach: we had a stud a few years ago who would frequently break into open field and be headed for the end zone, clearly no one was going to catch him. Having been burned by boneheaded 'block in the back' flags well behind the play more than once, our head coach had a habit of yelling loud enough for all to hear "DON'T BLOCK ANYONE!!!" It made sense to us as coaches, but was real fun for casual fans to hear a coach extolling the virtues of NOT blocking. Grouch
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Post by grouchy71 on Oct 17, 2011 20:06:13 GMT -6
Anybody else have a brain fart that led to saying something humorously dumb? [/quote]
- No. Not ever. Appalled at some of the idiocy I'm reading in this thread, from fellow football coaches nonetheless!
Grouch
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Post by grouchy71 on Oct 4, 2011 22:52:35 GMT -6
Coach,
We're dealing with the same thing here, a fellow New Englander talking. The fall lacrosse, fall baseball, and fall hockey hurt us a bit, plus a couple of hoops kids who think they're destined for the NBA and need to practice basketball once they get to high school after playing youth football. I'm a first year head coach, and some of the answers we've come up with probably won't thrill some people, but it's the truth. The first is the Spread offense, really any type of offense that lines up some receivers and throws the ball some. We're an option team and run more than we throw, but the PERCEPTION that we're high-tech and need basketball kids to catch the ball is helping. Also, I'm a younger coach and handle things differently than the previous coach. The fact that we don't demean the kids unnecessarily, that we build relationships with the kids and find ways to have fun is HUGE. We ask a lot of them, I've been a successful coach for years, I've coached in college and will get all over kids, but I've also learned to be positive with them when they do something right, the old saying is true that "you get more with honey than you do with vinegar." We use HUDL, which the kids think is the coolest thing ever. I know that they show practice film to their buddies at times, we encourage them to view it in school just so other students might see it and ask what it is. Get people interested. If you can't have fun with the telestrator and chat boxes in HUDL, then you really need to lighten up. Anyhow, all these things lead to good feelings about the program after years of negativity about anyone involved with it. The positive word of mouth has led to a couple of younger players "recruiting" their buddies to come out and play, or to return to playing. We actually had a good deal of success with making a simple after-school announcement saying that we were looking for more players to join up, particularly freshmen. I was stunned how many kids took us up on the offer, a lot of them said they just hadn't thought of it before, or they had but.... fill in the blank. We're working our youth program, coaches stop by their practices from time to time, invite them to our games for free if they wear jerseys, and we had our entire varsity team attend one of the youth team games which did wonders for building/mending relationships with those kids and that program. How did I get our entire varsity there? We made a deal. We took attendance, and said that if we got a certain % attendance, we'd have a walk-thru instead of full pad practice at the end of the following week. This is getting dangerously close to too "touchy-feely", but we felt it was important, and thus far it's paying off. We started with 53 players, we're now at 60. Now the fact that we started 4-0 with a couple big rivalry wins has helped, I'm not naive, but I believe that the way that we're doing things is key also. Quite the ramble from me, but I can relate to this issue, and I think it's a big issue as different factors pull at kids these days. These are my thoughts, not the only way, but it has been working thus far.
Grouch
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Post by grouchy71 on Jul 21, 2011 21:35:50 GMT -6
Great discussion. I used to be real black and white with this, "never talk back, talk with your pads, etc." I'm still that way with the kids, but I think it's a valid point that the teams that play with an edge do get an advantage from doing so. I'm not willing to go there, but I recognize it. The big issue for me is how to present this to your kids. I had this exact scenario at 7v7 last week. Other team playing with edge, nothing awful, a little more chirping than I prefer. I told our kids to keep doing things our way, etc. However, there is a point where I could lose the kids a bit if I keep preaching things this way and we keep getting beat because I'm rotating in freshmen, playing base coverages, not lining up in stacked quads and having the QB take 7 seconds to throw, etc. I could feel my kids steaming a bit, so I gathered them afterwards, told them I was proud, they did it the right way, and there is no alternative, WE DO NOT DO THINGS THAT WAY! Then I clenched my jaw and said quietly, "we are going to add these guys to our scrimmage schedule (their coach had already requested this), and in that scrimmage, we will not let up, we will pound them, ... it progressed from there with a few colorful adjectives that I keep in reserve most of the time. Just felt a need to tell my guys that I had their back, I recognized their frustration, and that we weren't being intimidated, we were simply going to wait for a better time to respond. The kids ate it up, and I think it's important that this happened because I could definitely see where at some point it could be construed as you're backing down. It's a very complicated issue though, great insights by all,
Grouch
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Post by grouchy71 on Jul 20, 2011 4:30:40 GMT -6
I'm a new HC and we're putting in the policy this year of free admittance for any youth player or cheerleader wearing their uniform. It's already helping with relationships with the youth program, should increase bodies at the game which is good for our players morale, the kids' parents will pay for admittance and the more people you have there, the more concessions you sell. Win-win-win in my eyes! Friend of mine who is an HC has done the drill of having a youth team introduced to the fans at halftime for a couple years now, the little guys love it, some 8th graders are too cool for it, but I'm thinking of adding that too.
Hey B-Dud, good luck with Antioch, my old neck of the woods out there. Recruited a kid from Deer Valley when I was in college a couple years ago, Kris something, great QB, I think he went to Nevada.
Grouch
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Post by grouchy71 on Jun 7, 2011 21:15:51 GMT -6
I'm loving the idea of a 20 minute or so warm-up. Part of it is that I hate the whole hour-long warm-up session that just drags on, intensity drains, etc. I'd rather keep them inside, off their feet, quiet, getting focused. What do these 20 minutes look like?
Grouchy
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