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Post by mrjvi on Dec 23, 2021 9:28:45 GMT -6
I use battalions (usually 4) for most things during the season-groups for sled conditioning, practice competitions, added discipline decisions (battalion leaders),attendance, etc. but by far the best way in 40 years to get kids serious about the strength work is to get some of them real strong and it becomes more motivating to be strong. The strong kids almost always are starters and good players (small school), and in practice when I keep weak kids from much contact with the strong kids (safety), they start to get it. Plus, unless the AD makes proper weight training a serious part of every coaches practice, it's an uphill battle to get them in there. In my 40 years it has always been that way. We do have T-shirts, long sleeved shirts and ultimately hoodies for kids that hit certain strength levels. Just like all the other suggestions on this thread it works for a smallish group. Once again the main thing that works for the most kids, IMO, is getting some of them very strong and making a big deal about it and go from there.
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Post by mrjvi on Dec 16, 2021 9:31:27 GMT -6
We are trying to change negative players through football if we can. They are some of the ones we have that football may help them more than they help us. Colleges want to know what they are getting.
Bob Ford who was the long time Albany, NY coach asked me about a kid I had. I told him the kid could definitely play at his level but was abrasive and had issues with many coaches and teachers at our HS. I was able, fortunately, to have a good rapport with him. He thanked me and said it was always refreshing to recruit my players because he always knew what they were really like because I didn't try to "snow" him. This particular kid he said he has had great success with-those kids with some issues. Kid did very well until he broke his wrist senior year.
Also had another kid who's father was furious for me not saying unbelievable things about his kid to get into the Coast guard academy. I told the father they would never believe me again. The father insisted it's my job to get the kid in no matter what. I also told him his kid's arrest record will prevent him getting in. He couldn't fathom why that would matter. He didn't get in and I had developed an enemy parent. The kid who did get into coact guard 2 years prior was an exceptional person. They want the truth.
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Post by mrjvi on Dec 15, 2021 7:11:07 GMT -6
I had an upstate div 3 school recruit a kid with no contact with me. Kid dropped out with a major drinking problem and no real academic skills. The coach then called me. I told him if he had contacted me I could have given him the heads up on this kid.
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Post by mrjvi on Dec 9, 2021 19:08:37 GMT -6
In my experience if you need to "Talk them into playing" as blb said above (virtually begging) they almost never pan out as a player of much value. All the above can have some effect- winning,somewhat, strong weight program, somewhat etc. The biggest thing that helped around my neighboring schools that are doing great are that the AD's MAKE all teams properly strength train or the coaches can't coach. THEN strong kids tend to do more sports. Not sure why numbers improve then but maybe when the NON weight training possibility of many sports is eliminated, they figure they may as well use that strength in more sports because they all will be lifting anyways. Probably why the BFS unified strength program was so succssful to all those schools' sports. Higher winning %ages from all of them.
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Post by mrjvi on Dec 6, 2021 12:31:58 GMT -6
I'm 62 and just finished my 40th year, 31 as a head, at 3 different schools. I've been retired from teaching for 6 years. Except for going up to weights 2 times a week my committment is largely fall. I delegate more. I still get excited so I'll keep going. Our school is involved in a possible merge with a neighboring school so that will bring interesting issues. My health is fair to good most of the time so I'm not sure what else I'd do. I have a mini hobby farm but that is easily workable in 2-3 hours each day. Money isn't much of a factor. I have enough with my wife's teaching retirement also. if I (we) want to go somewhere other than fall, we do. The kids keep me young. The Board of eds make me feel old. So I tend to ignore them. When I can't any more I'll then be done.
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Post by mrjvi on Oct 31, 2021 16:27:04 GMT -6
You can always find a way to prevent that from happening. I'm embarrassed hearing about it.
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Post by mrjvi on Oct 20, 2021 10:05:41 GMT -6
I'm at a small school now. I have nobody who can kick it even to the 20. I have 20 kids at best each week. We squib kick every kick off. I have some very inexperienced players we use on kick off since 4 quarters is a long time for the maybe 14-15 that are always in. They are relatively quick and can cover 15-20 yards fairly well. Not great tacklers, though. If we kicked it deep I guarantee we'd have some go all the way back. They usually get it no further than their 40-45, sometimes further back if it keeps bouncing. Last game we scored 3 times and got 1 onside (squib). Our punter could get fairly long punts but our coverage isn't great. He angles the kicks (we do short punt) with about a 50% of the time a gain of @ 25+ yards with no return. The down side is he shanks it right out of bounds sometimes with only @ a 10-15 yard net.
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Post by mrjvi on Oct 11, 2021 7:16:19 GMT -6
I would not let him address the team. The most I'd do is tell the team that so and so is done because he has some issues he needs to deal with. and treat him well when you see him. That's it IMO.
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Post by mrjvi on Oct 6, 2021 6:14:51 GMT -6
Our section in NY also went to a forfeit policy if you can't play your game by Monday. We are in the smallest class. We had a quarantine issue which caused a forfeit for our first game and then the team we played forfeited in the 2nd game. We were at a pretty healthy 27-28 kids in early season. With injuries and individual quarantines we are down to 18 this week. Grades come out on Friday. We may be done. 16 is the minimum.
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Post by mrjvi on Sept 7, 2021 15:46:28 GMT -6
We just got our covid info today. Last year no penalty. This year if you have enough to play you play. If you don't then you try to play your game through Monday. If not then you forfeit and get a loss. If both can't play no penalty.
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Post by mrjvi on Sept 7, 2021 6:04:42 GMT -6
How many teams in your area are affected by positive tests? We are quarantined until the 13th but only un-vaxed. We have already had to forfeit our 1st game.
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 16, 2021 6:24:56 GMT -6
I tried @ 20 years ago the same thing you did. The few BB players showed interest at camp then disappeared. They really were A holes to be honest even before I tried that. That QB who was decent for me still got decent passing stats-not that I tried to do that. The kids said we get open way more in DW then ever with the spread. We win way more with DW. A failed experiment but I'd never have known if I didn't try it. No coach I have had since then has ever suggested doing it again. Only fathers.
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 13, 2021 9:28:09 GMT -6
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 13, 2021 9:27:17 GMT -6
Thanks
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 13, 2021 9:26:56 GMT -6
coachcoon03-where are you in upstate, NY. I'm in upstate also. Our numbers were good before this "pandemic". Not so much now. Only surge at the moment is indifference. Hopefully back in school will help. I usually don't accept varsity kids after school starts but this year may be different.
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 13, 2021 4:53:30 GMT -6
coachcoon-where are you in upstate, NY. I'm in upstate also. Our numbers were good before this "pandemic". Not so much now. Only surge at the moment is indifference. Hopefully back in school will help. I usually don't accept varsity kids after school starts but this year may be different.
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 10, 2021 9:46:49 GMT -6
blb brings up a good point. Our small school had 130-140 graduating 30 years ago-even 20. This year there were 80. PLUS soccer was added 9 years ago so now there are 4 or really 5 sports. Too many for a small school. If you assume 1/2 are girls and 1/2 will not do a sport and half of them will do another sport you end up with @ 10 available each grade unless you can get the do nothings to play.
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 9, 2021 10:06:22 GMT -6
We are actually going to be worse than spring. I'll be lucky to get 25 on varsity. What Realdawg and Wingtol have mentioned about quality backups is exactly our problem. We may have 12-14 real players then an embarrassing drop off.
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Post by mrjvi on Aug 5, 2021 17:11:52 GMT -6
Remote learning killed us too. This would have been our culmination of 3 previous years of good progress at the school I'm at now. I'm also a retired teacher. Seniors this season, a great group as sophs, are no shows all summer and maybe no shows at all. Weight room is lucky if we have 12 kids each day. Feels like 1st year here again. I believe we'll have 6 9ths and 10ths starting each way on varsity with no JV. We'll still coach our @sses off.
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Post by mrjvi on Jul 26, 2021 5:53:32 GMT -6
Are these numbers from the past year's 9th through 11th grades? Also I know that PA uses just boys or girls in their numbers. In NY we use both and 9-11th grade previous year. That's why I just mentioned graduation numbers of boys plus girls.
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Post by mrjvi on Jul 24, 2021 18:44:47 GMT -6
In NY there are 5 size classes. AA, A, B, C, and D. We are a larger D school with 80 kids in our graduating class this past year. Schools with as low as 45 kids graduating play 11 man, at least in our section.
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Post by mrjvi on Jul 9, 2021 16:33:31 GMT -6
kcbazooka- Maybe a good idea for me to get rid of the 6-8 plays before games also. Thanks
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Post by mrjvi on Jul 9, 2021 16:30:54 GMT -6
I guess I don't give them much time to worry. Our pre-game talks are about 10 minutes before we go out. We get to the school (or our school) an hour before kick off. I have so many kids that have to go both ways that I have also found us to "last longer" before the fatigue bites us since I switched to this. And I probably condition our kids as hard as anyone Monday through Wednesday but so many of our opponents can 2 platoon many or most of their team. We never do any pre-game or practice stretching at all. In practice our first activity is very physical so I guess the games are similiar to them. Honestly an hour or more warmup before games would make me chain smoke. For me it's brutal.
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Post by mrjvi on Jul 9, 2021 9:22:06 GMT -6
We are different. We go out 15 minutes before kick off. Very short agilities then run 6-8 plays then go to the sideline.
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Post by mrjvi on Jun 14, 2021 9:45:03 GMT -6
I wish I had too many numbers for me to handle.
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Post by mrjvi on Jun 2, 2021 18:43:26 GMT -6
Larrymoe-I agree completely. When I was just starting out a neighboring city school FB coach made a "deal" with the basketball players that if they came to practice for an hour twice a week and to games that they could go play basketball all the other days. Sounded great to the basketball players. Worked until the 2nd week. Those players were PITA after they felt they were elite and the rest of the FB team started quitting because of the special treatment. He abandoned it soon after but never recovered that season. I'd rather lose with players that want to be there than deal with the headaches. Still recruit but get to know the kids better before getting too excited.
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Post by mrjvi on Jun 2, 2021 9:00:54 GMT -6
If I had to rely on finding talent at our small school, we'd rarely win a game. I ALWAYS need to develop kids that want to play and hope some talent rises from that. The best teams here have developed talent mostly but have an added bonus of a few or even 1 or 2 talented kids that puts them over the top. Right now the kids who are still remote are making no effort to come into school for workouts at all. 11 weeks away from the official start bodes poorly for us this year. I can't develop kids who don't show.
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Post by mrjvi on May 20, 2021 11:46:29 GMT -6
I had one player back in 2000 who went to Syracuse after HS and then played 7 years pro. When he was training for college in the summer he was doing the 10 x 110's. He knew it wasn't FB specific. He asked them why when he went to Syracuse that fall. He told me they just laughed and said that it was what everyone did. He said the linemen who did the worst were most of the starters. Too big for that stuff. Colleges sometimes do well despite their conditioning philosophies. A little off topic but interesting.
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Post by mrjvi on May 19, 2021 17:11:13 GMT -6
I believe there is anaerobic conditioning for football and what I call collision conditioning. Your ability to hit and take hits wears you out if you don't condition for it. Anaerobic conditioning doesn't prepare you to take 60-120 hits in a game by itself. We will go live (no takedowns) for 25 plays in a row at no slower than 30 seconds between plays. We do 25 more after water. Once per week. Seems to work for us though a small roster team like ours will honestly make me a little worried about fatigue injuries. Luckily we've only had a few in many years. Obviously we progress to that level over a couple weeks. I think they become tougher. If I had to pick one of those it would be collision conditioning. JUST MY OPINION.
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Post by mrjvi on May 11, 2021 16:56:06 GMT -6
We don't do anything. We go right into practice. Saves time and no injuries from it.
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