|
Post by jhanawa on Jan 22, 2014 13:36:22 GMT -6
We aren't anywhere close to what I consider a staff should look like. Our district provides 7 assistant stipends and the HC stipend. We aren't allowed to pay assistants with booster/tax credit/FB club monies. In order to be a top notch program, I think 8 coaches on varsity, 6 JV and 6 Frosh is the minimum.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jan 10, 2014 9:20:32 GMT -6
I'd look at what is the best fit for the team. If a position coach isn't the best guy for the job at that particular position, then he should be moved to another position for the benefit of the team- regardless of his feelings or your personal relationship with him- team first. If its a personal/chemistry issue between the two assistants, then air it out and bury the hatchet. They need to set aside their differences for the benefit of the team.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Aug 7, 2013 9:25:01 GMT -6
Anybody got any info on where we can order helmet decals resembling the Oregon wings?
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jan 23, 2013 9:04:40 GMT -6
Like others its been through exposure to programs & coaches, I played in a multiple "I" power/option offense in HS, I had 4 different offensive coaches & systems in college, multiple pro, flexbone, WCO and one back zone based offenses, after college I coached in Wing T, flexbone and then began running my own version of an offense which had a option and misdirection based run game with a passing game borrowed from my college years. We ran that for many years under center and backed it up into the shotgun about 8-9 years ago. We tinkered with footwork and timing until we got it right, it was a process.....About the same time we went gun I completely scrapped our system of play calling and went to a signal based/code word system. The guys I coach with thought I was nuts going into the gun and thought I was completely insane to toss out the terminology we've used forever, but IMO it was the best decision that I made regarding coaching offense. Our offense has been and continues to be an ongoing development, it gets better and more refined each year as our staff gets better coaching it. I've also learned a lot from guys on here that we've incorporated into our system. It's been a fun ride, kids love it, coaches love it and most importantly, it works.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jan 16, 2013 8:56:02 GMT -6
My junior year in high school is when I got the bug, I filled up my Algebra book with play diagrams, I would go home and tape college games to study. I'd leave plays on the whiteboard for my college coaches, partly as a suggestion and partly as a joke...Funny thing is my two sons are always leaving me a "new play" on my whiteboard in my football office at home, yeah, a full sized whiteboard at home when inspiration strikes at 2:30 AM....I put that up because my wife would get pi$$ed about me diagramming plays on every piece of paper around, phone book, etc....I accidentally drew a play on the back of one of my kids birth certificates laying on the desk....oops, thought it was scrape paper....so the whiteboard is for my safety...LOL
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Dec 11, 2012 10:01:07 GMT -6
My youngest son, who is 6, gets pissed off if I don't take him to work out with the team. He's grown up running with the older boys, it's been a positive experience.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Oct 5, 2012 11:43:23 GMT -6
Funny that he complains about potential 18 play drives......all he has to do is have his defense make them go 3 and out, then his defense is on the field less time then they would be against a team that huddles.....IMO what it is really is not having the ability to sub personnel (nickle/dime/short yardage packages) if the offense doesn't....well, tough chit, he's a big boy, he can learn to deal with it. Would all the "purists" be ok with the fast pace if it was no huddle double tight wishbone or Wing T?
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Sept 5, 2012 9:56:12 GMT -6
It's an interesting idea for killing off season boredom and would provide an neutral outside opinion, which I think is a good thing, kinda like an independent consultant giving honest feedback.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Aug 10, 2012 12:33:12 GMT -6
Our long practice is 2 hours, short practices are 1.5 hours.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Aug 10, 2012 10:09:32 GMT -6
Focus on the little things, stances & starts, stepping correctly, pad level, fundamentals.... I've been in your shoes before, had a team once that had 23 kids, 3 of whom had experience, we started out slow but ended up pretty good by the end of the season....daily improvement is the goal.... Things have gotten better over time, this year we have over 60 freshmen cleared so far.....build towards the future with the kids you have now.....
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Feb 27, 2012 12:14:07 GMT -6
Building a relationship with the youth coaches in the community is important to us regardless if they choose to use any of our terminology or plays. The important thing is that they are teaching sound fundamentals, our schemes and terminology are simple enough that we can teach the kids that stuff when they get to our school. Part of our commitment to building relationships with our youth coaches is that we put on free coaching clinics for our area's youth coaches. This is our second year of putting on these coaching clinics, tonight we'll be having our second of four clinics for this year. During these clinics, we discuss what we do, but mostly find out what it is that they (youth coaches) are doing and what problems they are having with it, then we discuss possible solutions. When we discuss a blocking scheme, I'll show film of how we use it from our formations and then discuss how it could be used from their formations. I try to tailor the clinic to improving what they do, I'm not trying to get them to run our stuff. I really try to focus a lot of our clinic attention on line play because that seems to be the biggest area of concern with most youth coaches.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jan 15, 2012 12:43:01 GMT -6
You could offer to put on a free clinic for the youth coach's,go over safety issues,rule changes,basic fundamentals,stuff like that.
Los, this will be our second year that our HS staff will be putting on a free youth clinic for local youth coaches. We enjoy sharing and talking football and it gives us an opportunity to build relationships with local community youth coaches. Having a quality feeder system where kids are being coached properly is every HS coaches dream. I'd suggest to any youth coach, approach your local HS head coach about putting on a youth clinic, he'd probably jump at the chance to help you.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Apr 5, 2011 22:28:23 GMT -6
I'll vouch for it! It's a GREAT resource, I'm on it daily scouring through the webinar archives. In respect to us die hard football video junkies, I wish you'd offer more video choices at the same time though, 6-7 per week isn't enough, I watch and re watch the selections and have to wait until they get rotated. ;D
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Feb 20, 2011 13:27:41 GMT -6
$7.00 Kitchen Clock at Walmart or wherever, you can set it in hours, minutes or seconds. We use them for passing league/QB release times as well as practice. Have somebody assigned to the kitchen clock, 5 minute periods on the schedule, blows a air horn or whistle every 5 minutes when the kitchen clock goes off. If your real fancy, you can have a manager flip score board numbers for the period that your on.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jan 12, 2011 14:16:51 GMT -6
I don't coach wrestling but I strongly encourage our kids to wrestle because I believe that the toughness, leverage and conditioning benefit the kids as football players. I invite the wrestling coaches to come to practice and I introduce them to the kids and make a big deal about wrestling being an "extension" of football season, you get two extra months of tackling practice. We've got 15 football players wrestling this year.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Dec 23, 2010 11:24:59 GMT -6
It's very common here in Arizona at the youth and high school levels. It has to do with heat acclimation, its a lot hotter inside pads than without. Kids are used to being inside in the AC, their bodies need to adjust to being outside in the heat. Our first 2 practices are helmets only, then uppers & helmets 3 days, the following week we can go full pads with contact. In half pads, its a good time to teach thud form tackling so kids aren't tempted to dive through legs, also a good time to get work in on special teams. IMO its no big deal since there are plenty of things to go over before we get to the full contact stuff, heck, most of the kids we get don't even know how to put their pads in their pants on the first day anyway.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Aug 9, 2010 21:30:50 GMT -6
Doug,
That sounds like when I started coaching youth ball, they had pitchforks and torches out in force. We had zero equipment, NOTHING, had to get everything ourselves and got stabbed in the back every single step of the way by a few idiots on the board. We eventually got the right people voted into office and ousted the jacka$$es. I sure wish you could have moved closer to Phoenix, we have 107 frosh signed up ( we'll probably have around 70 actually show up) and need more coaches. If your interested in officiating, the AIA is conducting classes now at it's Phoenix office, I'm not sure about what they have in Tucson. You can look up the Arizona Interscholastic Association online and they will have information on it. You can call them and ask for Jeanne.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 17, 2010 12:45:26 GMT -6
I still keep a paper and pad at the bedside and wake up in the middle of the night with some cockeyed ideas running through my mind.
I'll have to print that to show my wife I'm not the only one that does that....LOL
Only difference now is that I run downstairs to my football office with the 4x6 white board on the wall.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 13, 2010 13:14:05 GMT -6
Team speed, size & aggressiveness sometimes don't show up as well on film as they do live. Cadences and signals certainly are important to take note of. Snappers, Punters and Kickers in pregame and during the game are important to spy on. Years ago (In the early 90's scouting was common because you'd get a scouting report most of the time before you got film, 16mm was just going out and VHS was coming into use) I scouted a very good team that would huddle but signaled everything in. They used very basic signals and it was very easy to pick them up. When we played them, I signaled in to our LB the play that they were going to run. Nothing like knowing exactly where and how they are coming....LOL....anyway, our defense looked like 11 All Americans in the first half. The other team finally figured out that their signals had been compromised and sent the plays in with a WR after that. Another time I went and scouted a team that we were going to play the following week. Sat through the game, took copious detailed notes and with about 2 minutes left in the game and the target team down by I think 18 points, I figured I'd beat the rush and head for the gate....Next morning at 7AM sharp I'm in front of the entire team giving an outstanding presentation on everything they do, personnel, etc....tell the story of the game and outcome..... The HC gives me a funny look at the end of my presentation and asks me, did you stay for the whole game? Uh, nope, I cut out a few minutes early..... Well, as it turned out, the team that I scouted got a turnover, scored, kicked onside, scored again and kicked onside again, and scored again, they ended up scoring 3 times in under two minutes and ended up winning. Oops....LOL
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 6, 2010 11:10:32 GMT -6
fumblerooskie is illegal in US football now....
We ran our normal offense with the 9-10yr olds, we had a QB that could do it. He ran & read GT option and veer pretty dang good.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 5, 2010 18:38:28 GMT -6
I coached my son two years ago when he was 9. Now some might call it favoritism, but he touched the ball every single play on offense because we needed him to. Yep, he snapped the ball every down, shotgun snaps to the QB....He'll end up playing another position in the future, but he sure did snap the ball nice...
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 3, 2010 10:05:05 GMT -6
I have also been on the flip side of it; basketball coaches that only run their fall open gyms after school and try and force the kids to pick between football and basketball.
Our basketball coach does this, year round. If kids don't play summer "CLUB" ball on his team, then he'll cut them during the season. It's illegal here for coaches to do this but they do it anyway. It pi$$es me off but the AD won't do anything about it since they are buddies. We tell our Football players that we expect them to play 2 or 3 sports, all of the other programs in the school are on board with this except the basketball team. IMO specialization is another word for selfish coaches who don't care about their kids. We have about 7 kids on the basketball team who, if they came out for football and track, would boost the talent WAY up. There are two kids on the BB team that potentially could be DI defensive backs but as 5'10 basketball players, they won't sniff a college offer other than from a mediocre JUCO nearby. They have a couple of 6'5 kids that are good athletes but only average about 6ppg in Basketball which isn't going to take them anywhere. They'd make good WR's or High Jumpers but won't come out because they fear being cut from basketball. It's a bunch of BS.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 1, 2010 21:28:06 GMT -6
For two way players, IMO, they should start on defense and play as much as possible on offense, but rest on offense when they need it. For platoon teams, its trickier, generally speaking I'll favor brains and kids with fundamental football skills over pure athleticism on offense and put the more pure athletes on defense excluding the QB.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jul 1, 2010 10:30:22 GMT -6
As a school, we are getting Hudl for all of our sports.
I"m assuming you can have each coach set up his own sport/access list, is this correct?
Also, I'm assuming that you can edit film and store it on your computer hard drive and use it offline with the Hudl system when you don't have online access, for example, in a laptop at a clinic or meeting that doesn't have internet access. Is this correct?
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jun 25, 2010 10:29:03 GMT -6
Throwing interceptions down at the goal line is frustrating, but remember, you'll probably be running the ball down there in a real game. It's much easier for the defense to cover pass down there due to the limited area and the fact that they know your passing....lol Too bad on the kid getting hurt, not much you can do there.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jun 24, 2010 10:51:26 GMT -6
Doug, we are going into week 4 of our passing league, this Saturday is our championship final, double elimination tourney. While there are lots (LOTS) of things that irritate everybody about passing league, there are still lots of good things that come out of it. IMO, just teaching kids the passing game, routes, details about how to run each route, competing for the ball, breaking on the ball, QB going through his progression, etc. make it worth it for us. Just the sheer amount of catches by our kids, most of whom could not catch a cold when we started, makes it worth it to me. We start each practice with a 5 line rapid fire catch drill and then go into noose, so our kids are catching at least 100+ footballs per day throughout June. Then they go into detailed route/pattern drills and then the same type of format on the defensive side. It might not be a barrel of peaches right now, but trust me, the work your putting in now will really pay off in the fall, when it counts in real football. As far as going against the older guys, again, its very tough (we go against our Varsity a few times a week and really struggle) but in the fall, against kids their own age, the game will "slow" down for your kids, things will seem to all the sudden get easy against kids their own age. We run our league and have 13 schools in it (Freshmen teams). While its not perfect, we do avoid some of the common issues with rules. All defenses must have at least 3 players within 4 yards of the LOS. In our tournament format, teams get 3 downs to move it from the 40yd line to the 25yd line for a first down, they get another 3 downs to cross the 10yd line, inside the 10yd line they have 4 downs to score. Interceptions are turnovers. This format makes it a little more realistic than alternating 10 plays each. We have a "no chuck" rule that is constantly being broken and readdressed, next year we might just go full chuck since it keeps popping up as an issue. We have a kitchen timer that you set to 4 seconds on each field, it beeps when the times up, which is a sack. Stop watches and coaches eying them and the QB at the same time lead to arguments, audible clocks are the way to go to keep it fair in that regard. Of course, even this method has issues, we had a local private HS who's assistant coach took it upon himself to reset the clock to 3 seconds....couldn't believe the lack of ethics there, unreal, but anyway, if done right, 7-7's will help in the long run, even if it doesn't look real good right now... As far as man/man, we've had one team try that against us, we got into bunch 2x2, 3x1 and ran mesh, shallow and some wheel routes, ended up in our favor...38-0, the following week they were in Cover 3. Patience and lots of bunch with rubs/crossing routes can give man under issues, people get into trouble against it when they get impatient and want to throw the ball down the field into double coverage. I actually prefer to see man coverage to force our kids to work on their releases and routes as well as make the QB go through the progression patiently.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jun 21, 2010 21:45:25 GMT -6
They have the tools, but freshman generally lack the mental makeup to handle Friday nights
This is my concern also, some kids might seem physically ready but the speed of the game at the Varsity level and the techniques/strength required are difficult for freshmen to grasp. IMO, its quite easy to miscalculate and bring a kid up and get him shell shocked. This is the last thing that you want to do. IMO, keeping the freshmen together and building the program from the bottom up are important for long term program development. I can see it if pure necessity dictates it at a small school, however, at bigger schools, I don't think it should happen, if so, it should be extremely rare.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Jun 18, 2010 17:34:21 GMT -6
I would like for our state to end all summer activities in all sports, other than 3 hours a week of strength and conditioning. Every coach I've talked to about thinks it is a great idea.
I think 99% of us do team camps, 7 on 7's, etc., mainly b/c other teams do it, so we think we have to.
I'd say 99% of coaches here would disagree with your 99% LOL....
Is anybody forcing you to work out during the summer? Why would you want to make a rule to penalize programs that want to get better? If you don't want your program to work out or do 7-7's, then don't.
IMO, for somebody to believe that they can just show up in August and expect to compete is ridiculous. It might happen somewhere, I've just never seen it. I'm all for preventing "burnout" and having the kids get time off, but really, that needs to be something that the coach manages, not a legislative body. If coaches over do it then their kids and their parents should let them know. We do a lot of 7-7 in June, none in July. We will workout 3 times a week in July. We get a lot done but I don't think we over do it by any means.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Apr 30, 2010 19:34:39 GMT -6
We are looking at getting hudl this year also, really, really excited about having a real editing system to use. I've just done it the old fashioned way, film by film and excel. Generally the season end analysis is a review of investment (time) vs return (productivity- yds/tds) and is useful to trim fat or sharpen up on certain areas. Because of the nature of the offense we run, we do have things in the book that we don't use often. Sometimes that is because we thought it would fit our kids and it turned out that it didn't, while other times it is by design, as in special plays for certain teams, etc. Regardless, I think its important to review time spent vs return in order to improve the following season.
|
|
|
Post by jhanawa on Apr 30, 2010 8:21:14 GMT -6
Before each practice, we have a quick coaches meeting, discuss the practice plan. After each practice, we have a quick coaches meeting, discuss progress, areas of concern, etc. Each week during the season we self scout and scout the other teams films. After the season I break down the offensive side by every single play, type, direction, frequency, ypa, etc. In the offseason I study/research football 10-15 hours per week to compare how other programs do things, always looking to improve on teaching within our system. So I guess its not a "grading system", rather, a continuous pursuit to move forward and do things better. IMO the bar is always being raised in the coaching profession.
|
|