Youth Football Position Tryouts

First day of practice our team has something similar to a pass punt and kick competion. We have 7 different stations. Passing, catching, field goal, kickoff, 25 yard dash, 4 cone agility, pushups and punting. We tally up the totals and the second day take a closer look at our top 5 passers and so on.

Please tell me that you are joking.

Ive heard of that happening but never saw it myself. most of my guys are harder on their kids than anyone else. When I ran my Omaha thing, over 1/2 our guys were typcially non dad coaches.
The key is to get guys in it for the right reasons and have them accountable to someone.

Second is to have detailed position descriptions with very detailed requirements for each. Then you have competitive games that match up to the skills your are testing for. We use things like sumo, deer hunter, towel-tug of war, rabbit chases etc If Jr isnt in the top 2 for a required skill, he doesnt get a shot at that position.

All our evals are done in this fashion and we can rank the kids to top to bottom for a skill set.

We also do things later on as simple as a close quarters tackling drill, we are left to right into groups 1-2-3. Winners go to the left, losers to the right. In 10 minutes all our best players are in group 1, the worst in group 3. We do many of our base drills like this like blocking board drill etc.
We can also do these things in count out or king of the hill format, overtly exposes who can and cant play.
Is Junior consistently in group 1? If not he's not going to play a skill position.

this year I'm dropping down to the 10-11's and my approach will be the same. Before I put kids in position I want to see their attitudes and how they carry themselves. Do they do just enough in the exercises or do they go all out. Are they leaders or followers. Do they understand the materials handed out prior to the season. How coachable do they appear. Do they give you a loud YES COACH or do they have no signs of respect.

I then allow the kids to try out for QB to get it out of the way. Although I pretty much have a good idea who my starter is, nothing pushes a player harder than competition. I do basic passing drills and also access the WR's and RB's at the same time. Once I get my QB's out of the way they go into individual QB drills and the same goes for WR's and RB's. The bigger solid kids will do offense and defensive line drills and everyone learns how to block in the early going. Personally I won't do much in the way of evaluating kickers early on. At 10-11 I doubt I will go for an extra points and will always go for 2. On kickoffs, if I don't have a kid that can kick it 30 yards, I'd rather go for the onsides and squib kicks. That can be taught later on in training camp. The other positions will get filled during the individual drills. I have 23 on my team and it's usually not that hard to determine which kids will play where based on size, speed and aggression.

Now this is just my personal preference for setting up a new team. Just thought I'd add my 2 cents.

The first thing I tell my the parents in the opening meeting is that I don't play Daddy ball. Nothing drives me crazier. To me, my son would have to be better than another kid to play that position. Equal to or less than will not get him the start. Coaches get into the game for the wrong reasons sometimes.