when to pull the trigger

We will not let ANY juniors play JV this year. We do not want them to take the reps from a Sophomore. We will have 20 - 25 players on JV next year.

Now if it is an unusual situation where the kid is playing behind a stud then we might consider.

If a kid does not start or is not a solid back up or special teams player by the time he is a junior - we do not want him taking reps from a sophomore.

When I was at a big school, (near 4,000) in the Chicago Suburbs, JV was 70% Juniors, 25% Seniors, 5% underclassmen. However, we have a Freshman A/B team (occasionally a C team) and a Soph A/B, in addition to the JV and Varsity.

At a smaller school (790) in Indiana, we have two squads. JV and Varsity. As the JV OL/DL Coach this year, we had 2-3 Juniors playing JV in any given week, depending on injuries. We had a luxury of 3 starting quality runningbacks on the Varsity level, but unfortunately for #3, he was forced to play JV as a Junior, and sadly might as a Senior as well, since the other two are coming back. But he sure tore it up.

To answer your question - get your varsity in order first - set the Starters, subs, and special teams. Then look at the sophomores on JV and like bigm said, figure out if you want these juniors taking reps away from the sophs. You don't want to bury them - you never know when they might surprise you - but for right now, all they have is potential and a famous coach once said, "Potential will get you fired!"

From what we and every other team in our conference understood was that if a player did not participate in the Varsity Game for so many plays/quarters, they were eligible for J.V.

Why shouldn't they? At a school of that size, there is a strong likely hood that many seniors may not play. Why not let them play in a game that is meaningless?

I believe one year there were 12 seniors who were playing. 12 players who practiced their tails off, and didn't see the field. I don't see why there should be a rule preventing them, and there at least was not a rule at that time for those same reasons.

We generally play first year juniors on the JV, unless we feel they can get on the field as a Varsity. But if it's a matter of playing 20 varsity snaps all season or getting on the field as a JV, we generally play them down. Other than that we put guys down if they have no chance of varsity playing time AND the JV team could use some help at their position.

My feeling is that a Jr. that is not good enough to help win games on the varsity will probably not help much as a senior. I want my sophomores taking all the reps they can get on JV we also have a few freshman swing Fr./JV they get 5 quarters a week. I think that by playing Jr.'s on JV you are hindering your entire program. Plus you give kids and their parents a false sense of success.

This happened to me - Jimmy's dad comes to me and says, man the varsity basketball team is going to be good next year. I say, yeah why is that (varsity record 0-14 league). Dad says, well the JV team has went .500 in league and they are Jr.'s so they have a year left to get better. I explain to him that those Jr.'s went .500 against Fr./So.'s all season and the other teams Jr.'s were playing Varsity, so they have a years worth of varsity experience.

i appriciate the responses, but when do you make that decision? after spring ball so that they have the entire summer to be with the level they will be playing with, after summer so that they have the entire summer to be with thier peers or after a few weeks in pads??

to get better responses regarding that particular question, you will have to:
1) realize that there are MANY ways that program are set up regarding sub-varsity play as demonstrated in these posts.
2) explain in detail how your program is set up. from the post I quoted, it sounds like you have somewhat separate programs. This differs from many situations around the U.S.

we have three levels to our program varsity, JV and freshmen. only freshmen play at the freshmen level, freshmen soph and juniors can play JV, anyone can play varsity. we try to keep all of the freshmen at the freshmen level(in the eight years that we have had three levels, only one freshmen has ever played up at JV) we try to keep all sophs at the JV level, unless they are good enough to be a varsity starter. in the past couple of seasons we have asked certain juniors to move down to the JV level around midseason in order to get more reps and playing time while also filling the needs of the JV program. (they might have the majority of thier linemen going both ways or they really don't have a second safety) that being said, this upcoming season is going to be unique for us. we have a extremeley large sophomore class that will become juniors next year (40 guys) with the seniors that we have returning that would put us around 65 players for our varsity team. now, not all of these juniors are varstiy caliber players and we don't want to have that large a number on the varsity. we are thinking of asking certain juniors to play at the JV level, the class behind them is rather small and there will be opportunities for those juniors to play without taking time away from the sophomores. so, when do we make that decision? i hope that this clarifies our situation.

It partially clarifies the situation.
How are your teams organized. Is there a separate staff for each team? Separate practice facilities/structures?

For example, the last program I worked with had a Frosh/JV/VARSITY just like you guys. Freshman were separate in all regards (different staff, different practice structure) but the JV consisted simply of the guys that didn't get a bunch of Varsity reps, so it was very "fluid". There was no real reason to "pull the trigger" that you are talking about, since all the players worked out in the offseason together, practiced during fall camp together etc. The JV was just the guys who weren't playing much on Friday.