new youth program

Hey Walt, I ran a youth program in rural southwest georgia for quite awhile and really enjoyed it but after having some time to reflect on it , I can tell you some of the mistakes or pitfalls I fell into! Pop Warner would be great if you have it there, as saintman said! We didnt here! Our registration form was really just a simple release form that had to be signed by their parents and we charged an affordable 25 bucks per kid, and had discounts for multiple family members playing.We had a lawyer as one of the original coaches and he wrote up the reg. form. Lots of legal ease but basically name/address/age/any medical problems etc.. I just changed the date every season and continued to use the original forms(made copys at work) We purchased our own equipment from funds donated by civic clubs and each of the 4 small towns in the county. I learned to be a gracious begger for 12 years running this thing lol. Made a point to attend each council meeting once a year, tell them how much good they were doing and blaa blaa blaa, la di da! You know stuff politicians love to hear! We had enough stuff to equip 100 kids ages 8-13. Its very important to make sure you retrieve all your stuff at the end of every season, wash it and store it properly.We had an end of season cookout and gave out little trophys to all and used this time to get all the equip back! Insurance was up to the parents and also spelled out in the reg. form! Most had school insurance but I'm not sure if it covered the few injurys we had.(broken fingers, one ankle and a wrist is about all I remember). We broke our age groups into 8-10 and 11-13 but they couldn't be 13 before sept 1st. We played in a league with 3 adjoining counties and had league rules that applied to all. Our farthest trip was 45 miles but thats how it is in the country huh? You should have a coaching clinic for all your prospective coaches and try to get your local high school coaches to help you with safety issues, rules, player discipline, dealing with the parents etc.. If your interested in running the hs O and D, maybe see what their 7th and 8th grade teams do, our rules limited us some in the things we could run though.Heres a few pitfalls Referree's- Dont try to do it yourselves, since we played after the jv or B teams on thurs evenings, we just paid the 2 or 3 officials already on hand to do both of our games or in seasons where funds were slim begged the hs coaches to do it! Whoever is running your program doesnt need to be a coach! You need to spend your time checking out the different groups at practice, dealing with parents, equipment problems etc..At least dont be a head coach, you'll find that with all the other stuff going on you wont have time as your league expands! My brains going blank now Walt, thats all I can think of right now but be glad to share some more info if you need it. Good luck and have fun!

wow, $75 per kid. That's a steal. The last youth league I coached in, and my pldest son played in, we had to sheel out $150 ($10 discount since i was a coach) or if you werent coaching it was $160.

Walt,

I am the President of our local youth program as well as our local high school head coach. The best piece of advice I can give you is do not use Football America. We tried for two years to work with them. They short shipped or shipped late on just about everything we ever did with them and would then scream for money. It took forever to get them to fill there orders and get stuff that was always "back ordered". I would get invoices all the time for stuff that we had paid for already and they never had any record of it. They were a terrible organization to work with. Totally unorganized and not very forthright. I have moved all of the business that we did with them to more reputable companies. Since you are in Ohio you might want to call Ace Reconditioners in Washington, PA. They do a lot of stuff with Schutt and some other big name companies. They sell new and reconditioned equipment. If you want, email me or leave me a message and I'll give you all their contact information. dandr@blazenet.net

We started our program 5 years ago so if you have any questions or I can help you in any way just shoot me an email and I'll help you however I can. Good Luck!!