My Youth Football Coaching Diary – First Entry

Just recently I signed up to coach my son’s 3rd grade youth football team.  The following blog will be the first of a series of diary entries that I’ll post on a regular basis throughout the season to allow others the opportunity to follow my first time football coaching experience. I also decided to do this not only to share my experiences with other first time coaches and the football community but to also communicate what I believe will be a journey of challenges, frustrations, continued learning, conflicts in youth sports theory, and most importantly solutions that lead hopefully to a rewarding experience for all involved.
 
I’ve coached Little League Baseball, flag football, and at higher levels of women’s soccer.  This does not distinguish me from the hundreds of thousands of other youth football coaches that will put a whistle around their neck and spend hours on a football field this summer and fall.  What distinguishes me from others and also places me in a interesting situation is that I’ve spent the past 20 years of my professional career creating youth sports development programs for the NFL (12 years) and US Soccer (6 years) and most recently baseball, basketball, and golf.  For the past 20 years I’ve developed extensive player and coaching development programs with a philosophy that runs contrary to how most local youth leagues are run.  Now I’ll share with you throughout this upcoming season how I will deal with a program that has policies that I disagree with and have actually developed solutions to correct.  Policies such as placing kids in helmets and pads at the age of eight for the first time and asking that they play in a travel league, playing on a 100 yard field, forced to play a wing-t offense, with no weight limits, four weeks to prepare in the heat of August, coached by a group of dads just learning how to coach the game for the first time with no formal training or experience.  Sound overwhelming?  If not, you know nothing about football.  Some of football’s greatest coaches would struggle under these circumstances, unless they incorporated a different, tested, and proven system to develop both players and coaches, something this town does not even want to sit down to discuss.
 
Now why would I place myself in this type of situation?  I have a son that wants to play football and there is no way I place him in this type of program without my close supervision.  No parent should allow their kid to participate in any youth sports program without closely monitoring how they are taught and treated.  Football obviously comes with a set of different concerns, mainly the fact that for the first time in their young lives they’ll be hitting and getting hit by others.  If this is not taught properly you run a very serious risk of getting injured or at the very least developing poor fundamental habits that place you at a much more serious future risk.  If my son is going to play football he needs to be introduced to the sport correctly, and not rushed into it in order to satisfy a group of town fathers that are only interested in strategizing, scrimmaging, and playing games.
 
The reason I wanted to write this diary was to provide others that may be experiencing a similar situation with a source to refer to and hopefully find the solutions to issues you may face.  I also want you to share your own experiences and issues along with the solutions you may have created to solve them.  I refer to it as “The Revolution” to effect positive change, drastically decrease attrition, develop better and more passionate athletes, and improving the overall experience of youth sports.
 
The last thing that I want in my town is to take credit for football.  There are too many others that have put in too many hours, including the people I disagree with, to take credit.  All I want is to see are all kids receiving the best possible introduction, training, and most importantly enjoying the experience in order to grow a passion for the game. 
 
As a point of reference I’ll be primarily focusing on the first time football player and coach.  An area I feel is vital for the future of the game.  Today we’re lucky to have many new resources such as USA Football to provide football advice for all levels of training and play.  Hopefully this diary in combination with the many training tools you will find on this site, www.youthevsports.com, will begin to shed some light on how to provide the best football experience for our kids. 
 
My diary entries will appear several times a week starting now in July, then will increase in frequency to several per week beginning in August throughout the fall season.  You can also hear me explain in great detail these experiences on Sirius Radio’s “The ABC’s of Sports”, channel 123, every Thursday from 1pm-3pm (ET), repeated every Sunday morning 6am-8am (ET) Channel 122, and again from 8am-10am (ET) channel 123, or every Wednesday afternoon between 4 – 6pm on the Sirius NFL Channel (124) – “Movin’ the Chains” and again on “The Opening Drive” every Friday morning 9am-9:30am.