RVA UNITED YOUTH FOOTBALL AND CHEERING

Forget what they think or say about u because the only thing that matters is what u think & say about yourself. I need u to stay Positive & Persistent. Today will be better than yesterday but not as good as tomorrow. Believe that! #8uCoachGrigs

I sometimes hear from parents, “Why do you push so hard, they are just kids?”  Yes, they are young adults, and life is full of challenges.  I believe that sports, not just football, teaches young adults about life through competition.   As a coach, mentor, and friend, it is my obligation to teach our players that through hard work and goal setting that anything can be accomplished if you dream it or expect it from yourself.  At school, parents expect their children to succeed through good grades and conduct, why should Coaches expect below average participation and success?  My parents taught me that you should always do your best or don’t do it at all.  In my career with EDS, a F1000 IT Consulting firm, we were taught to set our goals high, just above what we expected we could achieve, so if we did not achieve our highest goal, we still achieved a high level of accomplishment. 

As a Coach, I expect more from my players not less.  People will achieve what you expect.  If you set low expectations or goals then that is what you will achieve.  When I started coaching t-ball, my assistant coach and I set a goal for all of our players to hit from the coach pitching after our first game.  Many of the parents thought this was too hard for the kids, but in our second game, all of our players requested not to use the T and we pitched to them.   During the season, a few other the other teams, complained to the league that we were not using the T.  The league’s response to those complaining coaches was that we were teaching the kids how to play baseball and why was that an issue and it’s actually harder to hit a pitch so how was it unfair?  I was very proud of our league for standing behind our methods.

So, do I push my players.  Yes.  I expect more.  I challenge them to always achieve more.  Later in life, they will expect more from themselves and accomplish their dreams.

I always urge coaches to reserve a decent part of the youth football off-season reevaluating the recent season. You need to go on with what works and delete what did not work so well. If this is the beginning year using a new offense, or defense, this is particularly truthful. I recall from the beginning year we ran the Single Wing offense with 6-8 year-olds we had such an happening. Our Blocking Back player decided to beeline every off tackle play to the sideline since he thought he could outrun the opponent.

The power play is an interior play where you go behind the leading backs to the hole. By abandoning the play, and running to the sideline, he was giving up on the offense lineman while getting stopped for little or zero gains. The lesson learned was that when teaching young football players, you must to make sure they realize the concept of the play being executed the way it is designed in practice.

It is an excellent idea to delay a couple of months after the pee wee football year ends to chew over on what really happened during the previous year. It is vital that you can distinguish from what genuinely happened versus what you presumed occurred. There has been many occasions when I felt we were doing one scheme the correct way and after my off season review discovered I was dead wrong. By delaying a bunch of months after the season ends, you can unclutter your memory and reexamine the past year, looking for something that will help you be an improved coach in the forthcoming year.

Each year you coach a dissimilar age, or skill group, you'll find schemes and concepts that have worked from before do not work with the current age level you are coaching. You must be sincere with yourself and understand that not all situations succeed at all levels. I maintain a total reference diary with elaborate notes of the current year I am coaching. It is a fantastic point of reference for upcoming years. I begin each year by selecting the folder from an older year that most resembles the ages and skill level I will be involved in coaching this season.

Each New Year will give you fresh talent. What may have been gold last year may not be good for the approaching APYFL season game plan. Embrace an open resolve at the beginning of the season before you arrange any concluding determinations.

Too many youth football coaches assume their players understand the game and even a lot of football technique terminology. For some coaches, they must think their kids are either much older than they are or are somehow students of the game who have poured over lots of old coaching manuals and been loyal attendants of the coaching clinic circuit.

I remember going to a youth football game a few years back in Lincoln, Nebraska. A guy I knew was coaching and his team was doing very poorly, he asked me to come and talk to his team. Talking to his team before understanding what was wrong with his team made little sense, but I agreed to observe. The interesting thing about this team was the coaching staff seemed to use every football buzzword known to man. They were constantly shouting instruction to their kids and the kids seemed to be listening, but not executing any of the buzzwords shouted. I heard: run your feet, play one down at a time, read your keys, roll your hips, contain, keep outside leverage, play our game- not theirs and fill the alley for starters.

The team I was attempting to help was chocked full of athletes, had nice size and they were good kids. They were attentive and listening, but they were awful. They were 0-4 at that point and they had only scored 2-3 touchdowns total. When I arrived just before halftime, they were losing to a much smaller and less athletic team 20-6. When a player that had been shouted instructions came to the sidelines I would smile and ask them, what they thought the instruction meant. When I asked one Linebacker, “what does run your feet mean to you”, he replied that he thought it meant he should run faster. When I asked a struggling Cornerback what “read your keys” meant, he shrugged his shoulders and gave me the “I don’t know” answer. As it turned out, most of these kids had no clue what their coaches were trying to tell them, the coaches might as well have been speaking in Mandarin.

While the coachspeak made the coaches look like they knew what they were talking about to the parents, the kids didn’t have a clue. It reminded me of the first year I moved up to the age 9-10 age group in baseball. It was an older group, lots of kids I didn’t know and it was coached by a guy who was old school and kind of hard nosed. About 10 minutes before the first game, he reviewed his signals with us, take- I knew that one, steal- knew that, bunt- no problem, then he got to hit and run. When he gave us this signal in the meeting, everyone nodded, I had no clue what hit and run meant. I didn’t watch baseball on TV, I thought it was boring and I was too embarrassed to ask in front of the other kids and to the hothead coach what the heck hit and run meant. I guess he thought all 9 year old kids inherently understand how to do that, like we know how to breathe coming out of the womb etc

In youth football DON’T ASSUME and get off the coachspeak. I’ve found some kids don’t understand even simplest terms like feet shoulder width apart. Maybe do something like show them with your feet spread as wide as you can- that this is too wide, then put your feet touching each other and let them know this is too close, then put your feet at shoulder width and let them know, this is what you meant. When you break things down and explain what you mean step by step, your kids and you are going to have a much less aggravating season.

One of the things many poor performing youth football teams do is waste practice time. They waste it by doing things that add little or no value to their team (priorities) and they waste it by not having a fast enough practice pace. Some of the teams I’ve watched practice moved around like their players were 90 years old instead of 9. Some almost looked like they placed a premium on trying to waste time. From 20 minute blathering speeches to scrimmaging with a play getting off every 3 minutes, some of these practices seemed to be contests on which coach could waste the most time.

These teams must have had an award for that at the end of the year. I can see their awards banquet with the MC saying- and now for our Time Wasting Award. This years award was so tough to decide on, all the coaches did such a great job at wasting time, it’s almost criminal to give this award to just one coach. Most of the teams I studied practice far more days than we do, so they must enjoy practicing. They were wasting so much time that practicing additional days would be a requirement to putting a reasonably competent team on the field. I’ve actually timed the number of reps these teams do during indys as well as team reps and compared those numbers to my own. In most instances we do about 2x-5x the number of indy reps per minute than these teams, while we do 4x-12x the number of team reps per minute than they do.

While we can all talk about practice pace and set goals for number of indy reps per minute and team reps per minute, it all starts with the coaches. If kids see coaches mulling around, wasting time and not hustling, they follow suit. One simple way to set an example is for coaches to never walk on the field, always be jogging to wherever you are going. That includes the 40 yard jaunt to warm ups, the 20 yards to water and the 10 yards between you and the coach you need to confer with about the blocking rule on a specific play. When kids see you are hustling and trying to squeeze every second out of every practice minute, they “get” that you value time. They in turn they have an easier time buying into having a sense of urgency in every practice. Of course none of this is of any importance if the coaching staff does not value time and chooses not to enforce a fast pace.

When I see coaches that aren’t sweating during practice, that tells me the pace isn’t fast enough. When I see coaches standing around that tells me coaches either don’t care, don’t value coaching or don’t know their jobs. When I see kids walking in practice and slow paces, that tells me the kids have no sense of urgency during practice and don’t value time. No matter what system you run, if you get 2x,3x,4x,12x the number of quality reps your opponent gets leading up to the season or game, you are going to win that ballgame. See what setting an indy rep standard of one rep every 6 seconds does for your team this year. See what setting a team fit and freeze rep standard of one play every 15 seconds can do for your execution this season. When you have sold that concept to your coaches and players and can execute it effectively, then it’s time to cut back the number of practice days. Then see the effort and attentiveness of your kids go through the roof.

One incident I will never forget came on a piece of game film I got from our camera guy a few years ago. He always left the mic on and I told him to keep the camera rolling during halftime. In this game, both teams fans were seated on the same side of the field in the grandstand. We were up 30-0 at the half and one of the opponents parents snarled over sarcastically- how often DO you guys practice? One of our parents replied, two nights a week. The other parent replied in a very disgusted voice, we practice 4 nights a week and this is the #$%& we get? While I had never watched this team practice, my guess is they placed a premium on wasting time not unlike the pace of the Walmart checkout cashier in the 20 items or less line. Priorities and pace, priorities and pace, priorities and pace.

Tough players compete regardless of the circumstances. They play through situations. They keep playing in spite of poor officiating. They play tough when they are tired. They gut it out when adversity hits. They persevere. Tough players win.

Young players, remember this. “If a coach can’t trust your effort in the weight room, the classroom and at practice, how can you be trusted to play in a game?”