I’ve been helping a couple of  Ft Worth area youth football teams this season with their offensive line coaching.  We’ve installed Rule Blocking and a few blocking calls so the boys can adjust at the line of scrimmage.  If you would like to research more about blocking Calls, read Radar Blocking.  For us at the 7-11 age group we are using very simple calls.  I am not going to elaborate on our rules but  I will highlight a few of the calls we make at the line.  We use different names for our calls. 

1. “Attack” – Blitz – Center will identify a Middle Blitz and adjust blocking based on the LBs
2. “Yellow” – Help – Lineman will make a call to request double team help
3. “EMU” – Outside – TE or End Man on Line EMOL will attack outside defender
4. “Green” – Good -  Lineman is ok and does not need help
5. “Black” – Dummy Call – Does not mean anything

You can get more complicated and call a cross blocks or folds, just depends on what your age group can handle. 

I hope your season is going well.  Have fun and Winning is funner.

Its football season again in Texas.  The heat is melting my brain under my Dallas Coyboys Cap, the cow pastures they call practice fields are hard as concrete and my tan is better than it was in Colorado.  Not that my tan has anything to do with youth football in Texas, but a lot of youth football players are getting tan and losing interest in learning the game standing in long and boring football drill lines waiting to play football and trying to see and hear the coach’s comments from 10 yards from the back of the drill line. 

Ok, how many of us stood in these long drill lines in High School footbal that start out as straight line then snake back around the drill because no one could see or hear the coaches coach?  Well why are you doing the same thing to your players?  Youth football players have very short attention spans and standing in line gives them plenty of opportunity not to listen and goof off.  Thus the reason you send so many to run around the opposite goal post for not listening when you should be punished for not keeping your practices fun and interesting.  Oops, did I say you might be boring.  Yep!

At the end of the season three years ago, my Arvada coaching staff  met to evaluate our season and determine what we did right and how we could improve as a team and as coaches for the next season.  One of my coaches, who also assisted on his youngest’s sons team, said his other team broke up drills into multiple stations so the players would get more reps instead of standing around.  He said the players liked the tempo of the drills and the coaches were able to focus on the individual players better.  We implemented the multiple drill format the following year with great success.  If you study Cisar, Reed, Wyatt and other youth football authors, they also suggest multiple drill stations to gain more reps and lessen boredom. 

Here’s an example of what we did to enhance our reps.  In our Oklahoma drill we went to three stations.  Small / Running Backs, Medium  and Big Meat station.  Each station ran the same OK drill within 10 yards of each other.  Each station had an assistant assigned to it and ran at its own pace.  I walked the down the line and over the bags to find the hardest hitters.  Try to keep your lines no more than 4 or 5 long.  At the end, I ask for the 2 hardest hitters from each station and we have a quick hardest hitter competition in one line.   

Another advantage of the multiple station drills is conditioning.  Since your players are not standing around, they are always on the move.  I used to love long lines so I could rest.  Now your players are constantly moving just like in a game situation.  We were able to stop running wind sprints at the end of practice because everyone was conditioned by doing drills and coaching.  Wind Sprints and sending kids to the other goal post is a huge waste of coaching time.  Is it worth 3 minutes sending them around the goal post or would you rather be teaching them their blocking assignment for 3 minutes?  Hey, there’s another advantage, more coaching time!

So the next time, you send a player around the goal post for horseplay, ask yourself who should be running around the goal post, you or him?  He’s only 10, your 25+ and YOU didn’t do your homework or organize practice so he’s interested in learning the game of football from YOU!

Play of FUN and winning is Funner!

I’ve been getting a few emails lately about why certain players start or what is my stance on minimum play rules or we should not let our youth players play for Select / Draft teams because it limits their growth as a person.  To be honest, I am old school on the issue of competition.  It is in nature that we learn survival of the fittest and in nature that we see good gene traits evolve and bad traits go extinct.  Many schools have taken football and other competitive sports / games off the playground, so when a parent signs ther child up for football, I think they should understand that football is an aggressive competitive sport.

The Echo Boomer generation is a group of soft individuals expecting a trophy just because they participated on the team even if they missed half the practices and games.  Does this occur in real life?  Does your boss allow you to get away with poor performance?  Well, I’ve read we may be allowing our younger employees get away with murder so, maybe bosses are allowing poor performance.  No wonder our economy is in the tank, we allow and promote poor performance.  I don’t think we should do this in sports.

Football is a team sport and very competitive.  A team is only as good as its weakest link.  So, I do not believe in the minimum play rule although I follow it 100%, I believe you should start and play your best players and if your league offers a draft / select team that is great.  After coaching for many years, the players know who should play.  It is only the parents that really get upset.  Plus the kid’s want to know the score and who won.  Its only the parents and adults that try to hide the real world from them. 

After reading about participation at the youth, HS, College and NFL levels, I calculated these percentages today.  As of 2006, there were approximately 3M youth players 6-14, 1M high school football players, 100k college players and 1,000 NFL players.  So only about one third of the youth players will go on to play high school football and that’s probably at the high end.  About 3% of youth players will play at the college level and less than 1% will play in the NFL.  So parents, its most likely your child will not play past the youth level and very unlikely they will play in college.  At the HS and College levels if that’s where you would like them to play, wouldn’t you like them to be ready for competition or will you be on the sidelines with them in college?

Competition is good and complancency is bad. 

Let me know what you think.

I found a video on youtube of a single wing spinner series of footwork for the spinner back.  The footwork in the video is very similar to what we use for our QBs in the Spin.  We take a shorter first step toward the line. 

We rep the plays on air at least 30 minutes each practice, more time earlier in the season.  The timing is critical to the success of the exchanges from QB to running backs.

Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!

My son is making the transition from QB to tight end this season, so he and I have been focused on blocking.  He was my best blocking back last year when we ran the Single Wing offense, so he’s a hitter.  The offensive line and especially the tight end position blocking assignments are new to him. 

Last night I re-watched the COOL clinic video of the Ohio State offensive line coach’s chalk talk presentation, Dave Cisar’s video Dominating Offensive Line Play and Championship Productions Becoming a Champion Offenive Lineman by Ed Thomas.  I also did a little lite reading of Reed’s, Coaching Youth Football book. 

In no particular order, below are few points that stick with me:

1. Your body will follow your eyes.  Keep your head up!   Head down and you will go to the ground.
2. Keep your feet wide and drive.  Do not hit and then stop your feet.
3. Be quick off the ball.  Do not set back on your heels.
4. Use your hands.  The use of hands might be the most important skill in blocking.
5. Eye a specific target, elbow, inside numbers, legs.
6. Keep your hips low so you can load your hips and drive. 
7. Engage with your hands on their inside shoulder pads, biceps.  Stay engaged or on their butt!
8. Keep your balance stay in control.
9. Stay wide in the hole.  Short choppy steps.
10. Remember the snap count.  This might be the most important skill!

If you have some other blocking points for youth football players, post them. 

Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!

Since my last favoritism post is the most read and the post I get the most email about,  I thought I would try and answer some of the emails in this post.  I agree that there is favoritism at all levels of youth sports.  I also think that each coach has a different set of qualities and attributes that they look for in a player and parents see their children through rose colored glasses which always makes them seem the best, and there is nothing wrong with that because you love them and want the best for them. 

Last year my youngest son played for a youth football team and played back-up quarterback behind the head coach’s son.  I admit I was not happy about this situation but honestly the head coach’s son was a better QB than my son last season.   I am not happy my son did not start QB, but was that the coach’s fault?

Also since different coaches see different qualities and skills in a player, one coach may find your child a starter and another coach may not see your son as a starter.  Since I am not coaching this year, I am watching my two son’s teams and see players that I would use in different positions than they are currently being used.  Plus coaches run different offenses and defenses which may require different skill sets.  My oldest son, who has started as QB the last three years is a back up QB on his new team because the Keller Kanes run an option offense.  Berndt is not an option style QB, so he is the starting Tight End this year and loves it.  He loves blocking and catching passes which is has not done in the past.  He’s also starting on defense at defensive tackle and loves defense, especially since I did not let him play defense as a starting QB.  He actually asked to be moved from MLB to D-tackle because he loves the hitting.  I never knew.  Am I happy Berndt is not starting at QB?  No, but when I step back, Bear is not the best option QB on the team. 

Yes, many coaches feel it is a right to play their son or relative in a certain position.  This happened on a baseball team I helped coach last summer.  The head coach told me that since he was coach, his son would play first base and that was final.  Well, we had words and I lost.  His son wound up playing first and he did not do a bad job, as a matter of fact the best first baseman played third and made a great 3rd baseman.  So it worked out in the end.   What’s the moral of this story?  If you want to guarantee your son or relative to play a certain youth sports position then you should commit the time to coach.  (I strongly disagree with coaching just so your child can play a certain position.)  Yes, its unfair to some kids but most of the coaches are unpaid volunteers so I guess this is the price you pay by not coaching.  I started coaching to insure my sons were coached properly and if I do not coach them, I do my research on the team and coach.  Before we moved to Keller I researched the DFW football leagues and we moved to an area with a good youth sports program, Keller Sports Association.

Yes, you should talk to the coach if you feel your child is not getting the play time.  Do not be confrontational or argue with the coach.  Don’t become a pest.  One of my closest friends in Denver became a pest and was confrontational to a head coach and his son was benched.  There is a fine line, but you should have at least one conversation and if you can’t control your emotions call them or email them. 

Like I said in my last post, if your child is better than the coach’s son or favorite, based on the coach’s evaluation, I am sure your child will play.  If your child is equal or just a touch better than thier son, well you might be out of luck.  Coaches want to win.  I do believe the better coaches will play the best players and they do not have nefarious schemes not to play your child. 

Play for Fun and Winning is Funner.

Its been awhile since my last post.  In June, My wife accepted a job in Ft Worth TX as a Tax CPA, so we have been packing and moving from Denver to Ft Worth the last two months.  We now live in Keller, Texas just north of Ft Worth, and my sons play football for the Keller Youth Association on the Select teams.  Unfortunately for me, their football teams already had coaches for the 2009 season, so I am sidelined this football season.  To be honest its been difficult the last 4 weeks watching from the sidelines.  I am not sure I make a good sports parent, I still want to coach, and have trouble not commenting to the coaches on this or that with practice. 

Although I am not coaching this football season, I would love to help any coaches in the Keller area, especially if you are trying to learn the Spin offense.  Or if your son needs a little extra football work, contact me for information.  I might consider assisting with his training.  My sons are 8 and 11. 

I think not coaching  this year will enlighten my perspective as a coach since I must act like a responsible parent.  Now that sounds hard!  Wish me luck.  If any other coaches have been benched for a year watching from the sidelines, please comment and let me know how you got through the season. 

Remember to play for Fun and Winning is Funner. 

Coach Parker

My son Bear needs a new set of shoulder pads, so I have been looking at all the shoulder pad possibilities.  I found the Football Shoulder Pads site run by Williams Sports Group LLC.  They have been selling Pads to the Florida Gators for years and recently patented some air flow technology. 

I really like the Williams pads and will be ordering the Williams WJS-22 Pads for running backs.  My son plays QB and blocks / runs more than usual in our Spin and Single Wing offensive formations and Williams suggested the running back pads. 

On the phone today with Williams, we had an interesting conversation about fitting youth shoulder pads.  They said you really need to fit them properly so you do not break your collar bone.  Here’s a video that does a pretty good job describing how to fit shoulder pads..

Also here are a few other resources about properly fitting youth football should pads

1. Hit Run Sports – Shoulder Pad Fitting
2. USA Football – Proper Shoulder Pad Fit
3. Sports Depot – Fitting Shoulder Pads

Good luck this season.

Back in February I started reviewing team websites.  These websites allow you to manage your team and communication.  I narrowed my review down to 2 website solutions

1. http://www.teamzonesports.com/
2. http://www.teampages.com

I really like both website solutions but I chose TeamZone Sports because of its price.  It is free. 

I have been using TeamZone Sports for my son’s baseball team over the last few months and can’t find a reason not to use it.  Sure there are a few cliches like the cell phone text tool not sending a complete message but 99% of the time it does what it needs to do. 

If you are not a web programmer or a techno I think TeamZone Sports is a great solution for a youth team website.  And even if you are a techno wizard, you’ll probably find TeamZone Sports a fun package. 

Let me know what you think?

One last thing, since Twitter has captured everyone’s eye the last several weeks, I think for a pure real time communication tool, Twitter has its advantages over cell phone texting; history.  Twitter can be set up to use over cell phones like SMS Texting but with Twitter you get a summarized micro blog (history) of your communication to and from the team.  I could see integrating Twitter into my team’s web solution in the neat future. 

Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!

Since my son is playing baseball this year, I visited John Reed’s site the other day to read a few of his baseball articles and order his baseball book.  Coach Reed’s football books and articles are great, and I wanted to see what he had to say about baseball.   I read through his baseball articles and Coach Reed recommended a book by H. A. Dorfman, The Mental Game of Baseball.  I picked up Dorfman’s book last night and read all 300 pages in one sitting.  It was that good.  The book is about baseball but the sports psychology in the book can be used for any sport.  There are also many football examples in the book too.  This is a must read for any youth coach.

One of the paragraphs I keep coming back to is…  “The body tends to do what it hears most clearly; the mind tells the body what it sees most clearly.  So, thinking about what you don’t want to happen greatly increases the chance it WILL happen.”  This happen to my team two years ago.  Before a game I told my team I dreamed we fumbled a ton during the upcoming came and told them do not fumble the ball.  Protect the ball.  We fumbled the ball 5 times during that game.  Because of what I said, I set my players up to fumble. 

 According to the book, a leading sports psychologist believes, “the difference between two (high performance) athletes is 20% physical and 80% mental.”  If this is true, as coaches we need to be teaching our players how to develop their mental tools. 

I hope you enjoy the book.

Play for Fun and Winning is Funner!