You read that right, but if you'd like to make sure, go ahead and read that title a couple more times.

I just had a discussion with a high school football coach of a local program who has completely failed to understand the reason and purpose for middle school and junior high football. Seriously, he's lost his damn mind.

His premise, which is one I've never endorsed, by the way, is that he "needs" (His word, and one that indicates how effective a coach he must be.) the middle schools to run his system so that he can stay competitive.

Go back and read that again, too.

I'm going to shred that argument piece by piece. I encourage you to print this blog out and take it to the next meeting you have with your coaching organization where they try to tell you that you must run what the high school runs.

The following is a word-for-word depiction of his side of our conversation and my accompanying replies, to the best of my memory. I don't think he is going to put me on his Christmas card list.

Point one: "I need the middle school to run the same things I run..."

Counterpoint: Why does a coaching professional paid a $3,000 stipend to coach at a Class AAA school in Washington State 'need' a middle school coach to prepare players for his program? Why is said coaching 'professional' unable to adequately prepare those players himself with his eight man coaching staff, $1.4 million field, $35,000 weight room, $6,000 film study equipment, and approximately nine weeks of off-season summer and spring training time?

Why does it a fall to a middle school program with a two-man staff making $900 between them, broken sled, antiquated equipment, prohibition against scouting (because it leads to 'overcompetitiveness,' whatever the hell that is), eight week season, and almost zero support from the district to teach a system you were hired to bring to us? Aren't you supposed to be the expert on this system? Isn't that why you were hired? If not, then why were you hired?

Point Two: "...so that when they get to me they already know the system."

Counterpoint: In your previous coaching history you have never remained in any position longer than four years. Your average is three seasons. Does this not indicate that it is useless to train a group of seventh graders to run your system when odds are high that you will have moved on to a greener pasture somewhere by the time they make it to the varsity level? Furthermore, I refer you to my previous counterpoint. If you're such a damn expert on the system, why the hell do you need someone else to teach it for you?

Additionally, this middle school feeds three high schools, one of which is in another district. What makes you think you're even going to get enough athletes from this program to your high school to make this a worthwhile pursuit? According to the research at JACK REED'S WEBSITE as well as the NYSCA statistics, fewer than 24% of youth football players go on to play high school football. What do you get by dividing 24% by three, and is it worth damaging the success of the middle school program?

Point Three: "At this level that's the only way I can stay competitive."

Counterpoint: No, as a matter of fact it's not. Tomales High School in Northern California has no feeder program and remains competitive-- and more so-- every year. Puyallup High in Washington has six feeder schools, only one of which runs the same system they run (and not because it is required). They consistently finish in the top 25 in Washington AAAA rankings. For every school you point to that is successful with this method, I can point to one that is just as successful without it, and probably two that are not successful with it.

Furthermore, at what point did anyone start to care about your ability to remain competitive? You are not the one on the field, and this game doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the players.

Point Four: "Middle school football doesn't really count, anyway."

Counterpoint: It counts to the middle school players who sweat and bleed to be successful. It counts to the parents who pay the bills so their sons can compete safely and successfully. It counts to the teachers who come to me looking for ways to use my sports programs to motivate students who are struggling academically. It counts to the administration that tries every year to justify keeping a program with sliding numbers due to lack of success.

In short, the only person that really thinks it doesn't count is you, and the only reason you feel that way is that you're not associated with the middle school in any capacity other than demanding that they do your job for you.

Point Five: "It's only there to develop players for high school game."

Counterpoint: That's an interesting and totally false point that indicates a complete lack of understanding of the role of athletics in the scholastic environment. Athletics has a clearly-defined purpose in school. It helps to teach life-lessons that can't be worked into the curriculum any other way. At the middle school level it also serves as a hook to assist struggling or de-motivated students who need something to cling to in order to keep the grades and learn the behaviors and social interactions that will allow them to be successful in life.

Preparing players to play football at the high school level is only an insignificant by-product of a successful middle school program. Ideally a middle school program should prepare student-athletes for life at the high school level.

Point Six: "Besides, you should run my stuff because it works!"

Counterpoint: You'll pardon me if I disagree. You've run two different systems at each of your last four schools. In the last six years you have had two winning seasons (2006 and 2008) and won one playoff game (2008). And you are supposed to be the expert with your system. Why are you making so many significant and program-altering changes to the system if it's so perfect, and why have you yourself not established a track record of significant success if this program is so great?

Furthermore, your program was developed for the high school level. Your varsity is comprised of student athletes who are considered by our state to be responsible enough to drive a motorized vehicle. Some of the student-athletes I coach are not legally allowed to be left home alone by their parents yet.

Your athletes are physically in the early adulthood stage of development. They have more finely-developed motor control, more testosterone, greater muscle development, stronger bones, and greater cognitive processing facility.

By contrast, the athletes you are demanding to run the same program are in the middle stage of childhood or early adolescence at best. Some of them have not even entered their secondary growth spurt yet. An adolescent may grow between three and six inches per year. Rapid growth of this nature generally results in a corresponding lack of coordination, while at the same time their muscle tissues are just beginning to thicken to adulthood. Fine motor control in the wrists doesn't complete development until age sixteen or later. There's a lot more to running a competent system at the youth level than simply handing your playbook to the middle school coach and pretending that you've given them a successful system.

Point Seven: "A successful high school program will help those kids go to college by providing scholarships and motivation in school."

Counterpoint: In the first place, colleges generally don't care what the won/loss percentage is for the athlete's high school. They are looking at basic skill development and raw athleticism. In the second place, you are actually harming the middle school athletes with your misguided philosophy.

If--and only if-- the middle school students stay in sports then sports can be used as a motivator. However, if they quit participating in athletics then sports will provide no motivation or encouragement for them. Coaches won't be involved in their lives, and the life lessons we got into coaching to teach will not be learned. The number one thing that drives youth players out of athletics, according to the NYSCA, is "not having fun." In most cases, "not having fun" can also be translated as, "getting the ass beat out of me every week because my coach doesn't know what the hell he's doing." (In fact, among my coaching colleagues I can point to at least twenty excellent coaches who left playing or got into coaching for precisely that reason.) More kids are going to quit middle school programs this year due to incompetent coaching than for any other reason. Every kid that quits football in middle school is one less athlete on your team, and one less successful athlete in the school in general. You should be doing everything you possibly can to promote and develop the middle school program. 

In short, coach, your plan actually interferes with the education of a middle school student by driving them away from one of the aspects of school that could encourage them, motivate them, and embolden them to keep their grades up and keep themselves out of trouble. By sabotaging the middle school program in an attempt to develop your high school system with some mythical, magical idea that doing so enhances your own team is nothing more than active stupidity disguised as altruism. Before you make demands on the middle schools, try doing some research and study of football at the middle school level.

You'll be surprised what you'll learn.

~D.

NOTE: Child development information taken from:

Bee, H., & Boyd, D. (2002). Lifespan development. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

It's been a while since I've had time to write here. Student teaching and finishing up the last of my schoolwork for my teaching certification has gotten in the way of everything I've tried to do lately (Sorry, Senator McCain. I was busy.)

But I've had some thoughts about a blog for a long time. I believe that time is linear, and that a chain of events is set in motion by a single choice.

In my case, that choice wasn't made by me. In 1985 I was a sixth grade wrestler for a local youth wrestling program that was run by a man named Pat Kelly. Coach Kelly was the wrestling coach for Sumner Junior High, and he developed his feeder programs by running off-season clinics where meatheads like myself could come and blow off some steam and get interested in the sport.

The next year I entered Sumner Junior High as a seventh grader. I can clearly remember walking into the school and seeing the mascot, a stuffed bobcat named "Scipio" after Scipio Africanus, the Roman who finally kicked Hannibal's ass. I can remember the confusion of trying to find my classes; how dark the gym was during first period PE because the sodium arc lights hadn't warmed up yet.

I can also remember that Coach Kelly's classroom was across from the gym's main entrance. As I headed to the hall juggling my notebooks and the papers that were handed out that day, he was standing in his classroom door. He beckoned to me and when I walked over to him he didn't waste any time with a preamble. "You should play football. You'd be a great guard."

I'd wrestled for this man. He'd chewed my ADD ass several times. I'd probably done more punishment pushups for screwing off at practice than anyone else in the history of his program, and yet he sought me out to tell me I should play football.

I don't have a clue what my next class was. I went straight to the office and called my mom at work. (This was in the days before every fourth grader was chained to a cellular tether.) I told her the words most moms don't want to hear, "I'm staying after school for football practice."

I won't lie to you. We sucked. Coach Kelly was a varsity coach and I was on the JV. We lost every game that year, and the year after, and the year after that. I was a sophomore before we ever won a game.

But football started to take on a sort of mythical significance in my mind. A sport I'd never understood (I learned to actually throw a football that year-- at age eleven.) slowly moved into the realm of the sport I'd ride a bike for fourteen miles to practice.

In 1992 I coached youth football for the first time. In 1993 I was busy flipping burgers because I'd dropped out of college and couldn't coach. In 1999 I returned to coaching in Kodiak, Alaska, where I tried not to interfere too much as my Lions obliterated everyone on the way to an undefeated season. I realized, in October of that year, as the Gatorade dried in the crack of my ass after the championship shower, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life coaching kids.

I went back to school. I got my first degree in 2004 and my second in 2007. At the moment I'm working on a teaching certificate, but I've been able to return to my home town and coach wrestling and football both while teaching at a middle school that was, ironically, our biggest rival when I was in junior high.

If life is a chain of events then my life was changed one day, by one man, who took the time from his day to coach me and make me better than I am, and then took more time to say just two simple sentences.

"You should play football. You'd be a great guard."

I am here now, because of that conversation.

It's the off-season right now, so while you're studying football and getting ready for next year, or maybe working on the other sports you might happen to coach, I want you to think about this: one man, ten seconds, changed my life. Every good thing that has happened to me in the last ten years happened because of the things I learned in football and wrestling. I made it through grueling boot camp-- because wrestling taught me not to quit or give up. I made it through college on the second try-- because football taught me that when you're knocked down you get back on your feet.

Pat Kelly is now the principal of Orting Middle School, down the road from where I live. He still has the same smile and the same blue eyes. Whenever we play Orting I like to seek him out and remind him, "Hey Coach, this is all your fault!"

Some of you might be thinking about giving it up. Your kids have moved on, or you just want more time with the family in the fall. After all, Dancing with the Stars is a damn fine show, and missing it every week because of football practice gets frustrating.

Before you head to eBay to offload your coaching library and take your cleats to Goodwill, consider this:

It's all your fault.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

I was on the phone with a good friend of mine from North Carolina yesterday named Bill Bollman. We were tossing ideas back and forth about coaching, and he came up with a real doozy.

I've never liked cuts in football. The lessons this sport has to teach are simply too important to restrict them to a magic few players. Not to mention that I'd be second-guessing my choices constantly. "We cut Billy, but did you see him today? He grew three inches and gained twenty pounds. Is he living in the weight room?" I'd be further terrified that I'd cut some young man who would have eventually filled that critical position we always seem to get every year. You know the one; at least once a season we all look to our assistant coaches and say, "You know, we have no one else that can play Center/Tight End/Free safety/Etc. If Bobby sprains an ankle we are in serious trouble."

Worse yet, when do you cut? After conditioning week, usually. Conditioning week is usually performed without pads. That means you might cut a player who looks like Jane, but would play like Tarzan in pads, in favor of one who looks like Tarzan but plays like crap! Until you've seen a player in a few tackling drills, you really can't consider whether or not he should be cut-- but you can't see him in tackling drills unless he has equipment.

I'm paranoid about that sort of thing, which is why I'm glad I talked to Bill. He came up with an idea that is stunning in its simplicity, and yet so powerful that it bears a lengthy look.

Bill gets some 72 players out each season. He's only got about 38 sets of gear. That leaves, unfortunately, 34 players who spend football season watching from the stands.

But what if we could take those players and create a special team for them? What if we could keep them involved, keep them learning football, keep them working? What if we could use a method that professional and NCAA teams use all the time: the practice squad.

The way it works is like this. Each player gets two sets of cuts. The first cut drops him to the practice squad. That's where he will play out his season unless he quits or you pull him up to the game squad. A second cut drops him from the team entirely. These I would use primarily for "attitude." Any player that wants to stick with the team is welcome to do so.

Practice squad players would be issued team tee-shirts. They come to every practice and they work on similar drills to the game squad. They practice tackling, blocking, and other crucial skills of football using non-contact or low-contact drills such as the ones popularized by HUGH WYATT. Only the Game Squad actually receives helmets, pads, and uniforms for game day.

They hold bags for scout team, allowing you to get more reps for your game team players. They are a legitimate part of the football team; entitled to all awards and praise-- or punishment-- thereof. They are held to the same behavior and academic standards, and considered nearly as elite as the game squad.

They are also available if you suddenly lose a player and need to pull someone up from the practice squad. In one week I had three offensive linemen go down, two from injury and one from a behavioral incident. A practice squad to draw from would have been awfully nice when we were reshuffling our entire team. (Not that we cut anyone. We've never had the numbers.)

You'd have to approach this in a certain manner. Where a young man's pride is involved things are never easy. I think that Bill is right, though. If you put enough focus on it, start in the preseason long before you hold a tryout or a camp, and start talking about how the practice squad is going to make the team better, how the practice squad gets privileges and entitlements just like the game squad, how the practice squad is composed of football players who need more work and practice, not wannabes who can't make it, there's a good chance you could turn this into a valuable resource for developing talent.

I have always thought it's a crying shame that there are young football players out there that won't get to play football this season because there aren't resources available to let them become a part of the team. I believe that it should be a major goal of any program that cuts because of equipment issues to gradually increase the amount of available equipment until every young man (or woman) that wants to play is able to do so.

Some programs cut because they can't get the coaches. If there are players, there are coaches. Every player has at least one parent or guardian. Every parent or guardian is a potential assistant coach, if approached the right way and carefully trained by a competent head coach.

Some programs cut because they can't get the equipment. Football gear costs money. We all know that, but there are ways to get more equipment. Seek out grants and gifts from local businesses. Create and sell a program at your home games and sell advertising in it. Hold lift-a-thons and get the players to work on getting sponsors for each ten pounds they lift. Hold a charity basketball game. Sell concessions at your games. Talk to the local schools about gifts of their old equipment as "handme downs."

If all else fails, just try to buy one or two more helmets and pad sets per season until you can suit up any player that wants to play.

As coaches, we have to remember that we can't coach the players that aren't on the field. We need to get them, and keep them, on grass. Bill's practice squad idea is the start of that process, but after that we need to get our players equipped and make them a part of the team.

Next topic: Why Girls Don't Play the Game-- and Why They Should!

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

It came to my attention today that my blog was hacked and an animation from a previous entry (a GIF showing the proper angle of explosion from a three-point-stance) was removed and an adult image was added in its place.

First off, let me apologize to anyone that was offended by the image. I can assure you that it wasn't even accidental-- it was malicious and it did NOT come from me. If anyone was offended by the image, you have my deepest apologies.

Second, THANK YOU VERY MUCH to the coaches who emailed and called me to tell me that this had happened to my blog. If you had not pointed out the problem, the potential damage to my career as a professional educator and youth coach could have been insurmountable. I very much appreciate you contacting me to let me know what had happened. Thank you.

Third, to the person or persons responsible: What you did could have cost me my career as a coach and as a teacher. If it was impersonal hacking, that's contemptible, but if it was a personal attack, then your cowardice disgusts me. Either way, the person who did this is a scumbag. If there is any way that I can track the IP address you used, you can expect to be defending legal charges in a court of law. Criminal charges, not civil.

Until I can be assured that pictures and video clips used on this blog will remain as intended, I will not post further graphics. I apologize for the inconvenience this may cause inexperienced coaches that are trying to figure out what I'm talking about, but I need a more secure method for placing these materials online. You may always email me for clarification.

Thank you everyone for understanding.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

Current Mood: Very, very angry

Most youth coaches coach their sons for a couple of seasons and are done with it. They move on into other things; take the promotion at work, change to a different job, whatever.

A rare few, however, can't find an antidote for the coaching bug. There are meetings where you can confess alcoholism, but so far I've yet to find a gathering of people in sweats and ball caps where you can stand up and say, "My name is Derek and I love teaching young people to tackle each other."

For those coaches, taking over a program is inevitable at some point in their careers. They'll either move from youth to a school program, (possibly vice versa), start a new organization from scratch, or otherwise find a way to bring decades of experience and study to a program that desperately needs it.

Sadly, a large number of those programs will be bad ones at the start. They'll have seemingly intractable problems. Remember, unless he's moving to a better job somewhere, most coaches don't leave willingly. If he's enjoying even modest success, the average coach would rather hang out where he is than go on a job search and move his family around.

Which means you're going to be walking into a difficult situation, and there's no easy way to untangle the Gordian Knot you're facing. The previous coach might have been beloved, especially if he left behind a good program, and you have to fill some large shoes. You can expect to hear someone use the phrase, "That's not how we did it last year," at least once per week for the first season.

This blog is specifically written with an eye towards taking over a school program that has not been more than moderately successful in recent years. You already know that you need to win the trust and respect of your players. Remember that anything you tell them they are accountable for, you have to hold them accountable for, or you'll lose their trust. There's a saying from the Armed Forces: "The enlisted man will forgive his officers any indiscretion save two: cowardice and inconsistency." It applies to football, too.

To begin with, I would look up the students that played football last season as sophomores and juniors, and I would also put some focus on the junior highs that feed into your program (or on the youth programs that feed into your junior high program).

One situation that drives me insane is youth programs and junior highs competing for the same players. I don't think that many football players have the physical ability to play for two teams at once, and most school coaches seem to have it in for the youth programs. I've been told twice by high school programs that they aren't interested in letting me coach any of their freshmen. Personally, I think this is a little dumb. At large high schools, some of those freshmen that could start for the youth program (or at least be guaranteed a certain number of plays because of the Minimum Play Rules) spend entire seasons sitting on the bench. Many of them quit after that one year, and never really get better at football. (It may or may not be relevant, but both school programs had losing traditions.)

If you're the school coach, consider what is best for the player, not your program. More often than not, if you encourage a younger player to play for his youth program, he's going to have more success, stay in football longer, and may even turn into a good player for you down the stretch. If you've taken the time to respectfully work with the local youth programs as I mentioned in a previous blog, you should have no problem with the idea of letting another coach develop your younger talent.

When it comes to the lower levels, junior highs if you're a high school coach and youth programs if you're a middle school coach, I would be campaigning harder than Hillary to make sure that every player who even walks past a football at Wal-Mart comes out for the new team. (In fact, that's a good recruiting tool, especially for youth football. Ask the manager of the local sporting goods and department stores if you can hang a flier on their rack of footballs advertising your program. Also put up fliers in the local gyms, on bulletin boards at grocery stores and coffee shops, and the like. You can also make sandwich boards like real estate agents use for open houses quite cheaply. Get permission to put them up in front of community events, like town meetings, high school plays, farmer's markets, and things like that. Be creative. Radio stations and cable access channels are required to offer Public Service Announcement time-- go to the stations and ask if you can put together a thirty second commercial for your program. Make sure there is a sign for your program on each of the main roads into your town. Stuff post office boxes with mailers. There are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do, most quite cheaply or even free with a little work.)

Your goal should be to increase your roster size by a minimum of 5%. Losing programs tend to hemmorrhage players. You need to get them back, or better yet, don't lose them in the first place.

The very instant you are given the handshake promise that you have the position, you need to schedule a meeting with the upper-classmen that played this season and will be playing for you next year. For a middle school, this means seeking out the 6th and 7th graders and getting them into a classroom with you for a few minutes. At the high school level, this means finding the sophomores and juniors that will make up your varsity team. (Do not neglect your junior varsity program! It is very tempting to rape the JV of players during a difficult season. Resist that temptation at all costs. The longer you let those JV players work together, the more success they have as a team at the JV level, the more likely it is that they will grow accustomed to that success and bring it out at the varsity level next year.)

I have some very high expectations for my players in the off-season. My football players do not just succeed, they excel. (Note that there is a difference between a goal and an expectation. A goal is something you hope your players will reach. An expectation is something you require your players to reach.) My expectations start with this:

1. GPA of 2.8, minimum. No excuses. Season GPA requirement is 2.5 to play, 2.8 to start. All other things being equal, the higher GPA wins the slot.

If you're a school coach, you might consider asking for a few minutes at the staff meeting to discuss your academic goals. I've noticed a bit of a division between academicians and athletes in schools, and it's best to nip that in the bud by reminding your colleagues that athletics teaches as much as academics, and that you are in this thing together for the good of the students.

2. At the high school level I require 75 Weight room log ins from December before you get your helmet for practice. (There are about 38 weeks from December to August, so that's less than two per week.) At the junior high/middle school level I would require about 35 log ins, or one per week.

3. You must play at least one sport other than football unless you a) Work a job more than 15 hours per week, or b) have a GPA of 3.5. (For middle schoolers this stays the same. I especially encourage wrestling, basketball, and track as sports that condition and teach toughness, footwork, and running form.)

4. High School players are required to perform ten hours of community volunteering to be done from December to opening weekend. (Talk with the local Boy Scout Troop, they have lists of stuff that needs volunteers.) Middle Schoolers are required to perform just as much, however this might involve some creativity since most of them don't drive. You might have to do more organization to get your team out as a group doing stuff like building picnic tables for the local parks, picking up trash along the roads, helping out at the senior center, and the like. (High school players have it easy-- they can always volunteer to help coach the local youth sports teams!)

5. Match up the varsity players with an incoming JV player from the local junior highs. Varsity players are required to call them a minimum of one time per week from January to the start of practice. Middle school/junior high players are required to call members of the local youth feeder program once per week. This is just a simple, five minute phone call, "Hi. How are you doing? Are your grades keeping up? Looking forward to football? How's your basketball team doing right now? Did you see that game on TV last night? I know! We better not do a sack dance like that or Coach Wade will run us until he's tired! Okay, I've got some homework to do, but I just wanted to see how you were doing. Get studying for that history test!"

6. No hazing. No bullshit. We are ALL Braves/Lions/Spartans, etc. We do not abuse the underclassmen, we lead them. If they do not respect you, that is YOUR fault, not theirs. I absolutely do not bend on this one, and my policy goes beyond zero-tolerance. My players are the elite, to be looked up to by the entire school. They are not thugs or abusers. Given the choice by school administration, I do not remove players from the team for hazing. Removing a player means that they no longer get to learn the lessons that our sport can teach. (I'm not a big fan of kicking a student out of my classes, either.) I do, however, make damn sure that they don't continue the hazing. We start with a thousand yards of bellies and a thousand yards of bear crawls at each practice for the next two weeks and a demotion to the bench.

One of the things that offends me the most about hazing is what it tells you about your team. They obviously are not pulling together and making a coherent unit. Even if the varsity is a tightly knit group, abusing the underclassmen means that a) those younger players aren't having fun playing football, and aren't as likely to play next year, b) those underclassmen are not going to "fit in" to the team when they move to varsity if they stay, and possibly worst of all, 3) those underclassmen will someday be upperclassmen who will think that hazing is normal, accepted, and enjoyable. That establishes a long-term precedent of cancer in your program. Kill it immediately before it spreads.

I would visit the junior highs at least once a month from about February until school ends to hold meetings with the incoming players. Just like the upperclassmen phone call, this is a quick little meeting for five or ten minutes to tell them about some exciting stuff they'll be doing, and to get involved in their lives. Players are more likely to want to play for a coach who takes an interest in them, remembers their names and the stuff they are involved in, and comes to see them. It's going to take time out of your day, but it's worth  it. Trust me. Come to the basketball games and wrestling meets for the junior highs and cheer until you can't talk. The players will know that you support them and will want to play for you. (I once tripped over a garbage can celebrating a home run at a player's baseball game. The audience got a good laugh-- and several freshmen who had not played football that year came out the next year as sophomores. One told me it was because he thought it was cool that I got right back up and started cheering again. Maybe it wasn't the whole reason, but it certainly didn't hurt!)

If you're a middle school or junior high coach this is going to be more difficult. Obviously you can, and should, drop by the local youth practice fields every so often to say high to the players and talk to them (with permission of their coaches, of course. I never set foot on a practice field without the consent of the coach in charge.) You want to avoid disrupting elementary school classrooms, but you can still approach the teachers about meeting with their students here and there throughout the school year. Failing all else, talk to the elementary P.E. teacher. Ask for five minutes a month to talk to their students about playing for you next season.

One thing I want to caution you about when you talk to coaches of programs younger than yours. Don't say a word about what you run unless they ask. Ask them how you can help them do what they do better. Ask them to consider teaching only your blocking and tackling progression, not your schemes or playbooks. You already know the contempt I have for high school coaches that try to shove their ill-advised systems down the throats of middle school and youth teams. Those teams belong to their coaches, and they have the right to coach them with systems they have developed, even if you think they could do better with the stuff you give them.

When it comes to working with lower levels, I take a line from Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! "She was a kind-hearted woman out for all she could give." You need to have the same approach. I continually talk up the feeder programs. I'll give them anything I can give them, time on my fields, extra equipment, any help I can possibly spare, and even players that are not necessarily going to spend much time on my fields. Remember that your future players are on those teams, and the more successful you can make them, the more success you are going to have, because those young men are going to stay in football, keep playing, and keep expecting to have success. (You had better, by the way, meet those expectations!)

One thing you should notice is that this entire, lengthy blog hasn't really covered anything about what weights to lift, when you should start practicing, putting together a summer contact camp (You should have two: one for your team, and one for the lower levels where your players actually coach the youth/middle school teams). The whole point of this blog is to remind you that a program isn't just a bunch of called plays on game day. It's not a jersey color or a clipboard or a cool mascot name like Raptors. A program starts at the earliest age you can get a young person involved in sports, and it lasts only as long as you can keep him interested in participation. Don't ask your players to specialize in football. It's not good for them physically, can cause repetitive stress injuries, and it leads to burnout. Yeah, you might lose a good athlete to an unscrupulous basketball coach who wants him to join a year-round traveling team, but that's not going to happen very often, and odds are the respect you show the other programs will come back to you when your season begins and they're encouraging their basketball players to put on some pads. (Respect, by the way ALWAYS goes out before it comes back.)

Don't forget the importance of grades, and remember that leadership is a difficult thing to master. It's something that takes practice and commitment. The only way your upperclassmen are ever going to get good at it is if you give them a chance to practice it. Put the onus on them; give them the responsibility for taking care of the younger players. They will grow to love it, your team will be better for it, and your players will be better for it.

It goes without saying that your program will, too.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com


www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

Okay, last week I intentionally misspoke myself when I called stance and start the most important part of football. When it comes to tactics and techniques, that's true, but there are things that are more important than winning.

Sportsmanship is one of them. In today's society there is a lot of emphasis placed on winning, and that's fine. American society has always been competitive, and the more we can teach our kids about coming out on top, the better they will do in life.

The problem is that some people tend to take things too far. Winning should never take precedence over the game itself, and it should definitely not take precedence over the respect we show our opponents.

In the first chapter of the excellent text, Let's Kill 'Em: Understanding and Controlling Violence in Sports, the author, Jon Leizman quotes a Sports Illustrated article, "Way Out of Control," in which the writer, Jack McCallum, comments on a friend of his taking his son to a ball game:

"Jeez, Dad,' the boy said, "I hope we see one today. I've never seen one."
"A homer?" The dad asked.
'No, a brawl." (P.1)

It's sad, but we can take that story even further and think of the number of kids today that have seen brawls-- and think they are acceptable.

Sportsmanship is something you need to work on every single day, just like stance and start, and tackling and blocking. Remember that your players go home and turn on the television, where they see things like Bill Romanowski putting a teammate in the hospital during a practice-field fight, Terrel Owens and his celebratory antics, and of course they can see the actions of Randy Moss, like his disgraceful stunt at Lambeau Field on January 9th, 2005. For those of my readers who missed it, Randy pantomimed dropping his pants and "mooning" the crowd, for which he was fined the princely sum of $5,000.

(It's no wonder the NFL can't keep a handle on their players. I don't think any other cross-section of American society with a population of 1,600 members would have as many flat-out criminals. Randy Moss's behavior has always been contemptible, and the fines have been equally as pathetic: $10,000 for squirting water on an official. $25,000 for a vehicular assault charge that was dropped to a misdemeanor when Moss intentionally knocked down a meter maid with his SUV. Remember that Moss's last contract in Minnesota signed him for $3.8 million a year.)

Your players will probably see at least one example of poor class and sportsmanship in every single game they watch during the 2007 NFL season. If it's not wide receivers screeching at officials for not getting a pass interference penalty when blanketed by coverage (or defensive backs complaining about flags they drew while covering those wide receivers), then it will be an excessive touchdown celebration or chest-thumping demonstration after a routine tackle.

These displays have only one purpose, to humiliate the opponent. I'll be blunt: it really asses me off that I have to spend my practice time every season carefully UN-teaching the things my players see on television.

But it has to be done, and you need to do it, too.

We start during the first days of practice, with a discussion of proper behavior during the coaches' introduction. We go on with an actual full discussion of sportsmanship on day two at the end of practice. During this discussion we also specifically warn the players that we will be testing them, and to be ready for it.

Periodically we reinforce things with a drill I stole from John Torres (formerly of Manteca, California) and Rich Scott (Who is still in Manteca.) called the Walk-Away Drill. Briefly put, pull one of your players aside and give him instructions to pick a fight with another player at some point during the practice. It should be completely verbal, but have him get in someone's face and be loud about it. (It works best if he picks the fight with a friend. A pretend fight can escalate to a real one and screw up this whole drill-- plus maybe even get you sued!) During the chalk talk we actually demonstrate this by having a coach start screaming at another coach who has to walk away.

Here's what your players should see: during a normal tackling drill, Billy gets taken to the ground too hard by Bobby, and leaps to his feet, yelling offensively. (With older kids, it's all right to have a little profanity during this drill, but I'd bring it up to the parents in the preseason so they understand what you're trying to do as well as how it will be done.)

Stop the drill at this point, when all eyes are on on Billy's antics, and reinforce exactly what he is to do.

I'll spell it out in three steps.

1) Smile.
2) Turn around.
3) Walk back to the huddle.

It's that simple. Run this at least once in the preseason, and probably once a month after that. It's sad, but there are also some teams out there that you're going to play that like to talk trash. If you know one of them is on your schedule, then you should probably run this drill the week prior to that game. (For example, if you're going to play a team coached by "Snoop Dogg" you should probably run this drill about every ten minutes during the preceding week.)

But wait, there's more! Sportsmanship is more than just learning to walk away from a fight. Being a good coach involves actively promoting sportsmanship in your players.

Here's one idea I got from the outstanding coaches and players of King's Academy High School in Northern California. After each game the players of this Christian school gather with their opponents at midfield in a giant circle, alternating each King's Academy player with an opponent. The coaches meet in the middle, and, King's Academy being a Christian school, everyone prays.

Now, I'm not here to tell you that you need to suddenly find Jesus (I didn't even know he was missing.), but this is a great idea for reinforcing sportsmanship!

I have taken this remarkable idea and added my own spin on it: what if we were to do precisely the same thing, but instead of praying (which is by no means a bad thing) just thank our opponents for being there? Wouldn't that stick in our players' heads? Wouldn't they remember that for the rest of their lives?

There are other things you can do to reinforce sportsmanship that aren't quite the production. Little things are just as important. For example, when your players score a touchdown, instead of a funky dance, or excessive screaming, just have them turn and thank their offensive linemen. Not only does this reinforce the idea of not taunting our opponent, but it also helps support the importance of the offensive line.

The final thing I'd like to bring up is the idea of backing down on the number of individual awards given out. I've seen helmets so covered with stickers that I'm surprised the players can hold their heads up above their pads. While this is cool, and makes them feel like a "big-time" player, it also tends to reinforce an "I'm better than you," attitude. I don't take this dislike of individual awards to absolute extremes, though. A speaker at a recent coaching clinic I attended commented that youth coaches should never keep individual statistics. I completely disagree with this idea. The players love seeing their stats, and they are a very important troubleshooting and encouragement aid.

There are only two individual awards that I give out. The first is the BLACK LION. I encourage you to visit the link and sign your team up for this program. The second is the Hardest Working Lineman of the week, which is an award given to the laziest running back we have. (Okay, I said that just to see if you were paying attention.) We actually get together as a coaching staff once a week before the first game and vote on the hardest working lineman in the program.

In my experience, the the more players work as a team, the less individual taunting they exhibit, and the more sportsmanship they display. This is because sportsmanship, class, and character are part of a culture. Unfortunately, so are trash-talking, taunting, and showboating. Your job as a coach is to create, reinforce, and maintain the right culture.

Sportsmanship doesn't just happen. If you don't actively encourage your players to treat the game and their opponents with respect, the miserable examples they have on television will do it for them.

And that's exactly what we don't want to teach.

If you're looking for further information on developing character and sportsmanship in your players, here are some books to look for:

Positive Coaching by Jim Thomson (ISBN: 1-886346-00-3)
Coaching for Character by Craig Clifford and Randolph M. Feezell (ISBN: 0-88011-512-2)
Let's Kill 'Em by Jon Leizman (ISBN: 0-7618-1378-0)

~D.

Next topic: Taking Over a School Program

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com


www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

I get asked all the time what the best drills are for football, how to plan practices, and whether or not the Gap-8 really works as a defense.

1) Jerry Vallotton's Timing Drill (DoubleWing.org), and my Hammer Drill (Coming soon to Football for Youth!)

2) By breaking down the necessary skills you need to teach and developing a practical program that first teaches, then reinforces, and finally perfects them in a consistent manner.

3) YES!

But one question I wish someone would ask is, "Coach Wade, what's the most important part of football?"

I think a guy named Lombardi said it best, "Football is, and always will be, a game of blocking and tackling."

When you break these two fundamental skills down into their most important aspects, you have one foundation that applies to both: stance and start.

Take a look at the animation below.


This is a shot of my 2005 Tomales Braves football team during the third game of the season. It's not perfect, but it's a good example of the perfectability, as well as the importance, of the stance and start.


Compare their initial stances and movements at the snap to the following diagram, which is a timeline of the first few moments after the snap of the ball.



The biggest problem that youth football coaches face, at least when it comes to on-field skills, is coaching explosive movement. All-too frequently they simply don't know how to coach it, so they let it get lost in the shuffle. The result is what you see in the diagram above.

It's not natural to play low. Youth players are human, and it's a very human tendency to want to pop up and look around. Unfortunately, it's a very real truth that the quickest way to end up lying down on a football field is to stand up.

My Braves start low, in good three point stances, but there is just a little too much pop-up during the first step. They are still more fundamentally sound than our opponents, who are playing much too high, and they are able to drive them off the ball as a result. In fact, this play is one out of the third series, in which we marched down the field with the same play (24 Toss) eight times out of thirteen plays.

My intention here is to focus your attention on your players and they way they both go into and come out of their stances. Proper stance and start is the most important thing a football player has to learn. We begin working on it on day one, and several times a day we correct our players in their basic stances. We progress naturally from there to explosive linear movement forward, in what Tim Murphy of Clovis East calls, "Hitting on the rise." In a perfect world our players make contact while they are still low and compressed like a tightly-coiled spring, and their follow-through steps take them under their opponent while gradually lifting, which takes the defender off his balance.

It has to be practiced, and it's so important that I believe it should be practiced not just every day, but several times each day.

Here's the way this works: we break practice into five minute increments called segments. A two-hour practice is composed of twenty-four segments, and an offensive or defensive period is usually composed of between five and seven segments. The first portion of these periods is usually a brief individual drills period to refresh skills and get the players warmed up for their positions.

Since each aspect of the team has their own coach (On offense these are Offensive Line, Backfield, and Tight Ends/Receivers. On defense these are Linebackers, Defensive Line, and Defensive Backs.) we have a perfect opportunity to check relevant stances consistently and constantly throughout the practice.

Let's say you and I are coaching together, and you're my defensive backs coach. When the defensive period begins I blow my whistle three times, loudly, to get every player and coaches' attention. Then I call out, "Defensive indo," (Individual time.) "Go to your coach!" The players have ten seconds to get to their coach, no matter where you happen to be.

When they get to you, they'll break down into a good hit position, which is the fundamental movement position in all athletics. (Seriously, compare it to basketball stance, a defensive tennis stance, even the way soccer players stand when they're not falling down because an opposing player came too close to them.) You'll take a quick glance at their body position, making corrections as needed and as quickly as possible, and then give them a set of brief calisthenics to perform, such as Ten push ups, or Fifteen sit ups. As they finish these exercises, you'll give them a second stance to demonstrate, such as Three-point-Stance. Like you just did, you'll look them over and make brief corrections as needed.

You can even take an extra few seconds and have them execute a get-off, popping out to block your extended hands, one player at a time as you move down the line. Or you can have them execute a dip and rip drill (arm over or arm under) against you, one at a time, moving swiftly along the line and reinforcing this vital escape technique. Or you can hold a dummy and have them hit, lock, and wrap up in the first part of a proper tackle. The possibilities are endless, and as this only takes seconds to work in you can get through an entire group of eleven offensive linemen in less than a minute. (Since there are five offensive linemen on an offensive unit, but only one-to-three running backs, one quarterback, and two-to-four receivers at any one time, the offensive line unit comprised of starters and backups tends to be larger than any other part of the team. In a typical 26-man roster, about ten to fourteen players will be offensive linemen, and the remainder will be spread among the "skill" positions. When planning drills into your practice plan, always consider the time it takes for each group to pass through each drill the required number of times for mastery.)

What have we just done? Well, we not only checked two stances (hit position and one extra), but we also worked a conditioning exercise (sprint to the coach) and a core strength-building exercise (push ups, sit ups, etc.) into the practice in a very time-efficient manner. Executing this practice method takes mere moments. Even adding in the extra get-offs only takes a few extra seconds, and provides an incredible return on investment. Some coaches may go their whole seasons without spending any real time on this important fundamental, and in mere moments we can check it, correct it, and reinforce it every day, from the first day of practice until the day we say our goodbyes.

Stance and start are the most important fundamental foundations in football. A proper stance allows for explosive movement into the opponent, and the correct start allows you to deliver the first blow. By taking just a few seconds throughout practice to focus on them, you can continually reinforce these skills, and proper execution in these areas will improve your team, no matter what offense or defense you choose to run.

Next week's topic: Coaching for Sportsmanship

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

The Double Wing Message Board!
The best offense for the greatest sport in the world!

Lately I have been receiving some very good questions via email, and for some reason there seems to be a resurgence of interest in the Wing-T as an offensive system. Whether it has to do with the mighty Bellevue Wolverines and the hammerings they’ve been doling out or some other factor, I think it’s a good thing.

Most of the questions I’ve been asked tend to revolve around blocking schemes for the system. This is the aspect of offensive football that most youth coaches have trouble with, because it’s the most complex, and also the least covered by network TV analysts and professional camera angles. (Another reason I find NFL football boring, since the offensive line, and not the ball, is the most fun for me to watch.)

I got the following via email, and I think it’s a good question:

Hi Coach Wade.

You have some great articles on your site. I'm an experienced basketball and flag football coach, but have been asked to be the OC for 13-14 year old team this year. Many of our players have played in the wing-T for a few years, and I have a decent laymans understanding of the plays/concepts. That said, my understanding of the blocking rules & techniques is poor. As I try to learn more I see a lot of incomplete or inconsistent info available on blocking rules. Do you have a summary of the blocking rules for the base wing-T series? I have seen the playbook download on the site, but this does not address changing fronts. Any other advice would be great also.

There’s a lot of ground to cover when we’re talking about blocking rules, especially when we’re talking about blocking rules for the Wing-T. At last count there were two dozen potential series available for the basic Wing-T, and coaches are developing new ways to use the common formations to attack the defense all the time.

The Wing-T can be a very complex offense to use, not least because it's so damn versatile. An example is Gene Cox's Multiple Offense (ISBN: 0966967208) from his book by the same name. His 'basic' terminology alone takes up four full pages. Sometimes the same play is blocked three or four ways against the same front, with no real explanation as to why.

Thanks to a decade or more of coaching experience, much of it under the patient and expert tutelage of Leon Feliciano at Tomales high school, I can now figure out that what these alternative blocking schemes give you is a different way to attack stud players in various positions. A stud defensive tackle, for example, can be charlie blocked. A stud outside linebacker can be kicked out, and the ultimate target is still the same point of the defensive line.

This is way too complex for youth coaches. It's too complex for most high school coaches (but they would never admit it in a million years). I have no idea at all how Gene Cox won 323 games with that system, but he's a better coach than me, that's for sure.

I talk a great deal about the Wing-T, but I choose not to run it myself. There are some very valid reasons for that, in my opinion. I'm a Double Wing guy, through and through. I think the Double Wing is a little further down the evolutionary road from the Wing-T. I would run the Wing-T as an offense by itself for two main reasons: I wanted to throw the ball more than I do (because I had an awesome in-space receiver I wanted to split as an end) or if I wanted to run the option. Other than that, I think the Double Wing answers a lot of the questions that the Wing-T asks, like line splits. What's the most effective distance for my age group? Who knows? The Wing-T can demand specific splits because of the timing of the plays, and finding the exact distance for your age level is as much trial and error as "book learnin'" from the playbook.

The Wing-T is a very precise offense, and tightening the line splits too much can have deleterious effects on certain things. For example, it will help you with the sweep, because the perimeter is closer, but it interferes with the trap because the FB is deeper-- the hole can open and close before he gets there instead of opening AS he gets there. (By the way, I'm not trash-talking the Wing-T. It's my third place offense I would run behind the Double Wing and the Veer. When I say that it's not as 'evolved' as the Double Wing I mean that the Double Wing went in one direction and the Wing-T went in another, and I prefer the angle that the Double Wing takes.)

But we want to talk about specific blocking schemes. Unfortunately, since there are no restrictions on defensive alignment (unless you’re in one of those miserable leagues that mandates a specific defense, in which case I encourage you to find another place to coach as soon as possible), we need to consider schemes whose rules allow for various defensive fronts, or our plays will fail for the worst of all possible reasons: because we failed to teach our players who to block.

When it comes to developing a playbook suitable for changing fronts, you need to start with a good scouting report and then give your players a base set of rules for each play. You can do this yourself if you find a playbook that has stuff left out of it. (Except when I do it, all my blocking schemes look like the Double Wing. I think I'm over trained.)

To keep things simple, I want to talk mostly about the most basic play in any offensive arsenal: the straight-up-the-pipe to the fullback. There are several ways to block this, as you can see from the diagram.




1) Base block - everyone fires out low and hammers the guy in front of them. If no one, continue in a path until you hit someone. This is typical youth blocking and as a result is rarely useful. (It can be, if you call it on occasion and catch the defense unaware, thinking you were going to angle block or something.) It relies on surprise as much as pure power.

2) Counter trap - Backside guard pulls through the center's hips and lays out the defensive tackle. For this you need two sets of basic rules; one has to be for the odd fronts you see, and the other has to be for the evens. You also might need some kind of call from guard to guard. (I use inlaw and outlaw. Inlaw means that the guy on my playside guard is inside, so he's going to be blocked by the playside guard. Outlaw means that the guy on the playside guard is outside him, and is the trap victim.) the basic rule here is: No one outside the trap touches a man on the line, period. EVERYONE goes to second level.

3) Charlie - This looks similar to the trap, except that we're not sending anyone to second level. Everyone base blocks except, in this case, the center and playside guard. Usually the outside man goes first, and he earholes anyone over center. The center delays for a heartbeat (gives him time to snap) and then, when the guard passes in front of him, he whacks the man over the guard. This gives both players inside leverage, but, it sacrifices speed because the punch is delayed. (You can even consider this a short trap. It works well on draw plays, too, BECAUSE of the slight delay.)

What you need to do is take a find a decent playbook with rules already in place. However if you're looking for some basic stuff to match what your kids already know, look at the series you run and consider this:

1) When attacking outside, there are two main blocking schemes: down block and reach block. Reach blocking only works with proper technique and when the defense has seen enough down blocks that they try to fight hard to the inside to beat that particular block. Then reach them.

2) Apply two points of leverage at every hole: inside and outside. So, for example, if you wanted to run a power with the halfback carrying off tackle, you need to apply leverage to the inside (down block) and to the outside (kickout with the FB) to pry the hole open. This is Hugh Wyatt's Jaws of Life blocking scheme and is employed in almost all Double Wing plays.

3) Trap on misdirection plays. Series are groups of interconnected plays that look similar (preferably identical)at the start of the play and immediately following the snap. A Buck series, for example, uses the dive, sweep, and a QB keep/rollout pass in the opposite direction from the sweep. This is prime time for the trap to the FB (dive) when the defense sees sweep and the linebackers start to chase.

4) Charlie blocking only works when it is quick and the players stay low. If the center pops up, he's going to miss his block and the fullback will get buried.

I hope this helps.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

Tackling Coach/Special Teams Coordinator
Tomales High School Junior Varsity
"Land of the free and home of the BRAVES!"
2005 NCL II League Champions!

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

Why I hate Bellevue High School.

For those who haven’t had a chance to follow them, Bellevue is a high school located in a suburb of Seattle. They achieved national prominence in 2004 by being the first football team to defeat De La Salle High School since 1992 and snapping the Spartans’ 151-game, thirteen-year winning streak.

So why would I hate this program? Bellevue is a model of success. They play inspired football. The offensive system they use is the Wing-T, and they are good. I happened to be at the game where they defeated De La Salle. Bellevue scored on their first play from scrimmage and hung thirty-nine points on De La Salle without ever throwing a single pass. It was impossible, even from our vantage point in the stands and superior angle, to find the football during a play, often for as long as two full seconds. Defensively, Bellevue’s 4-3 swarmed, gang tackled, pressured, and played sound fundamental football. The players and coaches were, and are, respectful and courteous to their opponents and to their fans. They’re a model of how a good high school program should look.

Why would I hate them so much if they are a living embodiment of everything I hold dear in football? The answer is actually pretty simple. I hate them because too many programs and administrations are making the mistake of thinking that because Bellevue does something, they need to do it in order to be successful.

I’m actually speaking of one specific thing. In Bellevue, the local youth program runs the same offensive system and terminology as the high school. The middle school runs the same system and terminology as the high school. It’s not quite to the level of Odessa-Permian in Texas, where male babies in the hospital are given a fabric football with their future number on it, but it’s close.

And, at the risk of sounding contrarian, it is not how you build a successful program.

Bellevue’s head coach is a very smart man named Butch Goncharoff. Coach Goncharoff did not simply wander into Bellevue and demand that the local youth organizations run his system. He was smart enough to realize that unless he demonstrated success with it, there was no reason that they would want to run his program.

Coach Goncharoff started as a youth coach, and he was absolutely not running the same system as the local high school. For five seasons he coached his system, gradually moving up the food chain until he reached the high school level.

First he showed that it was possible to win with his system, and now he has a comprehensive feeder program in place that gives him experienced players every year. The athletes in the Bellevue program run the same system from age eight to age eighteen, and they are only going to get better. Don’t look for anyone to knock them off any time soon.

Let’s contrast this with the attempts by a local school district I know of to follow in the Bellevue footsteps. Like Bellevue, they, too, mandate that the middle schools in the district run the same programs as the high schools they feed. Unfortunately, unlike Bellevue, they don’t have a track record of proven success to point to. In fact, the two high schools in the district were a combined 7-13 this last season. One of them has won an astounding four games in two seasons.

Possibly worst of all, the high school coaches did not come up through the system, they were hired from outside it. This means that the hapless middle school coach that has been there coaching his program with some success since 2000 can suddenly have his system yanked out from under him when a new high school coach is hired that wants to do something different.

Let's think about that. Imagine that you are the head coach at one of the middle schools. Imagine that you have put thousands of hours of research and development time into the creation of your own program. This is not an unlikely scenario by any means. The best youth coaches I know of put in about three to five hundred hours during the season, and about two thousand hours of study and development time during the off-season. Imagine that you have enjoyed some modest success with the system you have developed. (Actually, the odds are that the success you have enjoyed is probably more than modest if you are putting that kind of effort into your personal education and development.)

Now, standing in front of you is a high school coach that has had back-to-back 2-8 seasons. Only twice in the last two years has his offense scored more than three touchdowns in a game. He was shut out three times in the last season alone. He is going to tell you what offense and defense to run. He will probably never step on your practice field, yet he will mandate to you the systems that you will teach to your players. He will disregard your own personal research, experience, and study in favor of his own. Worst of all, you will probably not even be successful with the systems he wants you to run!

After all, he is not even successful, and he is supposed to be the “expert” in the system, hired by the district at the high school level and paid to teach his program to high school players.

This is the fundamental flaw that comes from misunderstanding and misapplying the methods used by Bellevue High School to build their program.

The short-sightedness of high school coaches never fails to amaze me. They think nothing of forcing a lower level coach to run a program completely unsuited to his personnel if it makes it slightly easier for them. They never seem to understand that an unsuccessful junior high coach in their feeder program is not going to send them players of any caliber. They are perfectly content to watch the junior high go 0-8 as long as they use the same terminology, and they just don’t seem to understand that youth football players that play for losing football teams do not usually go on to play successful high school football!

Youth football players are human. In a society that is desperately trying to drag kids away from video games and off the Internet, hamstringing their coaches, putting any stumbling block at all in their potential success is one more brick for that player to lay on the foundation of quitting. Why on earth would a freshman football player that lost every game as a sixth grader, lost every game as a seventh grader, and lost every game but one as an eighth grader want to continue playing football?

I’ll tell you, because I was that player once: he doesn’t. You will lose that player to soccer, band, drama club, or “hanging out” just as surely as if you personally cut him from the team.

Logically, it doesn’t even make sense to force a middle school program to run a high school system. High school programs are not designed with middle schools in mind, they are designed with high school athletes in mind. Why is this so difficult for the high school coaches to catch on to? This isn’t rocket science. Half of the middle school team hasn’t even hit puberty yet.

Probably the stupidest aspect of this situation is explained by the player study performed by Jack Reed in 2001. In the article on his web site at http://www.johntreed.com, Coach Reed tracked his 1995 youth football team and discovered that fewer than twenty percent of them went on to play high school football. Now, you can call this statistically insignificant because it is only one team out of thousands, but what verification is there that forcing a youth program to run a high school offense will make them more successful when they get to high school?

It is perfectly possible to take junior varsity players that have never once in their lives taken a three-point-stance and teach them to play successful, even triumphant, football. I know this for a fact because I have done it. I have taken my freshmen with flag-football experience and faced off against programs with established tackle feeder programs going down to age six—and defeated them. Why does this happen? Because I do not depend on another coach to teach my program. I teach my program. I teach safe and sound fundamental football.

Why me? Because it is my program. I am responsible for its success. The levels below me are not responsible for my wins and losses. It makes as much sense to demand that they run my program as it makes for the local junior college to order the high schools in their area to run whatever systems they approve. Actually, that makes more sense; fewer than twenty percent of youth football players may play in high school, but almost all junior college players played high school ball.

There is a horrible down side to the feeder-program mentality as well. In 1999 I was an active duty member of the United States Coast Guard stationed in Kodiak, Alaska. I was fortunate to work for a fantastic supervisor named Del who gave me time to coach football and rekindle my love of being on grass with young people.

In 2002 I ran into Del again after I was stationed in Petaluma, CA. Del had moved to a radio navigation site in Wyoming and brought his young son with him.

Del’s son was a hockey player in Alaska. If you haven’t had a chance to meet some youth hockey players, take my word for it: they are tough, very tough. More than that, Del’s son was also an Alaskan state record holder in the 100-meter hurdles.

Can anyone say, “broken field runner?” I’ll admit that my mouth started watering at the prospect of a young athlete with that kind of speed, toughness, and natural elusiveness carrying the football in my Double Wing offense.

So what happened to him? When I spoke with Del, he told me that his son had never played high school football. Why? Because the high school coach in that area told him to his face, “You can come out for football, but you’ll never play. My players have been in my program since they were eight years old. I don’t have time to teach you to play football!”

Del’s son walked away from the sport. Frankly, I’m disgusted with that coach, and ashamed to consider him a part of my peer base. Unfortunately, that is the sort of mentality that arises when you put too much emphasis on the presence of a feeder program for your high school. What are you supposed to do with transfer students? In 2005 the Tomales High School Football team had a player who was an exchange student from France! Not only had he not played football before, he hadn’t even seen an entire football game before he played in one!

Of course, if the only players we really care about are the ones that play in our programs from the moment they first put on a pair of cleats, then I suppose it’s not really a big deal that our young Frenchman was able to play football, now is it?

I don’t deny that having a good feeder program is a boon to a high school football team. All football experience is good for young athletes, and all football experienced athletes will improve a high school program. However, before you start talking about the responsibilities of the youth program to your high school system, you first need to understand your responsibilities to the youth program.

Bellevue High School is a fine example of a football program, but a disingenuous understanding of their program philosophy and errors in its application are throwing thousands of youth football programs under the bus every season. A high school coach has no right to order anyone not on his practice field to do anything. An unsuccessful high school coach has even less right.

Success is not always defined by wins and losses, but when you approach a feeder program to ask them to run your system, unless you have something to show, don’t be surprised if they respectfully decline. The youth football coach is not a supplicant to or lackey of the high school coach. The youth football coach, and this means the junior high or middle school coach as well, is the colleague of the high school coach. He should be treated as such.

And that means understanding that his program means his system. Let him run it.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

Tackling Coach/Special Teams Coordinator
Tomales High School Junior Varsity
"Land of the free and home of the BRAVES!"
2005 NCL II League Champions!

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"

As a football coach, one of the most important things you have to learn is how and when to get out of your team's way. It's an axiom: it is always easier to LOSE a game, than it is to WIN one.

On Sunday, December 10th, 2006, the Seattle Seahawks played a game in Sun Devil Stadium against the Arizona Cardinals. The odds-makers had Seattle by eight and a half. A win locks Seattle in to the NFC West Championship and guarantees them a playoff appearance. (Remember, this is a Seattle team that barely lost a Superbowl last year.)

The Hawks' many blunders included penalties at key moments: the very first play of the game was a holding call against them. I understand that the offensive linemen are playing against the most effective defensive athletes in the world, but aren't they themselves supposed to be of similar caliber?

Seattle finished the game with nine fumbles, including a key by Mack Strong in the third quarter. As they get set to put the game away after briefly taking the lead, a swing pass to the flat hits Strong in stride. He turns, makes three steps, and the defensive end makes contact with him. Because Strong is not protecting the football properly, it is stripped, and Arizona recovers. They go on to score and take the lead for the final time.

When Seattle gets the ball back, on the ensuing drive, a block in the back gives them a first and seventeen after the ten yard penalty is assessed and the down is replayed. Block in the back is one of the easiest penalties to avoid; all it takes is competent coaching to discipline the athletes until they pay attention. There's no excuse for it at the youth level, much less from a professional making $3.4 million a year. (Or approximately 100 times the salary of a high school teacher.)

Seattle completed their next pass over the middle, and the receiver fumbles because he never puts the ball away. Seattle recovers, but LOSES nine yards, leaving them with an eventual 4th and six inches from their thirty. (These are pros? Why can't they execute the most basic fundamental in football: hanging onto the ball properly?)

Right here is where Mike Homgren lost the game for Seattle. With less than ten inches for the first down and the league MVP from 2005 at running back, instead of going for it in a game that would clinch the championship (with a San Francisco loss) Holmgren chooses to instead punt the ball away.

Arizona also blundered. After the punt they ran five straight plays to Edgerrin James in which he gained, at minimum, four yards per carry. If they'd kept giving the ball to James they would have scored. Instead, they went to the drop-back and killed their drive with incompletes.

The punt leaves Seattle on their own four yard line.

Just under eight minutes in the game and Seattle now gets to drive the length of the field if they want to win the game. Or three and out, which is sort of expected. The punt leaves Arizona on the SEATTLE 44 yard line. Defensive penalties give Arizona a nice free first down and a chance to kill more clock after they already take two and a half minutes off. The field goal pretty much ends it for Seattle: 27-21. They end up six inches short of a conversion on the Arizona six with 53 seconds left.

Exciting finish? NO! Am I the only person that's sick and tired of seeing these "exciting finishes" that only come about because of flat out blundering in the first 58 minutes of the game?

There's a lesson in there, I think. Youth and high school coaches can learn a lot from the pros, even if it's how NOT to run a football team. I wish I could stop being a Seattle fan, so coaching blunders wouldn't be quite so offensive, but I've been following them for thirty of my thirty-three years.

Here's where we get to profit from the experience of the pros. If I'm coaching Seattle, I'm going to re-evaluate my game plan for practices.

Next week would focus on two major points in practice:

1) Ball security. I would run some form of gauntlet drill every day with all potential ball carriers.
2) Penalty avoidance. Each and every penalty yard would result in some form of team punishment, with an extra focus on sportsmanship and safety penalties. Generally, a good rule of thumb is ten yards of sprints or bellies for every yard of penalties incurred in a game.

Additionally, as a head coach for a potential champion, I don't think that it's good coaching to be tentative or demonstrate anything other than complete confidence in my team. Facing a fourth and six inches with one of the best running backs in the league on my team, it's preposterous that Holmgren chose to kick the ball away instead of going for the first down. Remember the statistics analyzed by Carroll, Palmer, and Thorn in The Hidden Game of Football (ISBN: 189212901-9) indicate that going for it on fourth down, even when deep in your own territory, is almost always a good idea. The consequences of failing are rarely as bad as one thinks, and the return on investment usually outweighs the potential drawbacks. Seattle was on their own thirty-four, hardly "deep" in their territory, and a first down could win the game for them.

What Holmgren showed his team was that he didn't have confidence in them as a unit when the chips were down. This is not surprising in a coach that once told the press that "Seattle will never be better than 8-8 with Jon Kitna at quarterback," but it is just as contemptible now as it was in 1998 when he said that about his starting offensive leader.

Tentative coaching and technical mistakes killed Seattle in a crucial game. Good coaching means learning from those errors and not making similar mistakes when your own championship is on the line.

~D.

Derek A. "Coach" Wade
Coach_Wade@hotmail.com

Tackling Coach/Special Teams Coordinator
Tomales High School Junior Varsity
"Land of the free and home of the BRAVES!"
2005 NCL II League Champions!

www.FBforYouth.com
"If we can help just one coach,
then we've helped twenty kids!"