Who's Getting Excited

[coachbreck 0]

This will be my 5th year coaching 5th and 6th grade youth football and I can say my enthusiasm is as high as it's ever been. I learn more each year and I love working with this age group they are egar to learn and are very competitive. We do not retain kids from year to year so other than one or two players I have a raw team each year that we draft to make all our teams as even as possible.

We start August 8th and we have a football camp comming up in July that the local College helps us run. We also will have our scheduling in mid July with the other teams in our leauge. I don't mean to rush anyones summer along but I can't wait til this fall.

I run pretty much the same system I always have since I started coaching with some variations here and there depending upon the personel I have from year to year.

Our numbers are up a little this year and will be looking at about 18 kids per team which is about as high as I would like to see on one team since every player in our system starts at a position and plays pretty much the whole game. I know the way most teams do it is they have some kind of minimum play personell, but I believe if a youngster comes out for football and makes it to every practice they deserve to play as much as anyone else. Unless they are dogging it during a game then they are on the bench until they decide they want to play again. We do have to try and hide some of these kids and it's frustrating at times but given the chance you would be supprised at some of the plays these kids can come up with.

O.K. I'll shut up now, just had to share my excitment for the fast approching season.

[CoachSteve 0]

Me? I am stoked!! We have the majority of our roster set and will have a parents meeting very soon. We kickoff practice on August first. We don't have a lot of size but we have some talented kids coming back from last year and some others moving up. Also, my son is playing for the first time in the younger bracket. I had a hard time deciding against coaching his team. I helped on his soccer team last year and had a great time but I think it is time for him to have a year of getting coaching from someone else - at least for a season or two. Still, I could not help my excitement when I took him to the sporting goods store last weekend and got his under armor shirts and pants, mouth piece, cleats, etc, etc!! Not bragging but he is built to play football and loves contact. In soccer, I had to council him about running over other kids. I think football is going to be good for him. Perhaps he will be a good player to boot!!

[coachbreck 0]

That's funny Steve. I did'nt mention it in my original post but this will be my sons first year of tackle football too. He will be a fifth grader and yes I am going to coach him. I don' know what to expect out of him he's short but a stocky 93 lbs and pretty quick. Probably going to start him at a middle linebacker on D and a backup fullback or flanker on O.

I am extreemly nervous though I have to try and walk that fine line this year between not favoring him and being too hard on him. I have coached a nephew and my assistant coaches two sons but this is still different.

We have been out throwing the rock around and teaching him the basic formations, hole numbers, cadence, hand offs and running plays. He will have that advantage over the other fifth graders anyway. Next week we will get out the tackling dummy and work on defense. I don't want to burn him out though before the season starts but he assures me he is having fun.

[Clinton_Redskin 0]

Hey Guys were fired up as well. We are turning over a new leaf in our program and have made the change from Flag to Tackle. It was a ton of work but with the help of a lot of people we got it done. We have 128 kids signed up and will have 8 teams. 4 (5th - 6th grade) and 4 (3rd - 4th grade). LAst year the flag league consisted of 79 kids so we grew tremendiously! We had a 3 day mini-camp in June and had 90 kids and 10 coaches participate. Things are looking GREAT and we cant wait to get started. I forgot to mention I will be coaching a 5th-6th grade team for the first time. If your interested we have a website started ( take a peak ) www.Clintonfootball.org !

[CoachSteve 0]

Coach Breck,

I just got back from a week of fun with the family and just saw your message hear. Good Luck with you son this year; it will all be fine. I made a different decision because I think it will be good for my son to have to deal with a coach other than me (a couple of times last year, he wanted to run to me as Daddy and not Coach). He was only 5 in soccer though. He is 6 now and will be seven at the end of the season for football. I was reluctant to start him in tackle too early but since I am in the program as a coach myself, I feel pretty comfortable that it will be a fun event and not a win or else attitude.

Good Luck with you son this year!!

Coach Steve

[coachbreck 0]

I just got back from 10 days vacation myself, We have a meeting thursday and will be doing scheduling next week. It's getting closer.

Clinton Redskin, looks like you have things up and running and are well organized. Good luck this year!

[Clinton_Redskin 0]

Thanks For the "Good Luck" , We are scheduled to start Aug 6th. It should be a great learning experience for everyone involved. Are main goal is to help Kids fall in love with playing football so when they reach High School our numbers will have increased!

[coachbreck 0]

C R, the first group of kids that played two years for us have never lost a game. They will be freshmen this year and every kid that played for us in 5th and 6th grade is still out for football. They love it and they all want to be part of that group because they feel some thing special will happen by the time they graduate.

Your are doing the right thing there in your town and you will see the benefits of it in the long run.

[coachjones49224 0]

Hey guys we just finished our first week of practice and I am so F@#!#@! excited about this season I can't wait til slpit the grades up and start working on game situations. We also had a coaches meeting last night and we broke down our practice schedual to the minute which is something that wasn't done before. Hopefully that would make us look more organized to our players so on game day we can look more orgainized to the opposing team. maybe gaing that psychological advantage before the game starts.

GO ALBION CHARGERS WERE HITTIN THEM HARD, HITTIN THEM EARLY, and HITTIN THEM OFTEN.

[CoachSteve 0]

Why are you so late?

we finish week 3 tonight and go to the jamboree tommorow!!! Our first game is next week. We are looking pretty good but we have a couple of tweaks left to work out. Tommorow should give us our final 'tweak' answers going into game 1.

Yes Hank, I am ready for some football!

[coachjones49224 0]

We just got our schedual for the season our first game. our first game isn't until Sept. 10th. I don't know why we are so behind everyone else. It's actually a good thing because we need a lot work on our special teams, so we got a liitle time left. Besides that our offense is looking great and our D looks solid.

I know the majority of coaches at this age (10-12) run either a sw or dw, but we aren't. Actually we aren't running any particular system just a coulple plays from an I-formation and split backs. We also have about 4 diffrent passing plays that we hope to catch them off gaurd since the majority of the teams we face will run the wing offense. and most likley thats what their D will be practicing against.

Since we are not running sw or dw its hard for us to practice our d against it. any suggestions on how to do that? Wer'e running a 5-3 and 4-4. we have more speed than power so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks Coach Jones

[coachbreck 0]

In my opinion it's damn hard to run a SW scout squad. DW is easier to run because you have a qb under center and can run a full back and two wings. and get the general idea.

What we do preparing for a SW or DW team is have the coaches run the plays so the defense at least gets somewhat of a look at what they will be up against.