coach cory

I would hope it is a progression at each level. I am involved with each age group of our youth program and work with the high school kids as well. at the 3/4 level (our youngest level) we teach fundamentals and more fundamentals, its not about winning and running plays as much as it about player development. At the 5/6 level we still work on those fundamentals but also work on running plays, and how fundamentals help with our positions. the same at the 7/8 level but we do start working on what they will run at high school. although, my goal is to make better football players not good players for a certain style of system they run at high school. Fundamentals never go away and you always work on those techniques at every level hopefully you build on them year after year. As a former Arena and now semi-pro player I still work those same fundamentals and techniques that got me this far.

I've been coaching youth football for a while now, the best advice I can give is to build around what you have. Every year we get a new batch of players and skill sets. I have played against a triple option, wing T, double Wing, Veer, and so on. The ones that have failed have failed because they forced an offensive plan that didn't match what they had. They worried too much about running what the high school ran vs just developing good football players. We run a little of everything, we find what they can do and run with it. We are very successful because we keep it simple and find their strengths and build on them. We run an option, a little bit of the spread (for the high school) and run I, offset I, split backs, and single back sets. We run a wishbone set out of a motion with offset I and run most of options out of that package. We throw the ball in all of our sets as well. We plan according to what the players can do, we throw out what we can't and dont waste time forcing them to run what they can't understand. We build on what they do and move on from that.