JWA

Is this software worthwhile?

Find someone you can be an assistant to. Take mental notes and think to yourself if you would do things their way or change them a little. This will help you to "find" your football coaching style. Your job as a coach is to be a teacher. I took the job as an assistant football coach for the first time this year. I've coached baseball, basketball and soccer in the past. I never played a lick of football and think now I can get the job done next year. Just some of what I learned this year under my HC: Every group of kids is different and you have to find what motivates them. What works for one group won't always work for another group. One group of kids will have certain skills that you will need to exploit and the next group may have a totally different set of skills for you to use. To be the most succesfull, you have to be able to coach, plan and motivate for any and all cases that you might encouter. For me, it's about the kids and NOT myself.

Thanks for the tips guys! I guess after you laid out the 4-4 like that and went through it all, we pretty much do the things you listed. Our head coach is pretty well versed in running and defending a 4-4. We're by far the best defense in the league. One question from a first year coach who never played organized football. Why do you have the linebackers named the following?: B---------W--M-$

Does anyone have any good trick plays that will work for the 5th and 6th grade level? We have a few, just looking for more to add in. Also, teams are "supposed" to run a 4-4 defense. I don't know what they call what they are running sometimes. HAHA How can we counteract teams that are saying they run a 4-4 but stack 3 linebackers on one side to blitz? Thanks in advance.

Thanks guys. I guess that's what I really meant to say when I said "plays". I'll put your ideas to good use in a few weeks.

Nobody???

After filling in when the HC wasn't around half the time last year, I'll be head coaching a 4th and 5th grade elementary school team this year. And YES, I'll be there every minute. I've got a fair amount of coaching experience with my son's various teams as he's gotten older. This is probably my biggest coaching undertaking so far. It's very important to myself for me to do a good job for the kids. At what point do you start working heavily on an offensive game plan? How much can you really expect to accomplish on offense teaching at this age level? I don't want to go overboard but I hate to sell them short on anything either due to my own shortsightedness. My thought is to evaluate the team's overall skills and ablilities. (To me the skill level we start at will determine how much playcalling I can do.) Then, see how quickly I can start working on offensive plays. Last year we had talent and it seem to come natural for the starting five. We had a good point guard and very good athletes. They were able to score without much direction at all. Any and all ideas are appreciated.

Sounds good to me.

You can laminate the cards so they don't get soggy with sweat or rain. The ink will run with moisture. I just use 2" clear shipping tape to cover and seal them from moisture. Works ok and is cheap.

Thanks again guys for all the tips and ideas you guys share. The SAB blocking is working well after just one night of teaching it. We used it in a scrimmage with good success. We got a 40 yard TD off of a QB sweep.

I would like to hear some ideas on opening drive ideas for 5th and 6th grade levels. We can run the wing t, split and single back formations with good success. Our passing game is just ok but developing. What should we be "testing" as far as the defense on our opening drive? Thanks, Jim

Mike, those are some awesome ideas for getting the most out of the O line!! I've been stressing to the team all year how important the O line is to our success. We'll be putting those into use today in hopes to get to the next level. Thanks, Jim

While I'm no expert by far but since nobody has replied, I'll try to help. You want to find the best hitters and tacklers, the fastest runners and best ball handlers to be on the special teams units. The fast and good ball handlers need to be in position to catch the ball. Teach the guys up front to knock the snot out of the man in front of them. You'll need to find a kicker and a back up or two. Some who can placekick can't punt and vice versa. Practice punt fomations and punt snaps. It's different from the norm and a bad snap can kill you. Be sure to teach the kickoff team to stay in their lanes. By this I mean run straight down the field and not get sucked in by a kick going to one side, a bobbled catch or a runner who jukes and jives. Too many times the runner will run over to an empty side of the field and score. It's a total emotion killer for the kickoff team. I'm sure others can help with more specific. I have a few plays I could email you if you have powerpoint.

Thanks guys! I think you put into words what I've been thinking all along. I'm just a first time assistant coach for football. I've coached other kid's sports. The head coach who is also my buddy and co-worker, is a several time champion and defending champ in our league. This year he was given a lesser talented team than most of the others. We've got talent but like you said, I think he's just TOO darn serious and worried about HIS record. I could care less about that. I'm going to make a huge point of telling the kids to have fun and don't worry about winning or losing from here on out. The coach missed a week's worth of practice and the kids responded differently to us assistant coaches. They seemed loose and we allowed them some room to cut loose a little. We won big that weekend. Our ONLY win by the way! Thanks guys. I really appreciate the thoughts and ideas. JWA

We have several players (5th and 6th grade level) who seem to be able to perform very well when "playing around" but have trouble performing the same things under the pressure of the game or intense practices and scrimmages. For instance our QB can wing the ball and moves freely in the pocket but is inconsistant and stiff under game pressure sometimes. Seems the more we try to keep him in line the worse it gets. We have pretty much the same story with our fullback. At the first part of the year he was really smashing the line and picking up 3-4 yards per carry every time. Now he's tentative and acting much like the QB and a hand full of others are. All are acting very similar. I don' think they are have any fun and the pressure is getting to them. How can we get the performance we are looking for and that we know they can do, without over pressuring them? How can we make it more fun??