I broke my ankle during training camp at my JUCO, so I had to come home for surgery. While I’m home and recovering, I have been helping out with the JV junior football team. The ages are from 6th grade to some small 8th graders. I know it isn’t as serious as high school ball or college ball, but I used to play youth football and I think there is a different expectation now then there was even 6 years ago.
First of all, wins and losses aren’t the most important thing, having fun and improving are. But it really isn’t fun to be on a losing squad. I think the hardest part of Youth football is the expectation of being a superstar right away. When in reality no one is going to really stand out from others.
If you think about it, only about 5-8 players on your teams of 20-25 will end up playing Varsity football. And even less will start. So focus on helping the team get better at fundamentals and basics of the game. And this may be controversial, but you need to focus on the better players, especially if you feed into the high school.
For example on our team we probably have 5 really solid players. I think we need to work on coaching them up really well and make the others work to catch up. Obviously they will still be coached, just not as heavily. At the High School I played at, we focused on trying to make the JV and bad Varsity players catch up to the rest of us like me and a few other guys. My head coach said to me that I’m good where I’m at so I should just help out the other guys instead of getting my own reps.
Now there is a time and place for older or more experienced guys coaching up the less experienced. But I firmly believe that in Junior football it is still the players responsibility to get better. By the time kids are in middle school, we should be providing the coaching to help them get better, but they have to choose to work. And I see a lot of laziness out of the team.
I am a big advocate for conditioning. I think it makes games easy, and teaches the team to bond together. I don’t think we should run them into the ground necessarily. But conditioning is important. Especially since half the team probably hasn’t moved since their last sport ended. So make them run.
Now I understand that you don’t want the kids to quit. But I have seen a lot of football, and it is better to have 15 good players than have 22 players on a team with 7 of them being bad. Football shouldn’t be technical at this age but you need to want to get better. And I don’t see that drive all the time.
Honestly, I think we should go harder on the kids. They can take more than we think. And make sure you mix some fun in there.
P.S. Geno Smith is the best QB in the league right now.