Youth Coaching Questions

[cqmiller]

Hey guys...

We are in a HS program that has been in really bad shape for a decade and are trying to turn it around. Both our HC and myself believe that we need to tie in with the little league program to improve both skill level and knowledge of the players that we get from the little league. What are the best ways to bridge that gap?

In March, we are putting on a coaching clinic at our school and are dedicating an entire room to focus on little league topics to hopefully start getting those coaches in the building and interacting with us more. What types of topics would be the most beneficial for a large number of youth football coaches?

I've been at the HS level for so long, I know what HS guys usually gravitate to, but don't see many little league coaches at clinics.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing your responses.

[bobgoodman]

It's like teaching any subject. It depends on the teacher's knowledge of the subject, & the teacher's ability to convey what he knows to the students.

You can work on both in a clinic. You can teach the coaches-to-be more about the game (mostly basic player skills), & you can also role-play it so they act like children, so they can see what teaching techniques (drills, mostly, but also tips on how to conduct practice) best get their att'n, motivate them, & make it easiest for them to learn by.

[jrk5150]

Start with asking them what they want to see. And feed them. :-)

Unfortunately, the challenge is to figure out what they need vs. what they want. Many youth coaches want face melter scheme stuff. But honestly that's a waste of time.

The most valuable lessons you could impart to youth coaches would be around technique and practice methods. Meaning, what to teach, how to teach it, and how to practice it. How do you construct a fundamentals heavy practice and still be able to teach a competitive offensive and defensive scheme when you only have 5-6 hours a week to do it. How do you meld scheme and technique so you can be efficient and thorough in those 5-6 hours.

Of course, these are things you DO NOT have to do, so you're going to have to spend some serious time thinking about it. What techniques and drills give you the best bang for the buck, and area simple enough that your freshman can easily run them first week or practice?

On the flip side, what NOT to do would be to completely de-emphasize winning. I'm not saying over-emphasize it either, but the easiest way to get me to get up and walk out of a clinic is for the idiot in the front of the room to say something like "winning doesn't matter, youth football should only be about fundamentals, your job is to get those kids ready for HS football". I am simply unwilling to learn from someone who thinks like that.

That said - how to win through strong fundamentals...yes, yes, yes.

[newt21]

Don't talk down to them is my biggest suggestion. After that, show them some of the main concepts you want taught (blocking/tackling) and show them a progression to teach it that will allow the kids to have success early. Let them know if they want more specific stuff, that you're door is always open and that you will be happy to meet with them to discuss things further.

I would also consider doing what jrk5150 suggested and ask them what they want to know, but I would do that more as a positional breakout session if that's an option. Have your OL guy talk with other OL guys, etc. You can even do an offensive breakout and then a defensive breakout later.

[cqmiller]

Thanks for the responses... keep them coming


One of the worries is that we don't want to tell them what offense or defense to run, but I'm sure some of them will be looking for plays like jrk5150 said. We have been throwing around ideas and what we have come up with for "topics" so far are:

1) Practice Organization for Youth Football Development
2) Using Concept Based Runs in Youth Football
3) Using Concept Based Passes in Youth Football
4) Trying to figure out what to call the defensive ones
5) Trying to figure out what to call the defensive ones

The guy speaking on Practice Organization was my little league coach when I was growing up and was the president of the little league for about 5 years. He wants to present the "whole-part-whole" idea and show how to incorporate scheme, individual, group, and then team segments and how to plan them into practices. He says that that is the #1 thing he has seen in his experience that little league guys struggle with. Getting individual drills to fit into the plays they are running.

Our HC who is our OL coach as well, wants to discuss the basic concepts of Zone, Power, Iso, Toss/Stretch. Around here at least, there seems to be a lot of "cat" blocking... the kids are told to block #56 and if #56 lines up differently at any point in the game, they lose their minds. Introducing the plays they are probably already running, but as concepts so that it is easier for them to run them vs. any front rather than just the 1 they specifically practiced that week.

I was going to run the pass concepts one. One of our little league guys sat down with me before this past season and we discussed slant/arrow and stick concepts. The 2 games I made it to they ran both of them and they worked well. Similar to the run-game session, but rather than "throw to johnny", use the concept to throw to the open receiver rather than a particular player.

We are really trying to find out what we should do on the defensive side. I know my defensive philosophy is align, assign, and TACKLE. Missed alignments, missed assignments, and missed tackles are what lose games in my opinion, but I don't want it to turn into a "here's this cool corner blitz we run" or just "tackling technique" session.

[rsmith627]

Didn't read the other responses so sorry if this is repetitive.

We have a preseason meeting to go over scheme things. Here we run the same stuff all the way through our program.

This year we are adding clinics to go over fundies and how we drill them.

We also have a youth camp every year (did this at Murray as well) where we have all youth teams and we do the initial install. They and their coaches get to hear our terminology, see us drill it, and hear coaching points.

[jrk5150]

Youth practices have SO MUCH wasted time. Of course, I've seen HS practices with that as well, so it's not automatic that a given HS staff could really instruct a youth staff around practice.

Another thing that you frequently see in youth ball is coaches doing drills that they learned in HS that have nothing to do with what they actually do in their O or D. Used to drive me nuts - my old HC had the OL, and he'd spend all their indy/group time on head up drive blocking. Which we didn't use in our offense AT ALL. We were a gap/down blocking team exclusively. But those drills are what he grew up on, so that's what he did. Colossal waste of time in a lot of ways.

Personally, I wouldn't touch scheme/plays without understanding how to translate your HS stuff into youth appropriate stuff. Youth is not dumbed-down HS, there are some unique things that you deal with at youth that you don't in HS.

[spos21ram]

I've been coaching in the town I grew up pretty much my whole coaching career. Played peewee and HS here also so I know the workings of our peewee system. I have coached at the HS for 2 HC's. Our new HC of 2 years is not originally from the area and one of his goals is for the HS and Peewee program to be one big "family". Not in the sense that they have to run our offense or defense, but just working together to better both parties.

Our old HC was a part of the HS program for 40 years and the peewee group was never interested in what the high school did and was never really interested in learning our drills or teaching methods. As a HS program we are a respected program so i dont think success or lack their of success at the HS level isna factor in them wanting to do their own thing. Maybe if we were 12-0 state champions and ran the face melter they would be more interested I don't know. Our old HC occasionally tried to talk to them, but didn't want to push the issue. There isn't really any animosity toward each other, the HS and Youth coaches have always been friendly with one another, some are good friends. The leadership of the youth program simply likes doing their own thing.

My Advice when trying to bridge the relationship between the two groups is to tread lightly and do it at a slow pace. Don't expect every youth coach to be on board the first year. Expect some resentment.

Our new HC would love for the peewee teams to run all our stuff, but he knows how difficult that can be. Since he came here, we do a season kick-off cookout at the peewee field every August where all the HS & Peewee players/coaches/parents/cheerleaders have a big tailgate cookout in the parking lot of the peewee complex.

We also offer a youth football summer camp in which we had great turnouts the 2 years we have been doing them. We also invited all the youth coaches to a coaches clinic at the high school where the HS coaches would go over everything we do at this level. Anything they are interested in as a topic we will cover for them.......And this is where I get to your thread cqmiller .

The 2 years we have offered this coaches clinic, only 3 out of approx. 15 coaches showed up each year. Unfortunately the majority just don't want to be bothered and like the way they do things. Our goal is to teach them the drills we run and how we teach fundamentals, that's it. We are not pushing our O or D on them at all and we still don't get a lot of interest.

So we haven't had a ton of success the 2 times we have tried these clinics so I would suggest sending out an email asking the youth coaches what topics they are interested in. If they don't reply call them or meet them and ask in person. Get a feel for what they are looking for. No matter what, always teach them how you tackle and block. How you drill it etc.