[ColumbusColt]

I'm sure there will be various replies about this: Anything from "the earlier the better" to "early bird gets the worm" approach.

We started conditioning practice at our middle school July 12th. We condition(no pads) for two weeks and then follow the IHSAA path and begin padding up August 2nd and start contact August 4th. I know the middle schools are not under the complete jurisdiction of the IHSAA. Our cross-town rivals started going full pads/full contact on July 26th. I was working in that school today and witnessed it myself(live along the line of scrimmage)....when is the correct time to start for middle schoolers??? There're rules in place for high schools for this kind of stuff?

This post has been edited by ColumbusColt: 30 July 2010 - 07:14 AM

[sparkplug dad]

In the recent past here in Speedway, we have not started anything until school starts. Prior to that they would start the week before school, but so many kids would show up for practice the first day of school and miss out the first week, they just moved it back to the first day of school. This year, we started conditioning on Tuesdays and Thursday from 5-7pm on July 20th and then started pro pads this week. All voluntary and we have about half of our 8th graders out! This has worked well this year. Starting regular practice with full contact(mandatory, I would guess)on July 26 is going overboard to me...good luck this season!!