CYO Football Championship Weekend

[FastpacedO]

17 hours ago, foxbat said:

I don't think that's as big a problem as some might expect.  In the 18 seasons that I coached youth ball at LCC, we had six different varsity head coaches and an interim head coach.  We always talked with the varsity coaches to ask what they wanted us doing at the youth level to help them have a better varsity.  Almost everyone of them said, teach them how to tackle and block properly and safely, teach them about working together, make things fun and meaningful for them and we'll handle the formation stuff when they get to high school.  None of them told us to run the varsity formations and comments that I heard from a couple that made me laugh were "Heck, I don't even know if I'll be running the same formations by the time these kids gets to high school" and another jokingly alluded to the fact that there wasn't a guaranteed that he might still be employed as the head coach by the time the 3rd/4th graders got to high school.

A former coaching colleague of mine and I were talking before the LCC-LaVille game and reminiscing about how our main goal, as youth coaches, was to take some kid whose parents brought them out in 3rd grade to eventually move from the 3rd/4th grade practice field, to the 5th/6th grade practice field, to the junior high practice field, to the varsity practice field and eventually the varsity game field on Friday nights ... and most importantly, to make sure that we moved the moms with them.  If Mom's not happy, ain't nobody happy and it doesn't matter what formation you are running.

I sat in with a Jr League's meeting with the Head Coach of the Varsity High School team. All the Dad's (coaches) were up at arms and wanting to change the rules of what they ran, they wanted to run shotgun. The Head Coach of said program relayed exactly what you stated "teach them how to tackle and block properly and safely, teach them about working together, make things fun and meaningful for them". He said he didn't care if it was from I formation, shot-gun, wing t, single wing etc. Then he looked upon them as they were smiling and whispering back and forth and told them "I also don't want to see ranting and raving and kicking your hat around when your shot gun snaps shoot over your QB's head putting you in 2nd or 3rd and long" and laughed.