Age differences When Coaching Youth Football

    Age differences When Coaching Youth Football 

Considerations coaching for various age groups in youth football

In previous posts, I gave many tips for working with the elderly younger youth football players. As mentioned in the book and in these messages, children 6-8 years are very visual and we have shown you many tips on how to use it to your advantage.

How other age youth football groups vary from each other?

These are generalizations that I found held true with my own team, and from what I've seen it done clinics and comments from other coaches:

strata of the age group ranging from league to league, here are a few that I've worked with:

Age 8-10: While our opponents rarely allow young eight-year playing tackle football, we do. Approximately 80% of our 8 year olds playing tackle, playing flag football for the smaller and less mature 8. We found with the priorities of the right practice as those detailed in the book and limiting most competitive exercises for small groups and lasting no more than 10 minutes or 8 years can be trained to be competent in football players youth. This is of course using the methodology of the practice books and do not make the game 40-60 playbook thing that many youth football teams poorly supervised use.

This age group is the most fun to coach in my mind. They are eager to please, have some bad habits, they want to learn the game, they are enthusiastic and most of them still respect authority. This group meets in real praise and rewards. They will test you like any group, but less than other age groups.

11-12 years: This group can often make much of the playbook, even more than the 13-14s because they listen well enough yet. Most played at least one year and some up to 3-4 years. This means that you may have to break some bad habits or standards of accountability that their former coach has not treated properly. They can test you and some of the best athletes can try and perform tasks "their" way instead of yours. It is very important to require full compliance with the technical standards that you set, otherwise there will be chaos with this group. Reward, praise and punishment are needed to make this group to realize their potential. Now you can start the waggle pass and use more movement.

13-14: The most difficult group, rewarding and frustrating coach. This age group has historically had the highest dropout rates in youth football. The players of this age begin to turn to other interests like girls, work, other sports, video games and school to name a few. Some children at this age with little parental support will also through the steps of apathy where they do not do much. Since many of these players go through puberty their body changes, the large dominant child is growing and now low and behold, it is one of the smaller children. The little boy who held his own in the younger age groups will not grow or will a little later in puberty and is suddenly overshadowed by the much larger and more aggressive players. Some players in this age group grow 5 inches and put on 30 pounds of muscle from one season to another. They return with deeper voices, facial hair and muscle tone, barely recognizable from the previous year. These large differences in maturity levels often lead children in slower development of the game. Many weak players at the moment understand that football is not going to be something they will excel and stop playing. Passing accuracy is still uneven, we had players of this age who can throw the ball 35-40 meters.

For us, this group requires the utmost care, coaches often coach and social worker for many children of this age. The only year I coached this age group to another friend, it was very rewarding. It was a "B" team where I shot the entire coaching staff one week before their first match. This personal coaching youth football had violated our "No" rule B "stacking" and "No Wednesday Football Practice" rule. They also failed to follow even remotely our football practice model and methodology into their first match played grassroots football and defense were not even close to being acceptable.

My friend and I were both head coaching other teams, so 2 days a week is all we had to do group work. In addition, we moved four players "A" to clear off this level "B" team and moved them to their place on the "A" team. We had a multitude of questions, tiny players, weak players, but players unconfident children who wanted to be there. At the youth level is something that you do not always see, some players are there because dad wants them a football player.

We started with 24 children, we moved the four children "A" up, a player broke his arm skateboarding, had been off the team by the parent for the students and had to leave because if he visited his father in a state prison on the same day that we played our games. We had 16-17 children in a league "B" on top of that the league has decided to delete the league "B" this year at the last minute and just create another division where they put what they thought be lower "A" teams in. We were the only organization that had a real team "B" in it, other org had one team, so we ended up playing the best team organizations with the lowest 17 children we had. We could not afford to lose a single player this season, pulling only 16-17 children.

How do we? Much praise, many discussions with chalk, many players learning multiple positions, each player with an accountability partner as we speak in the book in Chapter 4. For this age group, we explained both the how and why of what we were trying to teach. Even with the small number of players, we do not hold responsible actors to practice standards and technical attendance. Sometimes we do not start the best player. Over time we have our points across and the children knew that we would not move from the norm. After struggling as soon as we expected, we won to take second place in a division, we were totally outclassed in.

This age group can do everything, but they often will not be able to perform as well as some 11-12 year old teams. Even if they are physically superior than younger children, this group must often be broken many bad habits previous youth coaches allowed to continue. While many of these players have a great football intelligence and athleticism, many will have their own ideas, they will always try to use rather than technical correct. I love to talk and reason with children in this age group, but if you do not have a strong personality and sense weakness children, they will roll right over you.

This age group can tell if you know your stuff or not, if you do not know, you do not have to respect them. If they do not respect you, they do not play hard for you or follow you. They respect knowledge and skills that will help them win games, that's what they care about. They must know that you know your stuff, be confident and legitimately care about them. This is not the place for the first coach of the year, it would be a nightmare.

I head coached 14 different football teams ages 6 to 8 years to 13-14 years. Every year I come to the team that did not have a qualified coach "dad" available. Over the past six years, more often than not, it just ended up being a team of age 8-10 years. Today, this age group is my preference, I just stay in the 8-10 age level and get a new team every year, more or less. As I mentioned earlier, children of this age are often eager to please and a blank slate. I prefer to be the first to write on slates and mold these impressionable young football players. This allows our organization by sending well-trained players to older teams where coaches will now not have to break the bad habits players. Since my teams have very high retention rate is eventually "save" a few players who have resigned due to less aggressive management. Finally I just enjoy coaching children of this age with a lot of freshmen and sophomores coming into their own, it's fun and rewarding.

"Winner Youth Football system" worked all ages in the youth football level, both here in Nebraska and across the country. Chapter 7 of book, it is clear that series play and defensive systems must be used according to each age group and level of experience.

Although there are three schools using my system and I do not recommend my system schools. I've never trained for this level and are reluctant to recommend anything to anyone that I did not completely "stress test" and similar multiple situations similar to theirs. I coached 7th-8th and light grade 9 students and our Eagle teams in this age group have used this system the last six seasons, so yes I can recommend for a great junior teams.

For those who have emailed me to ask me why I coached older or even High school football players, as stated above, I have very good reasons for coaching young children. I have no interest in coaching outside of my own youth program. I have not been offered (turned down) a head coach paid to a local junior high with over 900 students. I've had inquiries about using at the high school and. The time required to do these jobs well is huge and something I would not be able to engage. My professional responsibilities allow fairly easily, but the family time, I would have to sacrifice is not the right value proposition for me right now. The good thing about running my own youth football program is I make the rules and have no interference from anyone, which is not possible with a school team. I have no aspirations for anything but football coaching youth, my impact is much broader and deeper into this arena it could be anywhere else.

For Youth Football coaching tips please stop by http://winningyouthfootball.com

For newsletter Football Free Coaching Youth Dave, stop there: football plays

Copyright 2007 Cisar Management

Republication allowed if links are kept intact

Dave Cisar-With over 15 years of practical experience as a youth coach, Dave has developed a detailed systematic approach to developing youth players and teams that has enabled his personal teams to win 97% of their games in five different leagues.

Dave is a trainer of youth football coaches nationwide. He has a passion for developing youth coaches so they can in turn train teams that are competitive and well organized, while having fun and retaining players. His book? Winning Youth Football a step by step plan to? was endorsed by Tom Osborne and Dave Rimington. His DVDs and books have been used by teams in the country to run based on integrity programs that win championships. His website is Coaching Football