Getting back at this...

Its been 9 months since I posted here.  I am going to try to get this blog going again.

Football has long ended, and Lacrosse winter and spring seasons have taken over for me.  We practiced indoors for the winter.  I had a group of about twenty-five 4-7 year olds, almost all of them were new to the sport.  So we went over all the basic skills, inside and out for about 10 weeks.  Once the nicer weather came, and the spring season started, we broke the  group, plus some additional kids into two teams.  We have a pre-K/K team and a first grade team.  I coach the 1st grade team.  A group of 18 kids.  Of these 18, 8 had played organized lacrosse in the past, most of them with me.  With 10 kids that were either completely new or started in our winter program,  I started fresh.  Lots of scooping, passing, and shooting.  We have worked on cradling with both hands, as well.  I must say coming up to our 5th game of the season, there has been marked improvement.  We practice twice a week, and try to work in a lot of skill drills, as well as team concepts.  In the coming days and weeks, I will get into specific practice skill drills, and team work drills that we have been using to teach these kids the game of Lacrosse

Installing the Offense

   With two practices left in our first week with helmets, I thought it would be a good time to install our offense.  This group of kids is very attentive, and seems to be able to grasp a lot of what I am throwing at them. Because of this, I decided to give them a variety of different things on Offense.  Our league runs 10 plays offense, 10 plays defense per half.  After hours of drawing up plays, I decided to script out the 10 plays would use for the first part of the season.  I decided on 5 different formations, and we will run 2 plays per formation. We will be running an I, Power I Right and Left, Wishbone, and the T.  To keep it simple, I gave them 3 hols to run through, "Dive" being between the C and G, "Blast" between the G and T, and "Sweep" around the outside.  The play calls are Formation, Runner (RB, WB, FB), and Hole.  Luckily we have two coaches on the field during the games, so we can be sure they all know where to go.

   I want to get each kid a chance at everything throughout the season.  At this point, I cam up with 6 different back field configurations, each having 4 kids (QB, FB, RB, WB).  With 12 kids, this gave each kid two chances in the backfield.  Using this configuration for at least the first 3 games.  Each configuration will run twice in that time frame, then I will change it up so they can play other positions.

Helmets On

The kids got their equipment last week.  We are doing on week (3 days) of practice with just helmets before moving onto full equipment.  We ran the same drills that we have been doing all along. I just want them to get used to wearing the helmet.  As previously stated, 9 out of the 12 kids are new to football and its equipment.  Some of the kids played lacrosse with us, but a football helmet is a whole other animal.  After about an hour of practice, I had a few kids starting to get upset about the feel of the helmets.  After a water break, I decided to let them finish up the last half of practice without helmets.  I guess an hour on the first night is pretty good.  Hopefully we can make it through the next 2 practices with helmets the whole time, so we can move onto full pads next week.

Getting Our Feet Wet

   With our evaluation "camp" over, and teams selected, the past week we have been able to practice as a team.  We have 12 kids on the team, all but 2 playing football for the first time.  We started slowly, going over proper technique for blocking and tackling.  The drills were very basic, just straight forward block or tackle out of a 3 point stance.  Once they had that down, we added an extra element to each.  For tackling, we had the players 'shed' a blocker, and then move into the tackle.  For blocking, and had them first fire out of their stance, low, under a shield, for three strides.
   We started working on offensive plays.  I have them running out of an I-Formation, doing dives, blasts, and sweeps.  The first time we ran these drills, I had players line up at each offensive position.  I felt like the kids lined up as O-Linemen were standing around too much though.  I didn't want them getting too restless, so we did this in smaller groups.  I used cones to show where the linemen would be, just so the backs could learn the running lanes for each play.  This went much smoother.
    Next up, we are going to concentrate on the Center/QB exchange, as well as the handoffs.  We will still do our blocking, tackling and running drills, but they will be a little shorter in duration. 
   We have about another week with no pads, then hopefully we can get their helmets on them, so they can get the feel.  A couple of days like that, then we will go full equipment.  I hope to get about 2 1/2 weeks of full equipment in before our first game.

Time to get moving

   Well, the start of the football season is now only 3 days away.  Starting next week, our organization will run a one week (3 day) evaluation for all players, after which we will draft our teams and get the season going.  Here's how things run.  For the evaluation we set up 4 stations for the kids to run through each night.  All the coaches work together to run the drills, and we can take notes on kids and try to determine who we would like to draft.  This is an instructional league, so we do our best to break up the teams evenly by age group, athletic ability, and size.  The drills we run help determine speed, agility, and level of ability to block and tackle.  This not only allows us to know the athletic level of these kids, which can be quite a range at this age, but it also lets us know how much we need to teach each child.  While we start at the beginning for techniques at this age level, its good to know which kids have some knowledge going in.  Its good to have some experienced (even just a little bit) kids to help demonstrate drills and techniques to the new kids. 
   At the end of the week, we will draft our teams.  We will probably have about 4-6 teams of about 12 players.  We play 7 on 7.  All new players are allowed to request their coach, this was if a child or group of children are more comfortable together, or with a particular coach, they can have a more pleasurable first season of football.  I have about 4 kids from our lacrosse team that are all first year players so we will be able to keep them together this season.  I think this is a good way to get new kids recruited into the organization.  It allows parents to be comfortable going into a possibly new sport.  Once we determine which kids have requested coaches, we do a round robin draft to fill out the remaining spots.  Again, we do our best to accommodate any other requests, while keeping the teams as evenly matched as possible. 
   Once we are all drafted we will start up our team practices.  All the teams practice at the same field, at the same time.  We run our practices separately, but it allows us to do mini scrimmages and collaborate with the other coaches and make it a real community feel.  I think this system of evaluation, drafting, and practicing works well.  It keeps the majority the people happy, and makes a coaches life easier.

Transition

Well, we are now officially between seasons.  Lacrosse has ended and football is 6 weeks away.  I need to start getting ready and planning.  This will be my first season as Head Coach for football.  I need to figure out how I want things to run.  Since this is a 5/6 league, I will stick to the same philosophy I had with lacrosse, make it fun so they want to learn the game.  Early in the pre-season, I will concentrate on teaching proper form for blocking an tackling, while getting them used to the physical demands of the game.  We will do a lot of running and calisthenics.  For tackling and blocking everything will be done at a slow pace, with dummies.  No real contact for the 1st few weeks.  I have completed my certification with USA Football, and have been browsing their site.  They have a lot of great tools, including practice drills, and game plans.  I plan on taking the time to go through it more thoroughly, and using it to make my life much easier.  I am excited about the football season, and all it will teach me and the kids.  Stay tuned!

End of Season

   So the Spring Lax season has come to an end.  It was a great season, and I feel the team advanced by leaps and bounds.  We started much later then a lot of the other teams we played against, but held our own throughout the season.  The one great thing about the close of the season is giving out trophies to the players.  When they are this young, they get so excited about it.  For many, it is the first time they are receiving any sort of award, and the smiles on their faces is priceless.  It makes all the hours that are put in organizing and teaching worth it.
   Now for some much deserved time off for both coaches and players.  But only 7 weeks until football starts.  Who am I kidding, I better get to work.