How to ensure a successful youth football season

As a high school coach that pulls double duty with our youth program, I have two main goals every season, one long term and one short term. The common denominator for both is “fun.”  The long term goal is to have each and every player see their football career through and play high school football.  The short term goal is to fall in love with football. 

Winning is important in our program, but at the varsity level.  Prioritize winning tomorrow instead of today.  The lessons and drills you teach your youth teams can help these youth football players win tomorrow both on and off the field.  We have goals to have all our youth kids eventually win a high school state championship, but even more importantly, we want to develop our keepers of the game for future generations and role models for the community as they grow up.

Here is a five-part guide to ensuring a great season:

• Create excitement. Nothing is better than having fun. Remember it is a game being played by children. Have fun and don’t stifle their excitement. Let them celebrate their success.  In our parent meetings at the beginning of the youth football season I tell them my biggest goal for the upcoming season is to have all the kids watch the Super Bowl.  What I mean by that is to have every kid fall in love with the game and help build the same passion we coaches have. Energy builds on energy. Let them find a great chant that they love and can do together. Little things can go a long way. Be a positive coach each and every day to build a culture all kids feel they need to be part of.
• Show up every day with a purpose. A majority of youth coaches get involved in coaching because they have a kid playing. We all love our own kids, but don’t make them your purpose for being there.  Once you accept the responsibility that coaching brings, you can bring much more to your players.  Start with getting Heads Up Football certified through USA Football. The game has evolved since the playing days of most of the youth coaches.  Being certified will help bridge the gap and give you great training.  All high school and college coaches go to clinics in the offseason, so the least we can all do for our players and their families is to keep up on training and make ourselves better coaches.  On top of the great training, you will receive all kinds of coaching tools. One is a practice planner with a great drill library. We actually send out our weekly practice plan with video drills of each position, so our coaches can be prepared to teach these drills each time we take the field.
• Balance playing time. Remember winning today is not as important as winning tomorrow. It is easy to see who the best couple of kids are in youth football. It does not hurt them to learn to sit out a bit. One day they will need to be able to do so.  The teams I coach at the youth level usually have about 18 kids and not one of them ever sits out for more than two plays at a time, without exception. We mass substitute every two plays no matter what. This keeps kids engaged and more focused.  Little Johnny won’t be daydreaming down at the end of the bench gazing off into the sea of parents because he needs to go in again in a couple of plays. There are different ways to rotate players. Have a plan to keep all kids involved and stick to it. You might be able to tell or predict how good a 10-year-old will be at 17, but for many you will not. We want to instill confidence, and although not being good enough to play will inspire a few to work harder, the truth is most kids will just stop playing. And I don’t feel it is the job of a youth coach to “weed out” any players.
• Teach football. Make sure you are prepared to teach skills and football knowledge that will make your players better. Football players need conditioning, but by setting up drills and having practice planned out you can get your players conditioned with football-related activities. Too many times I have seen coaches send players on a big lap, and while the players run, the coaches try to come up with what to do next. Youth football is not boot camp for the Army Rangers. It is a time to leave a football mark on these kids. If one of your players comes to practice on a Monday and says “I was watching Notre Dame and they ran our iso play,” you are doing something right. You will also take great pride hearing the high school coach tell you that your linemen sure have great stances. 
• Inspire. Do your best to help every kid on your team reach their potential. Challenge them. Our high school is a triple option team. That is not always the easiest thing to do in fourth and fifth grade. But we still do run some double option that will look like triple. When these young guys go to a game on Friday night they see that they are doing some of the same things as the high school kids who they look up to. You can see the pride on their faces that they can do these great plays. Now it is not an easy decision to make, because it is a high risk play at a young age.  It is much safer to hand off to your best kid and let him run wild. But if you are willing to let kids fail a bit, and learn to keep getting better at things most kids their age aren’t even allowed to try, you will get your reward in the way your players will carry themselves after mastering the skill.

Your success as a youth coach is so much more than the record you have. It is about having the same or more kids out for football the next year, preparing them to be great, passionate high school players, and most importantly helping them become great young men. So many times we can see a great player speak of his start in football, and many times, the first coach they had back in youth football was a strong role model that guided them down the right path.  Strive to do that and you will have a successful season.

               

Terry Donovan is a Master Trainer for USA Football’s Heads Up Football program. He is the offensive line coach for Kasson-Mantorville High School in Kasson MN. He is also a Youth coach and Director of Youth Development in the Kasson-Mantorville Youth Football Association.