Age differences in youth football coaching

Coaching Considerations for Various Age Groups in Youth Football

In previous posts, I have given numerous tips for working with younger aged youth football players. As mentioned in the book and in these posts, the 6-8 year old kids are very visual and we showed you many tricks on how use that to your advantage.

How do the other youth football age groups vary from each other?

These are generalizations that I have found have held true with my own teams as well as from what I have seen doing clinics and from feedback from other coaches:

Age group strata vary from league to league, these are some I have worked with:

Age 8-10: While our opponents rarely allow the eight year olds to play tackle football, we do. About 80% of our 8 year olds play tackle, the smallest and least mature 8's play flag football. We have found with the right practice priorities like those detailed in the book and limiting most drills to tiny competitive groups and lasting no more than 10 minutes, even 8 year olds can be trained to be competent youth football players. That's of course using the books practice methodology and not doing the 40-60 play playbook thing that many poorly coached youth football teams utilize.

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

Age 11-12: This group can often perform as much of the playbook or even more than the 13-14s because they still listen pretty well. Most have played at least 1 year and some as many as 3-4 years. This means you may have to break some poor habits or accountability standards that their previous coach did not address properly. They can test you and some of the top athletes may try and perform tasks "their" way instead of yours. It is very important to require absolute adherence to the technique standards you set, otherwise it will be chaos with this group. Reward, praise and punishment are required to make this group perform to their potential. Now you can throw the waggle pass and use more motion.

Age 13-14: The most difficult, rewarding and frustrating group to coach. This age group historically has had the highest drop out rate in youth football. Players this age start to look to other interests like girls, work, other sports, video games and school to name just a few. Some kids this age with little parental support also go through stages of apathy where they don't do much of anything. As many of these players go through puberty their bodies change, the big dominating kid is done growing and now low and behold, he is one of the smaller kids. The small kid that held his own at the younger age groups doesn't grow a bit or goes into puberty later and is suddenly dwarfed by 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 the next. They come back with deeper voices, facial hair and muscle tone, hardly recognizable from the previous year. These vast differences in maturity levels often drive slower developing kids from the game. Many weaker players by this time figure out that football is not going to be something they will excel at and stop playing. While passing accuracy is still spotty we have had players this age that can throw the ball 35-40 yards.

For us this group requires the most care, coaches are often coach and social worker to many kids this age. The one year I coached this age group with another friend, it was very rewarding. This was a "B" team where I fired the entire coaching staff 1 week before their first game. This youth football coaching staff had violated our "No "B" stacking" rule as well as "No Wednesday Football Practice" rule. They also failed to even remotely follow our football practice methodology template and going into their first game the base football plays 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 make this group work. In addition, we moved 4 obvious "A" level players off this "B" team and moved them up to their rightful place on the "A" team. We had a myriad of issues, tiny players, weak players, unconfident players but kids that wanted to be there. At the younger levels that is something you do not always see, some players are there because dad wants them to be a football player.

We started with 24 kids, we moved the 4 "A" kids up, one player broke his arm skateboarding, one got taken off the team by mom for grades and one had to quit because he visited his dad in an out state prison on the same days as we played our games. We had just 16-17 kids in a "B" league, to top it off the league decided to scrap the "B" league that year at the last minute and just created another division where they put what they thought were weaker "A" teams in. We were the only organization that had a true "B" team in it, the other Orgs had just one team, so we ended up playing that organizations best team with the weakest 17 kids we had. We couldn't afford to lose a single player that season, suiting up just 16-17 kids.

How did we do it? Lots of praise, lots of chalk talks, lots of players learning multiple positions, each player with an accountability partner like we talk about in the book in Chapter 4. To this age group, we explained both the hows and the whys of what were were trying to teach. Even with the small number of players, we did hold players accountable to practice attendance and technique standards. Some times we didn't start the best player. Over time we got our points across and the kids knew we would not budge from the standard. After struggling early as we expected, we won out to take second place in a division we were totally outclassed in.

This age group can do it all, however they often will not be able to perform as well as some 11-12 year old teams. Even though they are physically superior than the younger age kids, this group often has to be broken of many bad habits previous youth coaches allowed to go on. While many of these players have great football intellect and athletic skills, many do have ideas of their own, that they will constantly try to use rather than correct technique. I enjoy talking and reasoning with kids this age group, but if you do not have a strong personality and the kids sense weakness, they will roll right over you.

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

I've head coached 14 different youth football teams from age 6-8 to age 13-14. Each year I just took the team that did not have a qualified "dad" head coach available. Over the last 6 years more often than not, this just ended up being an age 8-10 team. Today that age group is my preference, I just stay at the age 8-10 level and get a new team every year more or less. As I mentioned earlier, the kids this age are often eager to please and a blank slate. I prefer being the first one to write on those slates and mold these impressionable young football players. This helps our organization by sending well trained players to the older teams, where those coaches will now not have to break the players of poor habits. Since my teams have very high retention rates we end up "saving" a few players that may have quit due to less aggressive coaching. Lastly I just enjoy coaching kids this age with lots of first year players and second year players coming into their own, it's fun and rewarding.

The "Winning Youth Football" System has worked at every age level in youth football both here in Nebraska and across the country. Chapter 7 of he book clearly states what play series and defensive schemes should be used based on each specific age group and experience level.

While there are 3 High Schools using my system as well, I do not recommend my System to High Schools. I have never coached at that level and hesitate to recommend anything to anyone that I have not thoroughly "stress tested" in similar and multiple situations similar to theirs. I have coached 7th-8th and lighter 9th graders and our Eagle Teams at this age group have used this system the last 6 seasons, so yes I can recommend it for Junior High teams.

For those that have e-mailed me and asked me why I don't coach the older players or even High School football; As stated above, I have very good reasons for coaching the younger kids. I have no interest in coaching outside my own youth program. I have been offered (turned it down) a local paid head coaching job at a Junior High with over 900 students. I have had inquiries about assisting at the High School level as well. The time required to do those jobs well is huge and something I would not be able to commit to. My work responsibilities would allow for that easily enough, but the family time I would have to sacrifice would not be the right value proposition for me right now. The nice thing about running my own youth football program is I make the rules and have no interference from anyone, that would not be possible with a School team. I have zero aspirations of coaching anything but youth football, my impact is much wider and deeper in this arena than it could be anywhere else.

For more youth football coaching tips please stop by http://winningyouthfootball.com
To get Dave's free Coaching Youth Football newsletter, stop here: Football Plays

Copyright 2007 Cisar Management
Republishing allowed if links are kept intact

Dave Cisar-With over 15 years of hands-on 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 5 Different Leagues.

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

Football of trying to make it in the football world

In most countries, the name of the game sound alike. Words like football, fussball, futbol, futebol... don't just sound the same, they are the same game. In the U.S., however, they call it soccer. Major League Soccer (MLS) as an American professional soccer league has been around for some time now.

Unlike other American major league sports, MLS does not dominate the sport's public attention on global scale, nor its champion is crowned as the 'World Champion'. MLS has been going through constant development. Did it gain significant public and media attention in the world football? No!

Soccer as the 2nd, 7th or 10th most popular sport in the U.S. doesn't make a great difference, the American public will still follow the NFL, MLB, NHL or NBA. The world public would follow those leagues with same attention as they are world's most prominent sports leagues.

In recent years with the globalization of media, the world sports scene has started to change; in that process, English football Premier League, promotes itself as 'The Greatest Show On Earth' and is in fact the world's most popular and most watched sporting league, with a current worldwide viewership of half a billion people and media income for seasons 2007 to 2010 worth over $5 billion. If the world will watch football leagues like English Premiership or Spanish La Liga, who will watch the American major league sports other than domestic spectators? Will a part of the American public turn to watch overseas football leagues as well? Such questions made soccer be an issue in the U.S sports.

Every now and then, the MLS officials would wake up from the drowsiness of being in shadows of Top 4 American major leagues around the time when World Cup takes places and it becomes evident how immense the game of football is in the terms of world public interest, media attention, sponsors.

As the noise around World Cup passes, the MLS would fall back in drowsiness. It was not to be like that after the World Cup 2006 in Germany when the world public had clear picture of European football's modern stadiums, multi-million player contracts... the world sports spotlight got a hold on football.

This time it's not the MLS who is to take the initiative of promoting MLS, it's the whole of American professional sports entertainment industry. It is an economic opportunity where the money revolving around the world football was too great to be missed or discarded.

In the summer of 2007, U.S. soccer attempted to take over the world football by storm by offering David Beckham a $250million contract, the most expensive football player contract in history of the sport, some described it as the deal to bring Beckham to America is thought to be the biggest in sporting history. MLS sent out a message to the world.

In the midst of summer when European leagues were between the seasons and the waters were still, MLS got the wanted exposure with news stories being dominated with the Beckham family moving to LA. Did the stories overtake the world football media and public attention in favor of MLS yet? No!

Is $250 million worth of exposure in the long run? Time will tell. Autumn came, European and international leagues are in full swing, the world sports news publish less articles about Beckham, LA Galaxy and the MLS. To make things worst, LA will hardly make the play-offs, giving the media less to write about.

In the league that has had an overall lost of more than $350 million in the first 8 years after its foundation (a BusinessWeek report from 2004), where at the present time only two teams, LA Galaxy and FC Dallas, are profitable with 3 additional teams expected to be profitable within a year, a $250 million one-player investment seems like a gamble. If so, what are the odds?

In recent years, several notable players chose to make the step away from the bigger leagues of Europe and South America for a financially good contract with teams from the Gulf countries. The headlines reported rich transfer deals, though there was no to little follow-up in media coverage of those leagues.

Not to be forgotten, prior to David Beckham's arrival, MLS attempted to gain exposure with Freddy Adu, a player under the age of 16 that was crowned as the next Pel é. Adu received significant media attention, the world knew he's playing for DC United of the MLS.

Many may or may not know that Adu, this past summer at the age of 18, signed a contract in Europe with Benfica FC - Portugal. Prior to joining Benfica, Adu spent some time during summer in the Man Utd's training camp, Alex Fergusson did not give him the reason to stay.

Benfica paid to the club from Salt Lake City $2million for the player's release note and Adu will receive $1.2million per year, solid but not the contract that tops the news. Adu was not on Benfica's Champions League match roster against Milan on Sept. 18th, in compare a player like Messi at the current Adu's age was already among the starting 11 for the football giant FC Barcelona. The MLS didn't appear to have gained substantial attention for the sport with Adu, nor contributed to his development into the world dominant player as expected. Through history, some of the best players of all times played soccer in the States, including Pel é, Beckenbauer, Eusebio...

After the decades long attempts that did not give hoped results for the success of U.S. soccer, what difference Beckham's playing (currently on a 6 week absence due to the injury) may makes now? Let's have a brief look at the MLS, a professional soccer league that started in 1996 with more than 10 seasons of experience under way.

Logistics and facilities:

On the day of publishing this text, September 27th 2007, Beckham's LA Galaxy is playing against the KC Wizards. SPORTiana.com, as the author of this text, had the insight in MLS through KC Wizards in the summer of 2006, a year prior to Beckham's arrival in the MLS. At that time KC Wizard's head coach complained about having himself and 2 more assistant coaches to run the team's training, forcing him to leave several players from 26 man roster sitting on the bench because of not being able to have them all on the field during trainings at the same time.

The training facilities included one open-air field and the in-door field with gym used by the NFL team KC Chiefs, within the Arrowhead Stadium complex. The Wizard's open air-training field was situated next to the fence aside KC Chiefs training fields.

Grass on the Wizards field was almost separated turfs on the ground as hard as a rock, a field where many players would pass on training in order to avoid injuries. A head coach, 2 assist coaches, fitness trainer... NFL stadium and facilities... small office space at the corner of a stadium... it would be quite a contrast to the clubs from leagues where Beckham previously played.

Players:

Majority MLS players come in the league as drafted college players. College soccer usually means player's playing for a full ride scholarship with the first pro contracts signed at the age of 22 or so. In other countries, first pro contracts are usually signed at the age of 18, at the age of 22 the player is coming out of a 4 year contract and managers have a better understanding of a player's capabilities in pro football.

This means college players are 4 years behind. By signing a first pro contract at the age of 22, they would come out of the 4 year contract at the age of 26, at that time, major world football clubs would rather invest their money in a 22 year old's prospect who has also had 4 years of pro football experience. College players hardly pass over playing in the MLS (players' first pro contract) on their way to better paid leagues as most foreign clubs would not sign a college league soccer player with no pro football experience at the age of 22.

Prominent American players like DeMarkus Beasley ($2million to PSV - Netherlands, currently for £700,000 with Rangers - Scotland) or Tim Howard ($4million to Man Utd - England, currently with Everton after being loaned), joined MLS directly from high-school without playing college soccer, just like Freddy Adu.

For an average football fan with the choice to watch a variety of matches, e.g. the giants of the game squaring up in domestic leagues like this past weekend when it was Man Utd vs Chelsea in England, Barcelona vs Sevilla in Spain, Roma vs Juventus in Italy, PSV vs Feyenoord in the Netherlands... Boca Juniors games in Argentina, Lyon in France... there's little space for MLS.

A football fan wants to see the competitiveness, passionate fans, decades-long fierce rivalry between the clubs, tradition, the world's best players, established players with reputation of playing for prestigious clubs, ultra-modern football-specific stadiums, most of which the MLS does not offer. The MLS needs to gain the interest of the American public and media in order to gain the same interest with the world public. Hard-working, attractive all-around players like Eddie Johnson of the KC Wizards or DC United's Jaime Moreno, who proved their quality in this summer's Copa America 2007 are the prototype players for a successful competitive league.

The MLS's proposed soccer-specific modern stadiums for all clubs are a step forwards. German Bundesliga witnessed tremendous boost of public interest and media attention on domestic and global level prior to and after the World Cup 2006, with a legacy of great new and renewed old stadiums. The MLS ought to internationalize as much as possible, the English Premiership did it, when foreign billionaires started buying clubs, world class players arrived in even great number to make it the most watched and profitable football league in the world. Many writers have speculated on why football is not as popular in the U.S. as it is in some other countries, most of them point to the fact that the game does not have enough scoring. Changing rules of the game in favor of having more goals per game may be beneficial this time around.

Football is a powerful force, it already changed the North American major league sports philosophy, MLS clubs are competing in the Super League and the Copa Sudamericana, The New York Red Bulls new stadium will feature a full "European-style" roof, in 2007 MLS started selling ad space on the front of jersey (a floor of $500,000 per shirt sponsorship), following the practice of the international football.

As the Latin American immigration increases in the US, so is the interest in football. With football being the most popular recreational sport for both boys and girls, the MLS has potential. In 2006 Don Garber, MLS Commissioner, expressed his expectations for the league's clubs to be profitable by 2010 overall. LA Galaxy's merchandise sales through Beckham's next 4 four years with the club may not top $600 million as it was during his time with Real Madrid, still an MLS player made onto the covers of Sports Illustrated magazine and gather a crowd of 66,000 spectators at a packed Giants Stadium.

In the words of David Beckham about his move to MLS: "I'm coming there to play football... I'm not saying me coming over to the States is going to make soccer the biggest sport in America". It's about taking one step at the time, if soccer aims to make it in the football world.

http://SPORTiana.com