Many youth football teams are wrapping up this time of the year. Most of us are either in playoff runs or want to make this the most competitive game. You want your youth football team to improve every week. Your last game should be the best. The last week of practice should be exciting. Everyone wants to finish the season with fun and hopefully satiate the players’ appetites for next season. How can we meet both of these goals while having fun and being ready for the big game?
This time of year, we only have two football practices per semaine. Many youth football coaches are either too busy or don’t enjoy the last practice. Although I believe in making it enjoyable for the players, if you make the last practice all about fun and games, it can be a reminder to them that the season has ended.
Our “fun” practice is the first of the week. In those first 30 minutes, we might play Hawaiian Rules football or a live scrim with running backs and linemen running back. We do often follow the lead of the children on the particular team, like the towel game or deer hunter. Our last week’s practice was cancelled so we went to the gym. The kids had a blast playing Dodge Ball and Capture the Flag.
We talked as a team about our weekly goals and individual goals for each member of our team. The players realize that the end result will not be known for at least 20 years. The seeds that we planted in this season’s campaign will hopefully have matured and sprouted. These were seeds of hard work, perseverance, teamwork and sacrifice. We also let them know that they are seeds of humility, compassion and reliability that will help each other be better sons and fathers. Although youth football is not a panacea for all our problems, it is important for many young people’s growth. Employers can easily tell if someone has participated in competitive sports. A competitive sports player is more likely to be competitive because they are more willing to accept coaching, work harder, get flustered fewer, and overcome challenges better than their video game counterparts.
Although the first practice of the week can be reflective and enjoyable, the last practice will get us back in “football mode”. If parents are looking for something unique, this is the practice to do it. We get back to business later in the week, at the very last practice. Apart from our regular individual development sessions, we will also be covering team offense, defense, and special teams on-air. This is the time when many youth football clubs are putting their best foot forward. This means that you must spend time coordinating and alerting your youth football team to special formations, such as the Swinging Gate/Lonesome Polecat. At this time of the year, we see wall kick returns as well as starburst and throwback kick returns. In this game, we see a lot of “tricks” plays like QB throwbacks, or even illegal plays such as the “wrongball” play 스포츠중계.
Set up your defense and special teams against your coaches and the remaining players to help prepare your youth football squad for such situations. Assign everyone to a position and ask everyone to take a knee. The defense will then observe the play, and the scouts should discuss it. Your scouts should then be able to walk them through the different football plays they need to prepare for. After you have demonstrated at least 4-5 of these football plays, you can huddle together and run the plays live (but not to the ground) with your defense. The coaches are always available to provide quality reps to your defense in a very short time.
These “tricks” are not something you will see, but it is something that the kids enjoy. For youth football players, football practice can get a bit stale during this season. It’s normal. These activities keep the kids interested and give them an interesting way to learn. It can also make a big difference in game time.
There may be some other trick plays for football that you can come up with at this point in the year. It’s not for scoring, but we do it because it’s fun. We do it to keep them interested.
A youth football team’s super-secret trick play, which they know will go for a touchdown, is stuffed without any gain or big loss. When you do something like this, the other team expects that you have not prepared. They expect panic, confusion, poor alignment and failure. This was the last game for the age 10-11 team. The illegal “wrong balls” play was used by the opponent. To see the video clip and more information on that play, you can do a keyword search on “wrongball” on this blog.
Our team had learned the “wrong play” week before. We discussed it, practiced it, and even used it against our defense. Our defense knew that, no matter what other coaches or players might be saying, if anyone picked up a ball after it was set for play, it was live and that the person holding the ball must be dealt with.