Youth football practice drill -- is this appropriate?
Check out this youth football practice drill -- is this appropriate? Someone mentioned in the comments they are 8 years old.
For clarification, when I say "appropriate" I'm not talking about contract in general. I'm referring to what appears to be the complete lack of coaching and technique here. But I could be wrong.
Is it that hard to have a medical person at least casually look after little league practice? Like a friend or parent. I mean. I hope that kid did a concussion protocol and stuff. Smh
My experience with doctors, where someone has been injured at an athletic event, is they stay back and away. I'm sure they would justify it over concern about medmal. But also in my experience, nurses and other medical professionals show no such reservation--and attend the injured person.
Nope this isn't okay
Totally inappropriate and yet completely unsurprising.
when i played travel ball in elementary and early middle school we were encouraged to be aggressive even in practice. boys playing a mans sport needed to play like men as it was said in waves of yelling. play angry or get hurt. it was a gladiator mentality. parents were all on board to the best of my knowledge. in fact if we werent aggressive enough practice, we would pause for bull in the ring to toughen us up. it was in the days of the raiders and steelers being revered for being ruthless. times have certainly changed but i suspect this coach may have grown up playing in that environment as well. if u wanted to play in a less intense environment back then u could pass on try outs for travel ball and play city league with generally smaller less athletic competition. i have to admit im glad my son didnt play football even if less intense these days...he has far fewer aches and pains at age 20 than i had.
Apparently a number of media outlets have picked up on it and it is generating a lot of discussion.
Needless to say - several idiots will hopefully be removed from coaching young kids and I hope sends a message to others doing the same things.
Thanks for posting this. I think we can now assume the coaches involved will be receiving some constructive criticism.
This is insane. There is not a technique out there that would overcome the huge difference in size and power of those two young kids. I have 3 boys who are big and strong for their ages and I would be pissed off if they were put in this situation even if they do come out the “winner”
Now in a 5 years or so when short guys turn into dickheads with small man syndrome, they can get clocked all day long and I could care less. But not these little kids!!....no way!
This is horrible. NO, not appropriate. I wouldn't do this drill with my high school kids most likely. I am firmly in the camp of there shouldn't even be tackle football until AT EARLIEST, 6th grade, preferably 7th or 8th
Nope and those coaches should be dropped by that youth football program. Honestly the coach presiding over that drill is in justified punch in the face territory from Dad.
I played through college and a cup of coffee in arena, I’ve coached youth and coordinated at several high schools. I have a son I made up my mind I wanted him to be in the double digits age wise before I’d let him play and this is why. You gotta be worried some yahoo coach is going to subject your kid to this. I love football and think it teaches young people great core values and toughness but this shit for kids this age is terrible. They can’t check in hockey until like age 12-13 for a reason.
This is fucking gross. This isn't standard in any arena for kids this age and if it is your team and league should be shut down.
And these assholes filming who knew the outcome need smaked upside their own skulls a court date in front of a judge.
Little excessive? I'd say the coaches should be disciplined and maybe replaced but "shut the league down"? Lets not act like riding a skateboard or any number of other youthful pursuits don't result in some tough crashes with as much or more impact than this hit, with pads & helmet for protection in place. A court date? for what? I mean what charge? reckless endangerment? child abuse? I'd agree this is ignorance. Maybe willful ignorance. Most likely by guys who were taught poorly themselves. They need to be educated before they are allowed to coach anymore that's for sure. But lets not get litigious because we feel like we have to go the whole nine yards to prove some point. That kid that took the hit isn't going to suffer long lasting consequences from 1 bad hit, and if we think he is then frankly we need to end football. Coaches can and should control all contact as much as possible in practice but in a game this can happen and who we gonna prosecute then?
Terrible
I coached a ton of rocket football. This looks like a classic case of: 1. Mismatch ignored, combined with 2. Tackling drill run before technique is mastered. We always put "tackling at speed" as an earned right. You had to "prove" you could break down, target the hips, wrap and roll before you could go full speed in a tackling drill. We built up to that by repping with dummies, then doing "2 step drills" where you only take 2 steps before impact, then 3 steps, then eventually as kids became visibly proficient we'd run a few drills at speed. Match ups are SO important also. As a coach you quickly see who's who and frankly there are 4-6 kids out of 15 that need to be kept away from the other 10 because they HIT. They're usually younger siblings with slightly older brothers and you can just tell they are fearless. As far as dropping the head goes, we REALLY emphasized not allowing that. Our mantra's were that you had to "see what you hit" and "never seen a facemask fail yet". The human instinct to protect the face is engrained and needs to be re-taught. Once you get them to keep the head up they naturally target better with the shoulder and learn to take the helmet out of the tackle completely. Pete Carroll has a good video on youtube on tackling technique to "take the head out of the tackle". Its a good way to teach tackling and works at the youth level perfectly.
A couple years ago when one of our grandkids was playing 7th/8th grade football, I watched one of his practices. He was playing d-line and made a tackle but both the ball carrier and himself came down awkwardly on his left arm. He came up holding it but continued to practice. A couple plays later he went up to his coach and told him he couldn’t go on. The coach yelled at him in front of the entire team, “Quit being a pu#%y, walk it off and get back at it”. Finally he walked off the field over to me and said he felt like he was getting sick. I called my daughter and said we are on the way home. My daughter, a nurse, took one look at it and said it was broken. Fast forward, surgery and a cast for 8 weeks
Needless to say, I’m glad I had just happened to stop by to watch that practice and our daughter fired off a few emails and made a trip to the Admin Building the next day.
There’s a lot of great coaches out there but a few that are just t plain clueless.
I really appreciate the slew of insightful and specific comments. I logged in to agree with the general direction that I found others posted. My experience is in 11 and under children and I am not much of an athlete however . . .
I played every child at every position with prep time for failure and "don't worry about it." You will pitch to three batters, just like in practice. Three walks, three home runs. Don't worry about it. (I got more push back from the parents than the kids. "Our son isn't ready to play goalie" but he shut out the the other team (bee-hive soccer) for a period. Never lost a game because of it.
I like MgrowOld's three points. Pretty much my approach. I don't remember winning or losing so much as my (usually mental) mistakes. Courage.