When should youth football transition from developmental to "winning"? How does a coach balance what the parents / youth coaches want with what will give your players their best possible experience at the HS level?

 

It should be about teaching the techniques and love of the game until freshman-ish. Then it can be about winning. But the job of all youth football is to get them to Varsity football in my opinion.

I see some of these lower level Pee-Wee teams, talking like 3-4 graders, with coaches that have play sheets that look like a Waffle House menu, and they are in shotgun every play, and just about every snap is on the ground or over the QBs head. What happened to teaching basics, and running dive, trap, iso, slam, sweep, and maybe a couple passes in the play book. Teach them the fundamentals of football, and quit trying to emulate big time NCAA and NFL football, and start with building the foundation of football.

They shouldn't be worried about winning at all until Varsity on Friday nights.  DEVELOP PLAYERS until then.  Develop their fundamentals, techniques, conditioning, strength, and most of all, develop in them to love the game.  You do that by making it fun.  It is a game afterall. 

Every kid should play in every single game until Friday nights.  You never know who will suddenly hit a big growth spurt, or who will become a gym rat, or who will discover they can actually ball!  They should also play a variety of positions until probably freshman year.  Every high school coach has approached some kid in the hallways before who looks the part of a football player.... and when they ask them to play the story goes something like, "I used to play, hated it because of how I was treated."

I also don't recall there being big writeups in the newspaper for winning JV championships.  Nobody really cares about that freshmen football championship you won, let alone youth ones.  The only ones that care are guys who are in coaching for the wrong reasons.....the "ME" coaches that think winning youth championships is something to brag about. Who cares, honestly.  Go ahead and wear your youth football jacket covered in Super Bowl patches like anyone is even remotely impressed.

Youth sports, especially football is making me absolutely sick anymore.  It's nothing but a money grab.  You have youth teams at 7 years old practicing 5x a week, playing multiple games full contact games in a weekend, and teaching the game in the absolute wrong way.  It's disgusting, and one of the biggest culprits is the NKYFL.  Not only do they seriously put kids in danger by allowing and encouraging youth football tournaments (think about how dumb that is for a minute, playing 3+ games in a weekend), teams are now partnering with local fitness facilities to encourage their players to go (for a fee of course) for "specialized" strength and conditioning.  I'm sorry, what??  We are encouraging pre-pubescent kids to do more specialized training for a sport that already monopolizes all of their time from early July through the end of October..... and many organizations keep playing in travel tournaments into December.  And before the season "officially" begins, we want kids to go train 4x a week at 20-30 bucks a session, and they'll also have their own "optional conditioning/practices" as soon as school gets out.  Meanwhile, most NKYFL teams have 30+ kids and over half of those kids never set foot on the field during a game.  "But they won a Super Bowl" playing 13 kids, most of them coaches sons while 2/3rds of the team shows up every day of the week to be screamed at, belittled, or completely ignored for 5-6 months.

And don't get me started on how most of the NKYFL coaches treat the kids.  This has nothing to do with "kids being soft these days."  You should not get in kids faces, chew them out, or say the things I hear said every week by opposing coaches.  If a grown man ever spoke to my kid the way I hear these other coaches talk, I'd be in jail.  You are supposed to be teaching the game, so teach.  Kids mess up, a lot!  Heck professional players mess up a lot.  Tell them what they did wrong, show them the right way, and get them out there again to do it the right way.  At home, do you scream and belittle your child if they use a fork the wrong way, or color outside the lines, or use too much toothpaste, or some other mundane task you are trying to teach?  My guess is probably not, but for some reason, in the football world, it's perfectly ok to get in a 9 year old's face, scream at the top of your lungs, or use expletives over a missed block, a lost fumble, or dropped pass?  DO BETTER as a man!!!

Parents need to wake up and stop the madness in all of youth sports.  The travel league crap has to stop.  The making sure kids have hundreds of dollars worth of useless accessories should have never happened.  The taking advantage of families and using the word scholarship to promote your business to youth players is dishonest at best. We pay to register the kid for the sport.  We then pay again for the equipment and/or uniforms.  We then pay again to watch the games.  We also have fundraising to help pay for more stuff.  We allow people to convince us to pay to travel to play in tournaments is what's best for our kids when it actually hurts them. Then we allow local "experts" to come in and convince us that our kids need additional training, which costs even more money. We pay for useless stuff that doesn't matter to the end product, which should be to teach kids the fundamentals of the game.  Instead, we have freshman football players who played since they were 7 but can't get in a 3 point stance, don't know how to take a handoff, how to carry a ball, and definitely don't know how to properly block or tackle. The whole system right now is a sham.  

Unfortunately, most parents are so brainwashed, that they don't care even a little bit.  They eat this all up.  Youth sports right now is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it's not leading to better athletes.  High school coaches spend entirely too much time breaking bad habits and reteaching technique.  The ones without any football experience many times wind up ahead of those with years experience.

Thus endeth my rant.

I'm probably the only one willing to say it, but college.

9 hours ago, Tranquility Base said:

I'm probably the only one willing to say it, but college.

I didn't even list what I want to say... Friday Nights(Varsity). But, in the climate we are in today, that is really tough to pull off. 

Developing young players happens at practice, that's where the zest to win leads many coaches astray. They worry about winning so much that they only focus on their better players in practice and spend little to no time on the rest of the kids.

On game day absolutely try to win, they keep score afterall. Work on developing the entire team in practice and then play to win, as a team. 

10 hours ago, New Colonel said:

They shouldn't be worried about winning at all until Varsity on Friday nights.  DEVELOP PLAYERS until then.  Develop their fundamentals, techniques, conditioning, strength, and most of all, develop in them to love the game.  You do that by making it fun.  It is a game afterall. 

Every kid should play in every single game until Friday nights.  You never know who will suddenly hit a big growth spurt, or who will become a gym rat, or who will discover they can actually ball!  They should also play a variety of positions until probably freshman year.  Every high school coach has approached some kid in the hallways before who looks the part of a football player.... and when they ask them to play the story goes something like, "I used to play, hated it because of how I was treated."

I also don't recall there being big writeups in the newspaper for winning JV championships.  Nobody really cares about that freshmen football championship you won, let alone youth ones.  The only ones that care are guys who are in coaching for the wrong reasons.....the "ME" coaches that think winning youth championships is something to brag about. Who cares, honestly.  Go ahead and wear your youth football jacket covered in Super Bowl patches like anyone is even remotely impressed.

Youth sports, especially football is making me absolutely sick anymore.  It's nothing but a money grab.  You have youth teams at 7 years old practicing 5x a week, playing multiple games full contact games in a weekend, and teaching the game in the absolute wrong way.  It's disgusting, and one of the biggest culprits is the NKYFL.  Not only do they seriously put kids in danger by allowing and encouraging youth football tournaments (think about how dumb that is for a minute, playing 3+ games in a weekend), teams are now partnering with local fitness facilities to encourage their players to go (for a fee of course) for "specialized" strength and conditioning.  I'm sorry, what??  We are encouraging pre-pubescent kids to do more specialized training for a sport that already monopolizes all of their time from early July through the end of October..... and many organizations keep playing in travel tournaments into December.  And before the season "officially" begins, we want kids to go train 4x a week at 20-30 bucks a session, and they'll also have their own "optional conditioning/practices" as soon as school gets out.  Meanwhile, most NKYFL teams have 30+ kids and over half of those kids never set foot on the field during a game.  "But they won a Super Bowl" playing 13 kids, most of them coaches sons while 2/3rds of the team shows up every day of the week to be screamed at, belittled, or completely ignored for 5-6 months.

And don't get me started on how most of the NKYFL coaches treat the kids.  This has nothing to do with "kids being soft these days."  You should not get in kids faces, chew them out, or say the things I hear said every week by opposing coaches.  If a grown man ever spoke to my kid the way I hear these other coaches talk, I'd be in jail.  You are supposed to be teaching the game, so teach.  Kids mess up, a lot!  Heck professional players mess up a lot.  Tell them what they did wrong, show them the right way, and get them out there again to do it the right way.  At home, do you scream and belittle your child if they use a fork the wrong way, or color outside the lines, or use too much toothpaste, or some other mundane task you are trying to teach?  My guess is probably not, but for some reason, in the football world, it's perfectly ok to get in a 9 year old's face, scream at the top of your lungs, or use expletives over a missed block, a lost fumble, or dropped pass?  DO BETTER as a man!!!

Parents need to wake up and stop the madness in all of youth sports.  The travel league crap has to stop.  The making sure kids have hundreds of dollars worth of useless accessories should have never happened.  The taking advantage of families and using the word scholarship to promote your business to youth players is dishonest at best. We pay to register the kid for the sport.  We then pay again for the equipment and/or uniforms.  We then pay again to watch the games.  We also have fundraising to help pay for more stuff.  We allow people to convince us to pay to travel to play in tournaments is what's best for our kids when it actually hurts them. Then we allow local "experts" to come in and convince us that our kids need additional training, which costs even more money. We pay for useless stuff that doesn't matter to the end product, which should be to teach kids the fundamentals of the game.  Instead, we have freshman football players who played since they were 7 but can't get in a 3 point stance, don't know how to take a handoff, how to carry a ball, and definitely don't know how to properly block or tackle. The whole system right now is a sham.  

Unfortunately, most parents are so brainwashed, that they don't care even a little bit.  They eat this all up.  Youth sports right now is a multi-billion dollar industry, and it's not leading to better athletes.  High school coaches spend entirely too much time breaking bad habits and reteaching technique.  The ones without any football experience many times wind up ahead of those with years experience.

Thus endeth my rant.

I, for one, really really appreciate this. Spot on.

Just had this conversation yesterday along these same lines and my point , along with yours as well (so it seems)?

Youth football is a bigger detriment to the game than it helps, or at best 50-50.

3 hours ago, Jumper_Dad said:

Developing young players happens at practice, that's where the zest to win leads many coaches astray. They worry about winning so much that they only focus on their better players in practice and spend little to no time on the rest of the kids.

On game day absolutely try to win, they keep score afterall. Work on developing the entire team in practice and then play to win, as a team. 

So how do you manage playing time with trying to win?  Play your best players while most of your team twittles their thumbs during the game on the sidelines?  

Do you specialize positions at the youth level because you are trying to win?

3 minutes ago, New Colonel said:

So how do you manage playing time with trying to win?  Play your best players while most of your team twittles their thumbs during the game on the sidelines?  

Do you specialize positions at the youth level because you are trying to win?

At youth levels winning should be secondary to player development. A good coach will find a way for every player to contribute on game day at the youth level. My point about trying to win the game is to instill a will to win and come together as a team for a common goal.

At Mayfield (I helped coach a couple of seasons 4th and 5th grade) we played all the players because you don't wanna run any players off cause you never know who is going to develop. Then middle school it changes some and they try to win all the games.

I think it is sad how much development has been taken out of youth football. As said above, high school coaches are having to spend massive amounts of time breaking bad habits and bad technique. I've watched youth football games where the entire defensive and offensive lines don't have one finger in the grass/turf/dirt and it makes me grind my teeth every time. As stated above, watched games with 6 year olds where every snap was in shotgun and 90% of the plays resulted in a loss of yards until the fastest kid got lucky and broke one loose, not by design or scheme is why I say lucky and somehow people think it's entertaining to watch. A lot of these teams that go out of town and win these "big" tournaments just stack their teams with the most naturally gifted athletes and then the coaches feel like they are Vince Lombardi or Nick Saban that they had such a good game plan and that they taught the kids so much, when in reality they didn't teach a kid a thing and for the kids kids that are actually fundamentally sound the tournament coach is reaping the benifits of another coaches hard work. There are no more full backs and "tight" ends. No more lead blocking. No more teaching what number the holes are. No more low man wins. All these "receivers" and not a none have a clue what a route tree is. I have heard people say well " there more advanced now these days" and that's a bunch of bologna most of the kids end up being way behind due to things that are out of their control and to some coaches that think they are playing Madden on a game console. There are some coaches out there using the right operating procedures and I salute to you it will affect the youth in other positive results than just W's or L's.

I totally agree and it’s not just football the AAU mindset is now fully entrenched in all youth sports. I helped coach 6th grade basketball, we couldn’t do proper passing or even make layups on the regular and the HC was having them run college offense and defense. I told him I’m not helping if we don’t devote time every practice to fundamentals. Needless to say I quit helping.

13 minutes ago, Breds82 said:

I totally agree and it’s not just football the AAU mindset is now fully entrenched in all youth sports. I helped coach 6th grade basketball, we couldn’t do proper passing or even make layups on the regular and the HC was having them run college offense and defense. I told him I’m not helping if we don’t devote time every practice to fundamentals. Needless to say I quit helping.

I don't know how you could afford to quit that job.

On 2/22/2025 at 11:59 PM, Tranquility Base said:

I'm probably the only one willing to say it, but college.

I don't even know if winning matters in college now with the NIL and transfer portal. And there is plenty of guys getting drafted out of bad Power5 schools and non Power5 schools. I've always said it's easier to turn a kid into a football player rather a baseball or basketball player. Baseball and basketball players at a early age really need as many reps as possible to develop the extra hand eye and feet coordination. Footballs not neccessarily like that and all that extra wear and tear with coukd do more harm than good. Give me an athletic kid that's never played football and never been taught bad habits and I'll have that kid serviceable somewhere in no time. There's basketball and baseball players that have caught on late but it's definitely tremendously more time and money consuming and you have to play catch up at a faster case cause the windows is so small. I love to see when a kid peaks later on because nothing has stunted their growth.