Coaching and Youth Sports

Not shocked. Heard it was a possibility 2 months ago. Legitimate family reasons. Wife's parents in declining health and he's challenging Phillip Rivers in the kid category. Plus he's starting to lean more and more into real estate and is going quite well.

New coach will be announced by Wednesday and I'll be shocked if it's not Lamar Brown.

 

A freshman girl at Greenfield, a small 1A school over in West TN, has scored 1,000 points this year.

That's insane.

 

My 7th grader told me this evening that he wants to play football. He’s never played organized sports and his knowledge of football is basically what he’s gathered from Madden or watching the NFL. I only played basketball and baseball growing up, so just wanted some feedback from the football guys on here about him jumping into football at that age having never played anything before. I obviously don’t want him to miss out on something he wants to do, but don’t want him to get himself killed either.

 

Hopefully, some of the younger Dads can help you.

The only organized sports we had at young age was minor league/Little League baseball. T ball or coach-pitch had not been invented. Pre-Little League, you had to hope there was a little kid who could get it to the plate and not hit you. But honestly, I learned baseball listening to radio. MLB on TV was the best coaching invention ever.

Organized football did not happen until 9th.
Salt tablets and water were the only health drink. Oh, tell him to check jockstrap for Atomic Bomb pain creme BEFORE he puts the jockstrap on. Basically it was pick-up tackle in an empty field with no pads until then. Nobody got killed. If there were no visible bruises or blood and you could walk or ride bike home, we assumed no one got hurt.

Basketball it was 7th grade, but we considered that a no-contact sport and the kid that could shoot and score was king.

 

Football is cool. Gotta have to want to hit and not be opposed to getting hit and have a little dog in you or at contact can be rough.
I’m still obviously a lacrosse fan. We had several football players try it the last 2-3 years and they ended up not going back to football because they enjoyed it so much and the constant action/involvement on offense and defense, even though you can do both.
7th/8th grade a good time to start though this season just started. It was also fun to play and gave us some bonding time as we would throw and got a goal for me to pass over and over to him and let him practice catching and shooting.
When I brought lacrosse up to my son in 5th grade, he had no idea what it was, but a coach had suggested it due to his speed. I asked him to give it an honest shot and effort for a few weeks. After the 2nd practice, he thanked me for signing him up. A few years later he was making all region and all state. He would’ve never been that good at football or had the weight.
It’s still physical but not nearly as many concussions and lower leg injuries due to getting rolled up on and has a little bit of several sports to the game movement and skills needed.
It’s lax season now and some good HS teams in Knoxville if you want to go catch a game and see the speed up close. Not as enjoyable to watch on tv.

 

He will get shit canned and either laugh about it or quit but that's okay.

There's nothing wrong with starting at that age but I would suggest starting some sprints right now

 

If he signs up, I fully expect him to get his shit rocked a time or two and throw in the towel. I just don’t think he’ll have it in him to hit/get hit like Ssmiff said, but I guess you can’t be sure until it happens the first time.

He’s just the complete opposite of me when I was growing up, so it’s hard for me to figure out. I loved to hit people. When I was in high school, players from a lot of the schools would organize games on the weekend and during the summer. There’d be a couple of dozen guys there and I’d always play in those. We’d usually play until you didn’t have enough people walking to keep playing or one of the coaches figured out where we were playing and showed up and everyone scattered so they wouldn’t get in trouble. Shit was probably 10x more dangerous than anything that happened on Friday nights.

 

I remember going to the grandkids pee-wee football (or whatever it is called) and watch the kids getting hogmollied by the one or two kids that were extrodinarily large for their age.

The next year son told me that the better leagues passed a rule that kids who weighed over a certain amount got booted into the next level. You should have seen the Dads scrambling looking for leagues that were not weight-based where their big kids could smash the little kids their age.

 

Tackle nerf football growing up helped get ready for pads but kids don’t play it anymore. I’m sure I woulda been inside on the computer playing COD with friends, but we only had 3 tv channels and didn’t really want to be inside except to eat and sleep or make a mix tape.

 

Yeah, there is a pool down the street from us in my neighborhood that has a massive empty field next to it. When I was a kid it would have been full of kids all the time playing football. I’ve lived here 11 years and never seen a single kid playing down there. Just a completely different world now.

 

There's always a few that surprise you when it comes to hitting and getting hit. We had a grown man of a child that would ragdoll anyone he could get his hands but he was slow.

One kid, resembling a tree stump, wore his ass out every day at practice until the big kid finally figured leverage out and got lower

 

That's when I started playing. As long as the coaching is good, and they are aware of his skill level to get his fundamentals up to speed (especially tackling properly), I wouldn't have any worries.

 

Let him give it a shot. He'll be fine. If coaches are worth anything they won't let him get hurt. Assuming Halls MAC team?

 

Definitely let him give it a go. My kids played in the 3rd and 5th grades, and never missed a practice or game, never asked to dodge a practice or game, and after one season each said "Nope" and hung up their helmets.

 

We've already had a kid quit. Made it all of 2 days in pads. Biggest kid on team. But both he and parents thought he was going to walk in and dominate (bEcAuSe FlAg) and he didn't. All he needed was reps and he'd been the baddest lineman on the field but I guess it was going to be hard so he dropped.

 

Bobcats.

[uck fay] Halls.

 

I always enjoy watching the flag football kids get hit for the first time

 

In that case, I'll give it more of a eeeehhhhh based on my knowledge of programs.

 

I had a feeling they might be a problem from sign ups when they found out he'd be too big to run the ball. When he cried both practices in pads, I kinda knew the end result.

 

That is 100% on the parents. I always told my sons that unless there is something dangerous going on, you sign up, you do it. After the season or sign up period is over, you say "nope", no problem.

But we sign up, we are going to be at every damn practice and game, whether you sit there the whole time never doing anything (cannot force you to), but by god we will be there.