Youth Practice Schedules

Coach,

We practice 5 days a week before our season begins with the first week being helmets only to acclimate the kids to the heat/workout conditions. After the season begins, we are limited to 3 practices per week with our games being played on Saturday mornings. All our practices are based on 24 - five minute periods.

We begin practice with a goalpost jog and a 10 min. dynamic warmup (high knees, get offs, shuffle/carioca etc.) followed by couple of times through the stepover bags and a quickfoot ladder. We begin every defensive practice and some offensive practices with a team tackling drill like angle tackling or a fit drill using tackling dummies that the entire team will participate in for approximately 15 minutes. I have found that static stretching is a waste of time especially for kids at this age level. If we do any stretching at all it is part of our cool down along with any neck strengthening exercises we might do.

A typical practice for us would consist of an individual position drill segment for 20 min. followed by a group period like inside drill, outside drill, 7 on 7, pursuit drills, etc. for 20 min. We then go Team O or Team D for 45 minutes before conditioning and circling up for about 10 minutes of cooldown/discussion. We would take at least three 5 min. water breaks throughout the practice.

We alternate Offensive and Defensive days with the offense receiving the additional practice day during most weeks. In the past in our league, only kickoffs and returns have been totally "live" so special teams were not given as much attention as they probably should have received. This year with our level "just playing football" the same as middle school without any special rules we will have to devote additional time to special teams as well as things like blitz pickups and dogs/blitzes that we would not have covered previously.

I hope this gives you an idea as to what our practices are like coach. Please let me know if you have any more questions.

Coach,

I am curious about your 90 minute practices. Our league also has a rule to where you can only practice 3 days per week. Also, we can't start practice until 6:00 pm. So we are pretty limited as to how much we can practice. I would love to be able to practice three days per week with 90 minute practices, rather than 3 days per week at 2 hour practices. However, can you show me how you can get everything done that you need to cover in 90 minutes??? I would love to be able to do that.

Thanks,

Tim

Coach,

Thanks for the practice info. We use the wing-t on offense, so this will work great for us. When do you fit in conditioning???

Thanks.

Lou Cella,

I would like to see coach Campbell's "play the script". Would it be possible to e-mail to me? My e-mail is howardp@melnap.k12.mi.us.

Thank you..
Coach Howard