Coaching 7 year olds

I just finished coaching a team of 30 6, 7, and 8 year-olds, the Goshen Raiders. I have no doubt that I'm not the best coach these guys will ever have, and we had only a modestly successful season (3-5). Even so, I'd like to pass on a couple of observations I've gained in head coaching this age group for the past three years, and assistant coaching three years prior to that.

First, if you're going to put up with the limited attention spans, hyperactivity, and wide variation of athletic ability within this age group, you HAVE TO LOVE KIDS. I mean it. My number one requirement for assistant coaches is that they genuinely are interested in the welfare of each of the boys, even at the expense of the won-loss record. Both of my sons have played for teams that went undefeated, and both of them hated the coach and football by the end of that season. The boys are more important to me than the record. I guess I'm just weird that way.

I'm really confused about the limits I see around the country on gap-8 defenses and such with this age. Our league (in Oldham County, KY) plays by high-school rules, with two exceptions: you have to be under 80 lbs at signup to line up in an eligible position, and if you don't want to punt, you can take a free 20-yard kick on fourth down. In my opinion, all the oddball rules that some leagues come up with to "make it easier" on the centers and other players, fails to teach them important fundamentals of the game, and just impedes their progress at the next level.

If your kids went out to play in the yard with their buddies, would they come up with junk like this? NO WAY! Our kids know that they're playing by "big boy rules," and in my opinion, this helps keep it fun for them. As for competitiveness, last year's champion in our league finished in last place this year. Most of our games were decided by 12 points or less, but we had plenty of scoring in our league. KEEP THE RULE CHANGES TO A MINIMUM! (I'll get down from my soapbox now. )

As far as offenses go, I took a few cues from Jack Reed's books and ran the old short-punt formation, which looks roughly like this:

E__T_G_C_G_T__E
_____F___F_____
_________H_____
_______T_______

with the fullbacks lined up behind the guards, the halfback behind the right fullback, and the center snapping straight to the tailback. Even my 2nd quarter offense (all the teams volunteered to play less-experienced kids in the 2nd quarter) was able to run sweeps left and right, and a nice wedge. The sweeps used a pulling guard, and toward the end of the season, I moved the right fullback out to a wing position, faked a reverse to him on the sweep right, and used him as a lead blocker for a sweep left. That's FOUR lead blockers on a sweep!

My regular offense ran these plays, plus a trap, a pass to the wing, and added a second pulling guard for FIVE lead blockers on the sweep left! This is a group of eight 8 year-olds, and two 7 year-olds, and they had few problems learning the 6-7 core plays. I am on the field with them, but ran a no-huddle (I held a Magnadoodle in my hands, and showed the kids a code for which play to run), and no cadence. Once the center put his hand on the ball, EVERYONE knew the play could start at any time in the next 3-5 seconds!

With regard to "pipe dreams," one of my pulling guards this year was an 8 year-old rookie. All of my centers learned to long snap, and in practice, I'd line up two of my strongest linebackers to hammer him as he delivered the ball. We had a few bad snaps in one game, but otherwise we had fewer fumbles than most of our opponents, who generally went with a traditional under-center exchange.

(BTW, why are you assuming that they'll run a Wing-T as 9 year-olds? Is that the best formation for the talent you have? Have you considered running a single-wing, double-wing, short-punt, or other running formation? Just blindly assuming that the Wing-T is best strikes me a bit odd. Few 9 year-olds that I've seen really excel in this formation.)

For our tournament, I got weird and ran Tiger Ellison's Lonesome Polecat, made possible because I had a very talented QB/TB who could release the ball very quickly. We lost our opening game in the tourney, but completed more than 50% of our passes from this formation, which is unheard of in this league. We practiced this formation (and the 2-3 plays that come from it), for just two weeks. You should've seen the defensive coach when we lined up in that formation! He was yelling at six different guys to move to try to cover all the eligible receivers (he forgot about the center ), and if I'd done a better job of teaching the blocking for the left halfback, we'd have had even more success than we had (and probably won the game). Most of all, WE HAD FUN!

I told my guys at the beginning of the season, I wanted three things to be true by November:

- Learn something about football
- Avoid serious injury
- Have fun

Along the way to having a good time and learning how to play the game, we won three games. A broken arm (in a fluke play) was our only serious injury, and was the first I've seen on one of my teams in coaching youth football for the past 6 years.

Please don't write this age group off! You have a unique opportunity to be the first football coach these kids will ever have. Don't dismiss the value of making sure their first experience in this game is a good one. I now have nine 8 year-olds moving up to the next level, all of whom know correct blocking and tackling technique. Most of them know how to "block down" on the line, one of them is an awesome long snapper, and a couple of them may very well start as blocking backs next year.

I'm now in the position of having the parents of the 6 and 7 year-olds begging me to continue coaching this team, and the parents of the 8 year-olds (and the parents of the 9 year-olds from the next team up, most of whom I coached last year) asking me to move up. Will we go undefeated? It's possible, but I don't really care. Will the kids on my team (whichever level I coach) keep learning this game and having fun?

Absolutely.

Good luck!

Coach Gooch