Coaching 7 year olds

DC,

In your message, you said:

"I tend to have more 7's than 8's (This is because the other teams aren't very eager to take 7's and prefer the 8's. Since my policy is to take any kid that wants to play football (and whose mother isn't just looking for cheap daycare), they tend to end up on my team."

This equates to the basic policy that we have in our league for all teams. This year, I had the following age distribution:

11 - 6 year-olds (one who turned 6 the second week of practice)

10 - 7 year-olds

9 - 8 year-olds

None of the 6's had ever played football before, and of the 7's that had played, only three or four of them had played tackle football. Of the 8's, four of them had never played football, flag or tackle. With 9 kids (out of 30) who'd played tackle football before, experience was not overflowing.

With regard to the "late arrivals" you mentioned, I had several 6's and 7's who were functionally equivalent to this type of player, simply because their interest level was so low at the start of the season. I'm not really clear why your league would allow late signups like that though, since it wouldn't be very cost effective for the parents (it's $80 to play in our league, where we provide all the equipment except shoes, socks, and a supporter), and would risk more injury to the kids. You have my sympathy and utter confusion over why the league would allow this.

You asked about selecting a HC, and all I can suggest is someone who really cares about the kids, and is willing to put in about 10-12 hours a week during the season, and at least that much time a few weeks before the season.

As for keeping the players entertained/focused, here's how our two-hour practices ran:

6:00 Jog, stretch, and cals

6:15 Basic skill groups (8 to a group, rotate after 5 minutes)

• Blocking drill
  
• Tackling drill
  
• Sprint drills (ups & downs, stance, etc.)
  
• Fox & Rabbit (one ball carrier chased by 7 spread tacklers)
  

6:45 Offense and Defense position walk-throughs or more skill drills

7:05 Scrimmage each other at half-speed

7:20 Water break (discuss positions for last scrimmage)

7:30 Scrimmage (full speed)

When we ran skill drills, I divided the kids up roughly by weight (which ranged from 48 to 132 lbs) into groups of 8, and then moved kids up or down a group, based on whether I felt they were "playing above their weight range" in various drills or previous scrimmages. This was very effective at making the skill drills more interesting/competitive. No longer would a 55 lb 6 year-old have to worry about our 92 lb LT crashing into him during a tackling drill.

I had three Asst. Coaches, all of whom really love kids, and the maximum 8/1 player/coach ratio worked really well for us. (The worst part was learning all their names! I worked especially hard at this, and by the end of the first week knew each boy, which included being able to distinguish between the identical twins based on whether or not there were freckles on the boy's nose.)

Of all the things we did to keep things interesting, by far the best was scrimmaging ourselves, and doing so from a no-huddle offense. With no "stand around time" from the offensive side, and less than 20 seconds or so between plays, it really keeps things moving. Often, I'd completely forget to have the second water break, and the kids weren't complaining.

With this setup, the biggest problem was making sure we were always subbing kids in that were waiting on the sidelines. I'd try to take that duty as often as possible, but at the very least, one of the Asst. Coaches would be there to monitor them, and/or run a drill with the 8 guys who weren't on the field at the moment.

Some of the drills, the kids hated, but they consistently begged me to either "play" the Fox and Rabbit drill, or scrimmage. They came out to play football, and when we were scrimmaging, they were doing what they came out to do. Even if their playing time was limited during games, they were getting nearly an hour of "playing tackle football," three nights a week.

One of my fellow coaches in the league, who had 34 players on his team, told me he'd never again coach a team of this many kids. Having been on the other side, and trying to practice with just 13 or 14 kids on a team of 16 total, I'd much rather deal with the hyperactivity and attention span issues. (We're shooting to cap the teams at 25, but late signups blew that idea, as we didn't have time to order new jerseys.)

If you've got more questions, and want to follow up via e-mail, you can contact me at: gooch@tool.net.

Hope this helps!

Coach Gooch