Youth Sports (i.e. the thing we all loved which parents have now ruined)

Thought we had a "I want to bitch about youth sports" thread, but I couldn't find one ... so I'll start one up so I can bitch.

Coaching 11U travel football this year. Local Parks and Rec went to shit - terrible numbers - so we were invited to join a local travel org, and we've built what we think is going to be a really nice team.

The 10U team in the same org likes to think that they're a "national" team (i.e. people who spend way too much money traveling out of state to play good teams because they think that's how you get a scholarship).

So on Tuesday, they want to scrimmage during practice and it goes alright. We're a lot bigger than them, and we manhandled them a bit.

On Wednesday, they ask if we want to go again. We were missing some kids on offense so we said "we're happy to run a defense against you guys."

So we get in our base defense - an odd front. They come out in like a 2x2 spread (because all "travel" teams think they're going to run the spread, allegedly zone block, and throw constantly).

We decline to spread our linebackers out wide to cover their slot receivers (we're in cover 3 and we prefer to take away slant).

After three plays where their front five can't block our front five, they start grumbling.

Their coach (and the org President), loud enough so our kids and parents can't hear: "You guys aren't giving us a good look. You can't just not cover that guy. If he runs a five-yard out, he'll be wide open. That's terrible."

Us: "Hey man - we don't see too many 10 and 11 year old quarterbacks who can throw the 5-yard out to the sidelines consistently. It's like a 30-yard throw. If a team starts doing it to us, we'd adjust to that."

They ran one more play - trying to throw the five-yard out - and threw it a mile over the receiver's head and well out of bounds, and then stopped the scrimmage and went back to practicing on their own because we weren't giving them "the right look."

Travel football is the absolute worst. It's not concussions that are killing youth football; it's travel football coaches.

 

Full tackle or combination flag/touch?

Hardly anybody in our region plays full tackle before 7th grade.

And hardly any QB anywhere below that age can throw a ball more than 20 yards with any accuracy.

Bubble screens and reverses to your stud running backs are the ticket.

 

I used to be the king of kiddie sports threads around here of course, but age and COVID has pretty much wiped that out.

My twin nieces (Sis A and Sis B), turning 16 in November, have moved into HS where they are doing ok in volleyball and pretty well in softball.

They jumped up to JV volleyball as freshmen, actually fairly impressive because their HS has four teams: varsity, JV, freshman A/B teams.

In softball they were both basically varsity starters since day one, but that's not such a big deal because the school is battling low numbers and doesn't have enough players for a JV team.

We were all set up to have a pretty big season in club ball in 2020, but then COVID wiped it all out.

My youngest niece, Sis C, is now 12 and a dual stud in softball and basketball, and trying to figure out options to play on club teams (as well as Irish dancing which she is pretty heavy into, which takes as much time for practice and performing as any sport.)

But I'm not really involved on the coaching end with her.

 

I was having a conversation with a guy the other day, and he mentioned the U8 national championship.
I said there shouldn't be a U8 national championship in anything.

 

Ha, ha. In our area a few weeks so ago, a guy who has been a huge huge figure in kids sports (of just about every variety) around here for 50 years was retiring and there was a great big takeout feature in the paper.

Among the highlights recounted was his team winning a junior pro girls basketball national championship in 1987.

That "national championship" team finished tied for fourth place in our regional 12 team league.

All season long Mr. Coach continually harped on our league sending teams to the national tournaments.

The top three teams in the league had little or no interest in any national tourney. In those days most people didn't budget time or money for national kiddie tournaments.

The little team I was coaching played Mr. Coach in the first game of the season. We had only put the team together that week and hadn't practiced, we didn't have game uniforms and had to play in practice tees, and they beat us 57-17, pressing and running up the score from buzzer to buzzer.

To open the second half, already up 20+ points, they pulled the old sucker play of lining up near the "wrong" basket.

Two months later and the league season was drawing to an end and we were playing them in a return game on our home court.

All the other coaches in the league were there for a league meeting to handle the urgent question of who was to go to the national tournament -- which no other team in the league had any particular interest in attending.

Quite frankly all the other coaches were getting pretty sick of hearing about it -- mainly it had to do with the league approving some travel money for the coaches of the teams going to the tourney.

Well after that first game bombing, we had recovered quite well to go 9-6 on the season, losing only to the juggernaut big three. We put in our offense, our defense and our pressbreaks.

So with all the other coaches in the league roaring from the sideline, we beat Mr. Coach 54-32, running a textbook four-corners delay game the last three minutes of the game.

The minute the game was over Mr. Coach was hurriedly running around to confirm his team would still be allowed to go.

His team and my team had tied for fourth at 10-6. He was pounding hard on the total score differential, since he beat us by 40 and we beat him by 18.

Mostly the response was the vigorous jacking off motion. "Go ahead and go if you want to, we don't care. We saw who just won the game today. It would have been 60-25 if Starman hadn't stalled out the last three minutes."

Quickly enough it was decided Mr Coach's team would be our official representative. The league approved $300 ($25 per team) for travel expenses (he had been plumping for $50). In 1987 that $300 probably covered Mr. Coach's own hotel tab.

A couple days later Mr. Coach calls me on the phone. Apparently he just got off the phone with the organizers of the national tourney and they needed more teams.

"You can probably still go if you want to, but you'll have to pay your own freight," he said.

Nahhhh.

Two or three weeks later I'm working on my part time job as a phone monkey on the sports desk at the local paper. Ring ring goes the phone and it's one of the parents on Mr Coach's team calling from Tennessee to report they just won the national championship.

Vigorous jacking off gesture.

 

A buddy told me this week his grandson played city rec league baseball, travel ball and 11U Little League. All told he played 64 games.
"We're not sure about Fall League."
I wanted to ask him if they had an arthopedic doctor lined up yet.

 

Pipe out 10 12 years ago I had a friend whose son was playing youth football. And his coach went on a rant with the team and told them that nothing matters but football. It's more important than school, more important than anything and they need to be at practice and they needed to work as hard as they could possibly work. The kids were like eight. That rant was relayed up the grapevine pretty quickly, and the coach was removed from the league. Can you imagine telling a bunch of 8-year-olds that there was nothing more important than their lives than football?

 

Hilarious.

 

Every coach will tell you they love multi-sport athletes, and every coach/organization will want you to ramp up your commitment so that that sport crowds everything out.

My daughter got the stink eye from her softball coach for missing most winter ball sessions to play competitive hockey (and work part time). She started the season barely in the rotation and had to claw her way up. For the most part, training for softball in a gym is pointless, pitchers possibly excepted.

I had a girl who had to drop flag football because she had to do dry land hockey training for September in May. Of course running up and down the football field all day is decent exercise, but attendance was mandatory.

It’s all idiotic. I miss it and I’m glad it’s over.

 

On my twin nieces' softball and volleyball teams, there are only 2-3 players on each team who play any other sport.

I don't think in their whole high school (1100 students) there are any 3-sport varsity athletes.

My 12-year-old niece (heading into 7th grade) is constantly being urged by club team coaches to play only one sport, as well as to quit Irish dancing.

 

Oh hell no.
Run Power. And then run Power. And then run Power again.

Youth football coaches notoriously fall in love with something they saw on Sunday, and think they can run that play too.

Nevermind that almost none of them can teach any of the nuances, especially to the offensive line.

You get a whole bunch of teams who say “we block zone!” Which actually means they run the “block someone!” Scheme, which actually means “they block like shit.”

 

Well, if you have big linemen who can knock everybody over, it works great.