The Game against Reading(say Redding)

The field was awash with white and blue players, marching, jogging, stretching.  Lots of blue and white with serif numbers, burly, I say, tall and ready to bench press a Harley-Davidson.

"One of them looks like he has a full beard..." , I heard a mother groan.

Going into war I believe the generals face the foe in a similar mindset:  Don't let fear set in or all is lost.  We need to strengthen them with our voice, yell at them to let them know, "You have ME to fear, if you don't do what's right, NOT them!"


Well, this is not the war, and these are not little soldiers.
You have to know your enemy, and know your players.

These are young men, that are used to soft beds, touch phones, good food, going out to eat, and playing the latest video games.  They love each other's company, and they play because they love to play.  They really don't play to win, but to play the sport, because they love to spend that time together doing "the man thing".

So how did that get mixed up with brow beating and only winning?
When I ask my son, How was practice, and his answer is, I hated it, everyone hates it.  Something is wrong. I guarantee they will not be back to "PLAY" a sport.

 It should be hard.  That is how you progress, but when you do not make progress or do not notice your progress, you hate what you do.  It is the job of the coaches to make it evident that players progress.  They either verbally have not, or they have made them believe their goal is winning.  When they don't win, they are failures.
They lost to Reading.

I could see the team was frustrated.  I could see the coaches were shouting.  Instead of pointing out what was wrong, what if we work smarter?

We are constantly up against larger teams with bigger numbers.  We need to assume we will have the smaller kids, and need to teach our smaller players a "new" kind of tackling.
Let me give you an example.
In a game I attended, I believe in Lebanon, when my son Brian was in school, a player was announced, without legs.  He stood up to the others hips, and was on the front line.  Time and again he was facing huge players, like my son, and over and over, he toppled huge players.  We need to think out of the box.  Show a DVD of a game with him tackling.
Get our players thinking, running faster, working smarter.  Now they only see what their limits are.  Let them see that the sky is the limit.

Wes was upset, the coach said the punt turnover was his fault.  He did not know Kenny was going to punt.  "Kenny never punts," he said.  Why did he punt?  It was a miscommunication, and would have corrected this run.   He was ready for a certain pass play, and the punt surprised him instead.  Wes was so upset, he does not want to stay in football.

Winning is not everything.  Maybe if the coaches and the parents look closely at the season SO FAR, see where we are going, we will realize the kids have done so well.  They show frustration in losing, and we need to help them look beyond the score.  They are working so hard, and just because the score shows the other team got a lot of touchdowns, does not mean we are losers.
We are fighters, and plan to continue to learn the game.
It is the quitters that are the losers.