There Is No Substitute For Experience

This is my second year coaching youth football, as an assistant coach under the tutelage of coach head coach Johnny Morris. I am no way near as good as “Coach Johnny,” but I’m working on it.

Coaching youth football is always been an interest for me. In the mid ’90s when I was living in California, I looked into coaching in a youth football league there. I discovered, however, that it is very difficult to break into the youth football coaching without a son playing. That was true even here in Spanish Fort when I tried to break into the youth football coaching scene two years ago. My seven-year-old daughter was cheering for one of the Spanish Fort youth football teams, and it recalled in me the interest I had in coaching. I spent the off-season trying to find a head coach who would be willing to take me on as an assistant. To my surprise there must have been a glut of assistant coaches, because there wasn't much demand for a new one – especially one who did not have an all-star son. I volunteered to the commissioner of our sports association and was told that there wasn't really a mechanism for non-father coaches to coach. Finally, Greg Walker, whom I had coached Upward basketball with, hooked me up with Coach Johnny Morris, and Coach Johnny was good enough to give me a chance.

I sure am glad he did. I have been reading football books — coaching football books specifically – since the early 1990s, but there is no substitute for experience.

• You can come up with all sorts of team plans on paper, but it is much much more difficult installing your offenses and defensive plans on six, seven, and eight-year-olds. If you number your holes in the standard way – odd numbers on the left, even numbers on the right – you may be surprised to learn that your offense is already too complicated for the younger players on your team, who haven't learned the difference between odd and even yet. On the other hand, your older players will have no problem with that. What do you do?
• How long do you spend with the player who just can't get into a good three-point stance? The book answer – the easy answer – is "as long as it takes." But you've got to balance league-mandated maximum practice times and twenty-odd other boys who need training, too.
• How do you handle the kid who cries after taking his first hit? How about the kid who cries whenever he gets hit?

There are better youth coaches out there than me, and most are better because they have more experience. I'm learning as I'm going, but I know I won't get better without experience. Just as the players need to practice football to get better, we coaches need to practice coaching.