While many 3rd grade teams place their final touches on their pre-season training, many will move on and no longer continue to work on or review fundamental techniques. Not in our case.
We just completed our fourth week of practice, totaling 18 practices and approximately 32 hours of fundamental training. Training that included the introduction to:
- Stances
- Shoulder Blocking
- Tackling Circuit
- Throwing
- Hand-offs
- Change of Direction
- Moving Laterally
- Receiver Routes
- Cadence
- Several Plays
- 6-point progression of blocking
- Quarterback/Center Exchange
- Back Pedal & Pursuit
- Offensive Holes & Defensive Gaps
- Backpedaling
- Form Tackling
- Positions
- Catching
- Running with a Football
- Huddle Organization
For the most part all 34 players were introduced and taught all 20 of the abovementioned skills. This took time and did not look like the other practice sessions that were being conducted for grades 4 thru 8 on surrounding fields. Several times I took a step back and observed how the other grade levels were training and being taught. The contrast between our third grade team and the older grades was quite drastic. It was if we were in the midst of a time warp. While we kept practices fast paced and fun, you would have thought we were back in the fifties when you witnessed the older grade levels practice with laps around the field, static stretching (while coaches joked and talked amongst themselves), suicides, nutcrackers, kids consistently on the ground, lines 10 to 16 deep, etc. As a matter of fact I saw a coach smoking a cigarette during practice.
With so many advancements in almost every aspect of our lives for the past three to four decades why is it that we continue to introduce, teach, and play sports as if we lived in the distant past? In a day and age where our own kids can receive information with a click of a mouse we continue to advance the youth sports experience at a snails pace. Ironically we want to rush kids as fast as possible into an adult world of competition that they cannot fully comprehend or succeed in with the type of inadequate training and speed by which we force upon them.
I'm proud of how we introduced this group of 34 young impressionable boys to a complicated adult game that we continue to keep at a 8 year old level. Throughout these four weeks the entire coaching staff, including myself, have been tempted to speed up the learning and push the envelope on contact drills in order to prepare them for "real games". Yet we've been able to hold back, keeping it simple, and slowly progressing them through the techniques of tackling and blocking, rather than forcing them to experience the full impact of all-out hitting. Instead we've worked tediously on the techniques while frequently sprinkling in fun, non-orthodox games that trick them into conditioning and overall athletic development training.
Will this pay-off when we begin to play other teams that most likely have been knocking the living daylights out of each other at every practice? As we quickly approach the start of the season, only time will tell.