Let’s knock out some additional admin responsibilities:

Prepare for your coaches’ meeting with questions and requests for clarification. Are picks legal? What constitutes flag guarding? Etc. 

Gather family schedule conflicts to submit to the league. We’ve added a handy matrix to our roster template here. 

Now, onto football.‍

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Player evaluations

You’ve hopefully had a few practices and can start getting a feel for skill sets and development. At the younger ages, we decided to put each kid in their best position to succeed, even if it meant players might not be rotating as much through positions. Our thinking was to get kids to simplify the game, build some confidence, and really start enjoying themselves. If we could start with that foundation, we’d have inspired kids coming back for future seasons to continue to work on development. 

To make it easy, we’ve added a template for player evaluations you can use. 
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How to open practice

Coach Kay would definitely tell me I spend too much time talking in practice, but I try to keep it as brief as possible. I think we got a lot out of spending some time together just talking about how we are doing and teaching them bigger lessons about the game and life. 🤷

1. Ask them how they felt about the last practice or game
2. Focus on the positives
3. Get them to flush their mistakes (PCA)
4. Tell them why you’re proud of them. This is an opportunity to reinforce your key themes. Ours were:
   • Work hard
   • Work together
   • Be your best
5. Give out awards
   • Candy for interceptions
   • Buttons for offensive and defensive MVPs (use Sticker Mule and sign up for their deal emails)
6. Word of the week – A reminder of what last week’s word was and introduce this week’s word. Some of the words we used:
   • Accountability
   • Resilience
   • Momentum
   • Intensity
   • Toughness
   • Humility
   • Pride
   • Dependability
   • Confidence (I asked the kids what this word meant to them, and I loved the three responses they gave me: “Believe in yourself; Believe in your teammates; Be brave.” They provided better definitions than I planned to, and we rolled with it).
7. Practice plan and schedule
8. Closing
   • What did we learn?
   • Flush the mistakes
   • Who saw a teammate do something great?
   • Reminder of the word of the week and how we will be looking for it during the next practice/game
   • Break down – We pick two players who stood out to break us down
       - Bear Down on me
       - Bear Down on three
       - 1,2,3 Bear Down

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