Yeah, I've been unfairly picking on you. I was wrong and I apologize.
Still, I get the feeling that your primary objectives are:
1) Winning
No, not winning but at least trying to be competitive. I was most irritated thinking about how unfair it was to all the kids sweating and bleeding, all the parents time and money, all the other coaches time and effort wasted so little Johnny can be a QB.
2) Some other kid playing QB
Absolutely, for all the reasons above. And I fail to see anything wrong with that.
And that's fine since it's a "competitive" league, but even in a competitive league, I think the primary concerns should be:
1) Kids have fun
2) Kids develop a love of the game and want to play next year
3) Kids developing skills and physical fitness
Granted, winning is often a major part of having fun, but it's generally not as important to the kids as it is the parents. And I may be wrong about you, it's just the impression I get from your comments.
Not concerned about winning, but having success. Success is defined by me to include the 3 items you list above but also,and this is more specific for lineman types, to understand and take pride in your role and understand how it helps the team. We had a kid who was 5'4" and weighed 225 lbs, just this year he ran a 9 second 40, he is a lineman and would never be anything but a lineman. And he is fantastic at it, a freaking road grader in every sense of the word. He needs to feel pride in being a lineman and own it and work to improve.
I also think you found a shitty organization/situation, and that's unfortunate. How many other coaches were there? If it was really as bad as you make it seem, you should have gotten the other coaches and quit and pulled your kids in protest. You also should have complained to the organization president and every other board member or whoever's in charge - punishing a parent's kids when questioned is unacceptable behavior and he shouldn't have been allowed to coach.
Yes I agree, and I knew alot of this going in. But somehow you convince yourself that it wont be as bad as you think. Another guy I was friends with, and whose son is a legit QB, saw the writing on the wall and went to another org. in another town. I let my son make the decision where he wanted to play and he chose to stay. So I guess I just tried to grin and bear it much of the time.
Also, good coaches should be able to defend their actions or answer questions they don't want to hear without acting like a child.
This appears to be another attempt to instigate an emotional response for your own gratification (v. weird behavior btw). However, I will address it in a show of good faith, how you choose to respond will determine the future course of this conversation. This, I assume, was in response to my questioning your qualifications to ask your question. I wont back off of this but perhaps I can soften it. You need to admit to yourself that you are arguing from a position of ignorance. There have been no less than three people in this thread give a valid reason why your solution would not work within the framework we are working in. It is probably time to move on to another point. If you are not able to do this I will accept this as an admission your are not debating in good faith and again, we can both move on.
My original question was genuine. How are you helping the kid you're trying to "hide"? You said yourself "the league we are in is very up front about being a competitive league." So why play him or even allow him to be a part of the team?
OK, here is the deal. It is a player safety issue. In football you have to meet the contact, meaning if you are going to get hit you need to hit back. If you don't there is a much greater chance of getting hurt. The kids who are timid will not meet the contact, they close their eyes and stand there or turn their back. In practice you can protect them through managing the matchups but in games there is no way to do that. Once the other team locates them they start getting lit up. And you have to play them because there are league participation requirements. So you "hide" them. As for just kicking them off the team and refunding the money, I am not comfortable with that, it would feel like giving up on the kid. Some do eventually get it and start getting involved, some even in the last game.
Yep, we broke out into positions for most of the practice time. My son is through with youth football now and having seen it I agree that there is not much use for tackle football for younger kids. I think one year before you get into middle school would be advantageous because it seemed to take a full year for a kid to get acclimated to the contact. Flag football is probably a better option for the kids that are younger than 6th grade.
We really aren't that far apart. I just think flag football should be played even later than you do - you can make it competitive. Kids in middle school still have a ton of development left and I think it's ridiculous to force them to begin specializing a position so young. Plus you would have fewer players on a team leading to more teams and therefore more reps for everyone. You'd find WR's that may have been stuck at line in middle school, you would have options at QB beyond the fat kid whose dad was the coach, and fewer lifetime blows to the head for everyone.
IMO a forward-thinking district/program/state could successfully implement a goal of no contact until high school, and begin gradually delaying contact to see how it impacts kids at the varsity level. Yes, it likely takes a year to adjust to contact, but if you could get a lot of people to sign on, I think it would be immensely popular with parents. It's a far-fetched idea that would probably take even more damaging research about head injuries to happen, though.
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Maybe - there would def. be a lot of resistance to it. And if you consider that the vast majority of careers end after high school, 6 years does not seem like too long for full contact.
