Customer Reviews

Coaching Youth Football

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This is a fantastic book for coaches that already know quite a bit about football, but are not sure how to best transfer their knowledge to a bunch of 6-12 year old kids. The book advocates a "games approach" to teaching football. It keeps the kids interested and thinking. It has worked great for me. When it is time to switch to the next teaching drill/game I nearly always have multiple kids asking, "Can we do it one more time?" We worked on kick off and kick off returns for 45 minutes yesterday using the "games approach". The kids learned a lot and they were begging to do it again. It was 95 degrees and these kids are begging to run the full length of the field over and over again!!! If you are fairly comfortable with your football knowledge, but not sure about coaching techniques, this is a fantastic book. Even if you are an experienced coach, you might what to look at this fresh, innovative approach to coaching kids.

I agree with the review on the back cover of the book, "It should be mandatory reading for every youth football coach in America." I was lucky enough to see this book at the library and then read it before I read the other Amazon.com reviews, which I was amazed to see were very negative. The emphasis of the book is certainly not the X's and O's of football. Rather, it is on how to effectively coach kids. How to communicate. How to teach skills. How to discipline and deal with misbehavior. How to deal with parents. The proper emphasis to put on winning ("athletes first, winning second"). How to make practice fun. The importance of listening and treating each player as an individual. This book is right on the money and is a very valuable book. It written by people who clearly care about our youth.