Here is an email I received from youth coach Steve Conrad

I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you how much I have enjoyed your football books and how much they have helped me. I had never coached youth football before a friend asked me to assist him with a 9-10 year old team last year. I told him I didn't kow anything about coaching youth football. He insisted that I get your book Coaching Youth Football. I did, and it was great. In fact, I can't imagine anyone just beginning to coach getting their feet on the ground with a better book. Since then, I have read your Clock Management book, Single Wing for youth, and the Gap-Air-Mirror Defense for Youth Football book. I am preparing for my second season. Last year I was responsible for the defense and I am again this year. I am looking forward to another season working with the kids.

By the way, with your defense, we had a great year. We went 7-1, losing our only game in the championship game. The defense gave up 6, 9, 12, 0, 0, 0, 12, and 14 points respectively in the eight games. We recovered 19 turnovers while only giving up five the whole season. Two of those were in the last game. In addition, your advice about scouting reports and analysis of the performance of the team and players in practice and the games was invaluable. We used many of your charts.

A few observations about the GAM:

It is very simple and the players understood it. They liked the scouting reports and practicing against something they would see in a game. When they began having success with the first game, it was contagious.

I made a mistake with our ends and linebackers, but because we had good success I didn't catch it until the end of the season when we struggled during the championship series. We had real good athletes at the ends and smaller faster players at the linebacking position. This year I think I'll be more likely to put more experienced, bigger players at the linebackers and more obedient players at the ends.

We had great success with smaller, minimum play players as down linemen. They were some of the best on the team at following the instructions of staying low. We usually left our stud at left tackle the whole game and rotated two players at the time at the other three positions. We tried to leave at least one starter on each side of the line at all times. We completely sealed off the quarterback sneak and all plays between the tackles. It was great as the other teams were very frustrated.

Our corner and ML play was great, with speed and savvy guys starting and backing up. Four interceptions came from the guys listening to the scouting reports and playing assignment football. Two were in a game that was scoreless going into the last quarter. The defensive end read the play and dropped into coverage on the tight end drifting into the flat. Interception and TD. The second was the ML playing deep and coming up on a pass to the TE. The LB was in position for coverage, the QB had to toss the ball over the LBs head, the TE let the ball bounce off of his outstretched hands, and the ML caught the missed pass and streaked 60 yards down the sideline for a TD. Beautiful.

We only gave up six plays of more than 20 yards the entire season-two in each game that we gave up 12 or more points on defense. Four of these plays were because the end didn't keep contain. The up side was that every team we played had to drive the ball a long way to score. The longest drive of the year against us was 70 yards and that ended in an interception. It was interesting to see how the constant pounding by our defense eventually caused a huge amount of frustration for the opponents. This resulted in more mistakes by our opponents (mental and turnovers) as well as their running backs just getting tired of being tackled by four, five, and six guys every play (our pursuit was excellent).

It is hard to get boys to tackle properly. The drills went well, but in a game, they would revert to a lot of sloppy, high tackling. On KO's, though,we had one guy who always brought OOHs and AHHs from the crowd with sparkling, below the waist tackles. It was a pretty sight.

Your advice about repetitions was right on target. We used a spread offensewith a slotback and wideout on each side and one fullback. We didn't have a stud at FB (kept searching, but never found one-our league has a 90 pound limit for non-linemen). As a result, we developed a very sophisticated and successful passing game. But the key was QB and receiver reps. Our QB was a smart 10 year old who could drop the ball on a dime on 20-30 yard fade patterns. In the next to the last game of the season, he had 221 yards passing, including two perfectly thrown and caught 30+ yard fades. However, nobody should let this go to their head. You are right about youth passing-it is very, very hard and inconsistent. We just happened to have several things come together at one time to make it work. It came back to haunt us in the championship game as he was off target and our running game couldn't pick up the slack. I think this year we are planning to use the single wing. The spread offense is good at the HS level because of all you can do with it. At this level, though, it is hard to get the dominating numerical matchups for a consistent ground game.

Your advice about being tough on players committing penalties was also right on target. In the first pre-season game we had three face mask penalties, one holding penalty, and one clip. In the second game, we had two face maskpenalties. At that point we made a rule that anyone getting a face mask penalty was on the bench. We had only two more the whole season and one wasa question mark. It is amazing how a loss of playing time gets a 10 year old boy's attention.

Finally, one real success story. In the second pre-season game, I gave a LB an assignment during a TO. He said, NO, I don't want to do that. At the next practice, I informed him that he was no longer a starter. I needed to depend on players that would do what I asked. Also, he needed to learn thatpeople are successful not because they do what they want to do, but they do what they have to do. I told him he could be a starter again, but he would have to show me what he could do and play his way back into the lineup. His father was one of the assistants and he agreed whole heartedly. I later learned that there was a lot of crying for several days at his house. However, this young man rose to the challenge. By the end of the year, he was one of our most versatile players, playing DE, LB, and FB. He always seemed to be just the guy we needed to fill in for someone who had suddenly gotten amnesia and forgotten his assignments. Whenever we called on him, hewas ready. In fact, as FB, he was slower than a calendar, but he carried out his fakes better than anyone else in the league. On some of our game tapes,he has defenders chasing him when he acts like he has the ball and the QB didn't get within five feet of him. It is really comical at times when the defender realizes he is chasing someone who doesn't have the ball and the real play is on the other side of the field. It is even more comical when it happens several times a game with the same player. At our year end banquet, his mother rose with tears in her eyes and gave a testimonial about the coaches and the positive impact we had on her son. While we had a great year, that was the icing on the cake.

Thanks for the books, great insights, and your hard work in coaching and developing youth. In the final analysis, we all want to win the games, but the most important thing is the kids. Your books not only give us good coaching guidelines, but they also prove again that being tough but fair with kids, having high expectations for their performance physically, mentally, and as sportsmen, being positive role models by working hard ourselves, and showing them that we care about them as players and people are not out of style. Indeed, those are the things that they will build on for the rest oftheir lives.

Thanks again, and God bless you and your family.

Steve Conrad Assistant Coach Tigers Pee Wee Team Rome, Georgia

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