First time coaching (youth flag football)

[staylor26]

Ages 4-6. Had my first conditioning practice today and found out my entire team hasn't ever played before, so needless to say, I have my work cut out for me.

Any tips?

[morphius]

Don't be the reason that any of the kids quit the sport.

Good luck man, should be interesting coaching kids that young. Youth soccer was bad enough and that is mostly herding cats.

[Mr_Tomahawk]

HGH

[Seanathon]

I literally went through this with 5th and 6th graders this year. I'd never coached & they had never played together before. We had 7 games, started off 0-5, gained momentum and got better each week. Then we absolutely smashed the last 2 teams we played. Despite it not being a "success" of a season at 2-5, boy did it feel good to see them thrive at the end. I stand by the advice of "making sure they have fun".
Offense: Keep it simple, then layer. Normal routes and runs, then add motions and reverses as they progressively understand. Install 3 or 4 plays, then add variations of the same play depending on their skills. I've got a playbook I put together; if you want to see it PM me.
Defense: work on mostly fundamental skills like tackle (flag grab) drills. A big one is sideline drill, where they have to force the ball carrier to choose between out of bounds or cutting inside and get their flag grabbed.
Coaching Tip: This sounds so ridiculous but its probably the best leg up I learned all season; if you have an assistant coach or parent available, make them solely responsible for any and all substitutions during games. It makes ALL the difference between plays for your own sanity. You'll never feel worse than when you snap at a bunch of children because they are ALL asking to play different positions while you're trying to get plays called.

[Mr_Tomahawk]

In all seriousness; have thick skin. The parents are the worst part of coaching.

Make sure the kids have fun. I have coached my boys flag/tackle teams the last 6 years. Parents put a lot of unnecessary pressure on kids these days.

[wazu]

Was thinking about this age and how challenging it was and had a few more thoughts -

For this age I would make sure every kid gets the ball at least once each game. I used to have every kid play offense one half, defense the other. I'd bring a paper roster with list of positions for each half and we'd run through a quick meeting on it before each half started. I would keep the roster on my clipboard and put a tick next to each kid's name each time they carried the ball. I always figured if they at least got to carry it once it was one of those things they could talk about with their families after the game. Our better athletes would get the ball more because I do still have a competitive streak. But every kid at least had a chance to be the hero. (And results were often surprising.)

Offense

The 4 offensive plays on my sheet at that age I think were 3 run plays (RB or WR end around, etc.), and one pass. The one pass play that was a very short rollout/flood right that usually went to the center, but with other routes that were available.

Defense

Main thing to emphasize in addition to protecting the sidelines is to be very aggressive on pulling flags. Getting in the runner's way and grabbing the flag near the hip. You have to really preach an attitude of physicality on this. That may sound counterintuitive to flag football but if kids aren't physically aggressive you see missed flag pulls and long TDs. Get the team fired up about this and really celebrate good flag pulls. Every once in awhile we'd have a collision or a penalty for something that was a little rough, but nobody got hurt and I didn't lose my mind watching us whiff (as much).

Practice

We spent most of practice in scrimmage. Kid's would play the positions on offense and defense that they would be in on game day. We'd spend maybe 15 minutes doing primarily 2 drills - a flag pull drill and a handoff drill.

[blake5676]

I've coached soccer in that age range as well as T-ball and now coach pitch baseball. We actually just had our last game of the season last night.

4-6 is a REALLY tough age range. The attention spans are just basically zero at that point, so when you tell them to do something, or to line up, less than a minute later half of your players will be walking around or playing in the dirt or talking to each other etc.

So....my main piece of advice is to ask as many dads (or moms) to volunteer to help at practice. The more adults you have to keep order the better. Otherwise you're honestly just screwed bc unless you're an asshole, you're not going to be yelling at the kids when they don't listen. That's just what kids do.

That being said, it's pretty damn fun too! I told my son I'm willing to coach until sports get more serious, then I'm only helping out and not running the show. But you WILL see them get better through the course of the season and it's pretty rewarding. So no specific flag football recommendations but in general just make sure to accept as much help as you can and have a beer or two after practice and laugh about how frustrating the previous hour was

[wazu]

Originally Posted by blake5676

So....my main piece of advice is to ask as many dads (or moms) to volunteer to help at practice. The more adults you have to keep order the better. Otherwise you're honestly just screwed bc unless you're an asshole, you're not going to be yelling at the kids when they don't listen. That's just what kids do.

Good advice. Managing the assistants is a big part of it. Give them each a role. If you have a really good one make them defensive coordinator so you can work some with the offense when they're not on the field. Another good role is a parent that is the "ref" for practice.

[luv]

From a parent of a child who played flag football, I would suggest a flag pulling drill. Maybe have one or two kids run down the center of the field, and have a few at a time run after them to try to pull the flag. The biggest problem my kiddo had was getting flags. He had the speed and would catch up to a player in no time, but he was afraid to reach in to grab the flag.

And I definitely agree with clean snaps and hand offs. Overall, just remember to keep it simple. It's hard to add on to plays that they haven't mastered yet.