More Stats for NOT Running the High School Offense in Youth Football:
Here are a few stats for you youth football coaches feeling the pressure to run the local High School offense:
Let’s say you have a team size of 25 kids. National studies from Michigan State University and the National Youth Sports Alliance say less than 30% of your players will play High School football. So now, out of 25 kids you have 7 players that according to the studies go on to play High School ball. Of those 7, not all will play at the local Public High School, they may move, play for a different local High School, or they may play for a Private School, let’s say you lose 1 player there. Of the 6 remaining, after they go through puberty some will grow and others won’t. That skinny wingback that fills out to a slow 250 pounds is no longer a wingback in High School, kids change. The big hulking center you have doesn’t gain a pound and ends up playing fullback. At least half of your players will play a position different than what they did in Youth Ball.
With the weight rules in place for most leagues that restrict large players to the interior line positions, your big players are usually not allowed to touch the ball. So forget about the big players getting any training at receiver, tight end or running back, positions they may very well play in High School. In 2006 two of my former Omaha players, offensive guards James D and Ronnie C both played fullback for Omaha North High varsity as freshmen.Ronnie even ran for a TD in one big game. North has over 2500 students, made it to the state semi-finals, had two DI scholarship players and a parade all-american (Niles Paul) on their team. Neither of these former offensive guards ever got to touch the football for my teams, as both were over the running back weight limits. Neither had played in the backfield or ran this schools offense, yet they did very well at their new positions in a brand new offense. I doubt Omaha Norths head coach cared one iota that these kids had never run his offense. He gets paid to coach football and train football players, not sit back and call football plays from a tower with kids that are already trained for him by a bunch of youth coach volunteers.
So now we are at 3 kids of the 25 that would be playing High School ball and playing the very same position on the High School team as they did at the Youth Football level. If you decided to make the choice for the High School offense for the benefit of just 3 players at the expense of the 22 others on your team, it would not benefit anywhere near the majority of your players.