Central Arkansas Pop Warner Football & Cheer

Youth Sports Nutrition

2009-08-18T10:11:00.003-05:00

One of the most common questions parents ask regarding their child’s nutrition during sports is what is the healthiest thing for my child to eat and drink before playing sports?

With our family of athletes, we have learned that offering high – carbohydrate foods (also called complex carbohydrates) versus high protein and fatty foods two to three hours before a game is very important to maintain the energy needed for them. Some examples of high-carbohydrate foods are foods such as pastas, breads and cereal which are digested quicker than high-protein and fatty foods. Unfortunately, most children, and adults, forget just how important nutrition is to good health and athletic performance.

Fruit is actually an excellent source of complex carbohydrates and fluids and can be eaten one to two hours before a sporting event. My children enjoy raw, dried and canned fruits or fruit juice before we head out to a game.

Fluids are extremely important, before, during and after a game and my children have discovered that staying hydrated makes for a better performance. For elementary and middle-school aged children, eight ounces of water before, during and after the sporting event is extremely important, especially if the outdoor temperatures are high. During a game, athletes should be allowed to take fluid breaks when needed to maintain their best and safest performance, and of course, caffeinated and carbonated beverages are not recommended.

If your child tires easily in practice and appears irritable, and their performance suddenly declines, dehydration may be the cause. The following are more signs that your child is dehydrated:

Dry lips and tongue
Sunken eyes
Bright colored or dark urine or urine with a strong odor
Infrequent urination
Apathy or lack of energy
Thirst

So pack up those water bottles and sport drinks (and don’t forget the fruit) and head out after a healthy meal full of high-carbohydrates to enjoy your child’s sporting activity.

Is Youth Football Safe?

2009-07-16T09:53:00.005-05:00

Good Equipment Is the Key

"Kids do get hurt paying football,". "But if you put a kid in the right equipment, teach him proper techniques, and play him against kids who are the same age and weight, it's a pretty safe sport."

Fortunately, football equipment for kids has never been better. The same companies who manufacture equipment for the colleges and pro teams make equipment for kids. Beyond the standard helmet, pads (shoulder, knee, thigh, hips, tailbone), and rubber cleats, Pop Warner requires that players wear vests to protect their ribs and long Lycra girdles over all the padding to keep the pads from slipping.

"Pop Warner requires the use of helmets that carry the NOCSAE (National Operating Committee for Standards for Athletic Equipment) seal of approval". "Every youth league should send their helmets out each year to be reconditioned, pressure tested, sanitized, and re-certified."

"In the end, what coaches have to remember about age-group football," is that it's all about providing recreation for kids in a safe environment. The score doesn't matter."

Three factors help prevent kids from being seriously hurt when they collide with another player. These three factors explain why age/weight group football -- when taught and managed correctly -- is actually less dangerous, statistically speaking, than soccer.

1. Proper equipment minimizes the danger of serious injuries.

2. Proper technique helps kids avoid getting hurt. "players should be taught that you should never use your helmet to make a tackle,". You lead with your shoulder.

3. FORCE = mass x acceleration, and kids don't generate much force when paired up by age/weight.

Team Tryouts

2009-07-08T09:46:00.005-05:00

For those leagues that require tryouts prior to participating, this blog is directed towards you. So many coaches only have winning on their mind and are focused on doing so by any and all means necessary. I want to remind you all that knowing how to lose is equally as important!

With football season right around the corner, many issues start to come about for the upcoming season. One thing that is on everyone's minds is tryout week. Today in sports you often see teams that are clearly superior to others at that age group. Tryout week is very important in determining how the rest of the season will go. It is very important during this week to find a system on rating players, and being able to split players up evenly.

One way to conduct tryouts and come out with equally talented teams is to use a player ranking system. Every player has a core skill set. Judge each player on a 1 to 5 scale on how well they can perform each skill. You want to look at a wide range of skills such as speed, tackling, throwing, and blocking. At the end of tryouts take the average of all of the players skills. In order to spread even out the talent within a certain age level, create a rating scale for the players.

What this means is take the overall 5 skill players and place them evenly throughout the league, then place the 4's evenly and so on till every player is placed. This almost guarantees a league with each team being equal. With equal teams players can only get better and will make for a more competitive fall.

The only other way is to just take the players blindly or at random and coach them up. Remember to treat all players equal and not just center your attention around your "super athletes".

Arkansas Ranks 2nd in Rate of Obese Children

2009-07-01T12:15:00.003-05:00

**Report from Arkansas Business***

Arkansas ranks second in the nation in its percentage of obese and overweight children (37.5 percent) and is tied with Ohio at 10th place in the percentage of obese adults (28.6 percent), a new report says.

Adult obesity rates increased in 23 states, according to the report, "F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America 2009." Mississippi was No. 1 on the list for both adult and child obesity, the report, released Wednesday by the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said.

None of the states saw a decline in the rate of obesity in the past year. And two-thirds of American adults are either obese or overweight, the report said.
"Our health care costs have grown along with our waist lines," Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America's Health, said in a news release issued by the trust. "The obesity epidemic is a big contributor to the skyrocketing health care costs in the United States. How are we going to compete with the rest of the world if our economy and workforce are weighed down by bad health?"

Mississippi had the highest rate of adult obesity at 32.5 percent, making it the fifth year in a row that the state topped the list. Four states now have rates above 30 percent, including Mississippi, West Virginia (31.2 percent), Alabama (31.1 percent) and Tennessee (30.2 percent). Eight of the 10 states with the highest percentage of obese adults are in the South. Colorado continued to have the lowest percentage of obese adults at 18.9 percent.

Adult obesity rates now exceed 25 percent in 31 states and exceed 20 percent in 49 states and Washington, D.C. In 1991, no state had an obesity rate above 20 percent. In 1980, the national average for adult obesity was 15 percent. Sixteen states experienced an increase for the second year in a row, and 11 states experienced an increase for the third straight year.
Mississippi also had the highest rate of obese and overweight children (ages 10 to 17) at 44.4 percent. Minnesota and Utah had the lowest rate at 23.1 percent. Eight of the 10 states with the highest rates of obese and overweight children are in the South. Childhood obesity rates have more than tripled since 1980.

The report also calls for a National Strategy to Combat Obesity. The effort would define roles and responsibilities for federal, state and local governments and promote collaboration among businesses, communities, schools and families. It would seek to advance policies that
● Provide healthy foods and beverages to students at schools;
● Increase the availability of affordable healthy foods in all communities;
● Increase the frequency, intensity and duration of physical activity
● Improve access to safe and healthy places to live, work, learn and play;
● Limit TV and computer screen time; and
● Encourage employers to provide workplace wellness programs.

Taking over a new program

2009-06-24T10:02:00.000-05:00

Most youth coaches coach their sons for a couple of seasons and are done with it. They move on into other things; take the promotion at work, change to a different job, whatever. A rare few, however, can't find an antidote for the coaching bug. There are meetings where you can confess alcoholism, but so far I've yet to find a gathering of people in sweats and ball caps where you can stand up and say, "My name is Derek and I love teaching young people to tackle each other." For those coaches, taking over a program is inevitable at some point in their careers. They'll either move from youth to a school program, (possibly vice versa), start a new organization from scratch, or otherwise find a way to bring decades of experience and study to a program that desperately needs it. Sadly, a large number of those programs will be bad ones at the start. They'll have seemingly intractable problems. Remember, unless he's moving to a better job somewhere, most coaches don't leave willingly. If he's enjoying even modest success, the average coach would rather hang out where he is than go on a job search and move his family around. Which means you're going to be walking into a difficult situation, and there's no easy way to untangle the Gordian Knot you're facing. The previous coach might have been beloved, especially if he left behind a good program, and you have to fill some large shoes. You can expect to hear someone use the phrase, "That's not how we did it last year," at least once per week for the first season. This blog is specifically written with an eye towards taking over a school program that has not been more than moderately successful in recent years. You already know that you need to win the trust and respect of your players. Remember that anything you tell them they are accountable for, you have to hold them accountable for, or you'll lose their trust. There's a saying from the Armed Forces: "The enlisted man will forgive his officers any indiscretion save two: cowardice and inconsistency." It applies to football, too. To begin with, I would look up the students that played football last season as sophomores and juniors, and I would also put some focus on the junior highs that feed into your program (or on the youth programs that feed into your junior high program). One situation that drives me insane is youth programs and junior highs competing for the same players. I don't think that many football players have the physical ability to play for two teams at once, and most school coaches seem to have it in for the youth programs. I've been told twice by high school programs that they aren't interested in letting me coach any of their freshmen. Personally, I think this is a little dumb. At large high schools, some of those freshmen that could start for the youth program (or at least be guaranteed a certain number of plays because of the Minimum Play Rules) spend entire seasons sitting on the bench. Many of them quit after that one year, and never really get better at football. (It may or may not be relevant, but both school programs had losing traditions.)If you're the school coach, consider what is best for the player, not your program. More often than not, if you encourage a younger player to play for his youth program, he's going to have more success, stay in football longer, and may even turn into a good player for you down the stretch. If you've taken the time to respectfully work with the local youth programs as I mentioned in a previous blog, you should have no problem with the idea of letting another coach develop your younger talent.When it comes to the lower levels, junior highs if you're a high school coach and youth programs if you're a middle school coach, I would be campaigning harder than Hillary to make sure that every player who even walks past a football at Wal-Mart comes out for the new team. (In fact, that's a good recruiting tool, especially for youth football. Ask the manager of the local sporting goods and department stores if you can hang a flier on their rack of footballs advertising your program. Also put up fliers in the local gyms, on bulletin boards at grocery stores and coffee shops, and the like. You can also make sandwich boards like real estate agents use for open houses quite cheaply. Get permission to put them up in front of community events, like town meetings, high school plays, farmer's markets, and things like that. Be creative. Radio stations and cable access channels are required to offer Public Service Announcement time-- go to the stations and ask if you can put together a thirty second commercial for your program. Make sure there is a sign for your program on each of the main roads into your town. Stuff post office boxes with mailers. There are dozens, if not hundreds of things you can do, most quite cheaply or even free with a little work.)

The High School Coach is Interfering With Your Son's Education

2009-06-24T09:52:00.000-05:00

I just had a discussion with a high school football coach of a local program who has completely failed to understand the reason and purpose for middle school and junior high football. Seriously, he's lost his damn mind. His premise, which is one I've never endorsed, by the way, is that he "needs" (His word, and one that indicates how effective a coach he must be.) the middle schools to run his system so that he can stay competitive. Go back and read that again, too. I'm going to shred that argument piece by piece. I encourage you to print this blog out and take it to the next meeting you have with your coaching organization where they try to tell you that you must run what the high school runs. The following is a word-for-word depiction of his side of our conversation and my accompanying replies, to the best of my memory. I don't think he is going to put me on his Christmas card list.Point one: "I need the middle school to run the same things I run..."Counterpoint: Why does a coaching professional paid a $3,000 stipend to coach at a Class AAA school in Washington State 'need' a middle school coach to prepare players for his program? Why is said coaching 'professional' unable to adequately prepare those players himself with his eight man coaching staff, $1.4 million field, $35,000 weight room, $6,000 film study equipment, and approximately nine weeks of off-season summer and spring training time?Why does it a fall to a middle school program with a two-man staff making $900 between them, broken sled, antiquated equipment, prohibition against scouting (because it leads to 'overcompetitiveness,' whatever the hell that is), eight week season, and almost zero support from the district to teach a system you were hired to bring to us? Aren't you supposed to be the expert on this system? Isn't that why you were hired? If not, then why were you hired?Point Two: "...so that when they get to me they already know the system." Counterpoint: In your previous coaching history you have never remained in any position longer than four years. Your average is three seasons. Does this not indicate that it is useless to train a group of seventh graders to run your system when odds are high that you will have moved on to a greener pasture somewhere by the time they make it to the varsity level? Furthermore, I refer you to my previous counterpoint. If you're such a damn expert on the system, why the hell do you need someone else to teach it for you? Additionally, this middle school feeds three high schools, one of which is in another district. What makes you think you're even going to get enough athletes from this program to your high school to make this a worthwhile pursuit? According to the research at JACK REED'S WEBSITE as well as the NYSCA statistics, fewer than 24% of youth football players go on to play high school football. What do you get by dividing 24% by three, and is it worth damaging the success of the middle school program?Point Three: "At this level that's the only way I can stay competitive."Counterpoint: No, as a matter of fact it's not. Tomales High School in Northern California has no feeder program and remains competitive-- and more so-- every year. Puyallup High in Washington has six feeder schools, only one of which runs the same system they run (and not because it is required). They consistently finish in the top 25 in Washington AAAA rankings. For every school you point to that is successful with this method, I can point to one that is just as successful without it, and probably two that are not successful with it. Furthermore, at what point did anyone start to care about your ability to remain competitive? You are not the one on the field, and this game doesn't belong to you. It belongs to the players.Point Four: "Middle school football doesn't really count, anyway."Counterpoint: It counts to the middle school players who sweat and bleed to be successful. It counts to the parents who pay the bills so their sons can compete safely and successfully. It counts to the teachers who come to me looking for ways to use my sports programs to motivate students who are struggling academically. It counts to the administration that tries every year to justify keeping a program with sliding numbers due to lack of success. In short, the only person that really thinks it doesn't count is you, and the only reason you feel that way is that you're not associated with the middle school in any capacity other than demanding that they do your job for you.Point Five: "It's only there to develop players for high school game."Counterpoint: That's an interesting and totally false point that indicates a complete lack of understanding of the role of athletics in the scholastic environment. Athletics has a clearly-defined purpose in school. It helps to teach life-lessons that can't be worked into the curriculum any other way. At the middle school level it also serves as a hook to assist struggling or de-motivated students who need something to cling to in order to keep the grades and learn the behaviors and social interactions that will allow them to be successful in life. Preparing players to play football at the high school level is only an insignificant by-product of a successful middle school program. Ideally a middle school program should prepare student-athletes for life at the high school level.Point Six: "Besides, you should run my stuff because it works!"Counterpoint: You'll pardon me if I disagree. You've run two different systems at each of your last four schools. In the last six years you have had two winning seasons (2006 and 2008) and won one playoff game (2008). And you are supposed to be the expert with your system. Why are you making so many significant and program-altering changes to the system if it's so perfect, and why have you yourself not established a track record of significant success if this program is so great? Furthermore, your program was developed for the high school level. Your varsity is comprised of student athletes who are considered by our state to be responsible enough to drive a motorized vehicle. Some of the student-athletes I coach are not legally allowed to be left home alone by their parents yet.Your athletes are physically in the early adulthood stage of development. They have more finely-developed motor control, more testosterone, greater muscle development, stronger bones, and greater cognitive processing facility. By contrast, the athletes you are demanding to run the same program are in the middle stage of childhood or early adolescence at best. Some of them have not even entered their secondary growth spurt yet. An adolescent may grow between three and six inches per year. Rapid growth of this nature generally results in a corresponding lack of coordination, while at the same time their muscle tissues are just beginning to thicken to adulthood. Fine motor control in the wrists doesn't complete development until age sixteen or later. There's a lot more to running a competent system at the youth level than simply handing your playbook to the middle school coach and pretending that you've given them a successful system. Point Seven: "A successful high school program will help those kids go to college by providing scholarships and motivation in school."Counterpoint: In the first place, colleges generally don't care what the won/loss percentage is for the athlete's high school. They are looking at basic skill development and raw athleticism. In the second place, you are actually harming the middle school athletes with your misguided philosophy. If--and only if-- the middle school students stay in sports then sports can be used as a motivator. However, if they quit participating in athletics then sports will provide no motivation or encouragement for them. Coaches won't be involved in their lives, and the life lessons we got into coaching to teach will not be learned. The number one thing that drives youth players out of athletics, according to the NYSCA, is "not having fun." In most cases, "not having fun" can also be translated as, "getting the ass beat out of me every week because my coach doesn't know what the hell he's doing." (In fact, among my coaching colleagues I can point to at least twenty excellent coaches who left playing or got into coaching for precisely that reason.) More kids are going to quit middle school programs this year due to incompetent coaching than for any other reason. Every kid that quits football in middle school is one less athlete on your team, and one less successful athlete in the school in general. You should be doing everything you possibly can to promote and develop the middle school program. In short, coach, your plan actually interferes with the education of a middle school student by driving them away from one of the aspects of school that could encourage them, motivate them, and embolden them to keep their grades up and keep themselves out of trouble. By sabotaging the middle school program in an attempt to develop your high school system with some mythical, magical idea that doing so enhances your own team is nothing more than active stupidity disguised as altruism. Before you make demands on the middle schools, try doing some research and study of football at the middle school level.

Football Deception

2009-06-23T22:40:00.001-05:00

Why is it that people are so devious? Last year Pop Warner Football made Central Arkansas it's home, and despite all of the stones thrown it's way, had a successful first year. The first year was so good that another league has changed their name for this year to mirror that of the Pop Warner League. Central Arkansas Youth Football & Cheer vs. Central Arkansas Pop Warner Football & Cheer. Wow, what a similarity? Has youth sports gotten so competitive that these are the new lows?

I mean come on, Pop Warner has been around since dirt, and they play on ESPN sports fans!!