Half the boys have played tackle football before. The other half just strapped on for the first time, so a little uncertainty and a bit of timidity weren't entirely unexpected.
We did have two guys get a little teary. One hurt his arm on a facemask. Another couldn't really tell me what hurt, but it must have been something. Getting 'dinged up' is a normal part of the game. We are trying to introduce hitting in a slow and somewhat measured way - but with 38 kids and all levels of ability, there are occasionally spots where things happen.
The 'splatter' tackle drill that we did over the tackling dummies was designed to get kids over the fear of falling, or taking themselves and others to the ground. It provides a soft, safe landing space for both players. For the version of the Oklahoma drill we did, we limited the space and speed between the collisions to three yards acceleration from a prone position. This is the gridiron equivalent of a fender bender - potentially painful, but generally unlikely to be too big a problem.
Football is a violent game. Sometimes it is difficult to think of 4th graders as violent, but the game encourages a certain amount of blunt trauma. Helmets and pads protect our boys for the most part. But another surprising source of protection, fully on display last night, is actually the player's attitude about hitting and being hit.
I probably can't explain this very well, so let me pour out a stream of consciousness, and see if you can tell what I mean.
I noticed two new players last night - they'd never played tackle before - that seemed to enjoy the hitting. They were hit, and they made hits. They didn't win every battle, but they won a few. One is a decent-sized guy that may be a good interior lineman. The other is kind of small, with some nice speed. But last night I got to see the way they attacked and faced attack. I appreciated their body lean, their posture, their head position - you could probably call it body language.
I watched another really good experienced player, big, fast, and strong, just light up a kid on the splatter tackle. This player knows what he's doing, and he likes to hit. When we got to the Oklahoma drill, he missed a player that he should have tackled. He knew it, I knew it - he tried to blast that kid.
We talked a little, and I gave him a bigger challenge against an even smaller, quicker kid, to see if he'd learned his lesson. I bet myself big money that he had, and now I'm richer, because he stepped up. He went into the tackle a little more cautiously, not terribly worried about making a crushing hit - but determined to make the play. The attitude he used I would describe as 'smart first, aggressive second' instead of the other way around - but aggression will always be a part of his game, and he finished his tackle by driving a really good player three yards back.
And some of you that watched may have noticed the battles royal that we staged at the end, between matchups that we all wanted to see. Peyton and Brayden had a classic, on the first night of pads. 61 pounds vs 65 pounds, and either one of those kids will happily take on any size kid on our team or in our league. They have ferocious attitudes about how they will play the game, and kids that they go against will often outweigh them by 30 pounds or more. Trust me, it won't matter.
And then there were the eight or ten brand new guys that hesitated going into tackles, or carrying the ball.
Understand that these are clearly very smart young guys, applying ration and reason to a physics problem, i.e., if I slam into that guy, it may hurt. Unfortunately, football can be a little cruel, and despite their best intellectual efforts, the slamming happens anyway. But now they themselves are slammed, instead of being the one doing the slamming. And very often this type of wreck will happen just as the slammee exhibits a state of semi-rigid tension. This is a perfectly understandable physical reaction to the feeling of alarm that precedes an accident. Unfortunately, it is sort of like becoming the anvil to another kid's hammer.
Been there, done that. No shame in it, and it is a part of the process. Sadly I was 11 when I learned these hard lessons, and 12 before I understood enough to do a little teaching myself. It takes time, and we saw the evidence last night.
Different kids will accelerate through these first few weeks of pads at different paces. I've already seen two new kids light the hitting light bulb. Others, MANY others, will 'get it' before the end of the first game.
And as pleased as I am with all our hitters' attitudes, the other coaches and I are really excited to help a whole lot of other guys get there.
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