ONW Ravens 2018 Football Club

Here we grow again.

For the second off-season in a row, your coaches have been planning for the addition of new players. We've also had discussions with Cedar Creek coaches Wes Swinford and Darius Lechtenberger about their team participating in our club, and they will be present for you to meet at our information meeting next month.

Last year the ONW Black and ONW Blue teams each had 19 players. The Cedar Creek team carried 16 players. Of the 54 players on our combined teams, 38 were brand new to tackle football.

How many players will we have in 2010?

Will we add 38 new football players again this year? We don't think so. But if we add just eight new players (we lost Andrew C from ONW Blue - his family has moved to Alabama) then we will have four teams playing in the club. Here's a table showing the possibilities:

Net New Players	Number of Teams
7 - 21	4
22 - 36	5
37 +	6

The crystal ball says that we should net 10 to 15 new players, and have about 16 or 17 players on each of four different teams. But that's anybody's guess really, and the meeting we will have in May will help inform us of what to expect.

What's the right size for a team?

We never want to turn away players. But we also don't want so many kids on one team that playing time becomes a difficult issue. We believe that an appropriate size for a team 15 to 18 players, provided the team has scrimmage partner teams practicing at the same time.

We believe that each team should have at least four coaches. (We were a little bit short of that last year on the FCCJC side, with six dads covering the two teams. )

Why is there a club now? Is it different than last year?

We're forming a club because we want to enjoy the economies of scale that a large group can provide. We can share sponsorship, equipment, coaching expertise, events, marketing, correspondence, uniforms. All the little off-the-field details that are both time-consuming and necessary for every team can be coordinated.

It is somewhat different than last year for all of us because we will all be part of a larger group. Coaching responsibilities will be adjusted a little. The FCCJC league won't allow one coach to handle three teams, and only by exception will  they allow one coach to handle two teams. We're still working out the details of all that, and should know more at the meeting.

We will practice in a different location - fifth graders use the practice field that is just east of the track at Olathe Northwest. We are working hard to be able to light the practice field later in the fall, to avoid starting practice at such an early time in the waning weeks of the season.

Our vision is that each 5th grader playing football next fall, whether in FCCJC or Blue Valley, be a member of the ONW Ravens 2018 Football Club.

When do we sign up? Where do we sign up?


The available FCCJC sign-ups are May 22nd, June 12th, June 26th, July 10th, and July 24th at the FCCJC complex at 162nd and Pflumm. The Blue Valley League signups can be handled by the team or individually. We will be sending E-Mails in advance of each sign up.

If you played for one of the three ONW teams last year, we encourage you to sign up again in the same league for this year. If you prefer to change leagues, that is always a prerogative. But know that as coaches we are committed to growing the club, not the individual teams, so we are just as happy having you involved with any one of our teams as with any other.

How many teams will there be in each league?

We don't know the answer to that yet. It will depend on the signups. If we had to guess today, we would guess three teams in FCCJC, and one team in the Blue Valley league. But no one knows for sure.

Who will coach the teams?

Coach Adam will coach at least one, and perhaps two FCCJC teams. The third FCCJC head coach is TBD. We expect Coach Swinford to again be the head coach again of a Blue Valley league team. For games, only FCCJC coaches will coach in FCCJC leagues, and BV coaches in the BV leauge. Both sets of coaches are subject to league rules that limit their participation to teams in their own league.

In FCCJC Paulo Koch and Steve McGavran have agreed to help coach, which brings us to eight. That is still a little light for three teams, but we're working on it.

Will the FCCJC teams have a placement period again?

It will depend on the signup numbers, and how many new players we have. But it seems likely that we will. The first couple of weeks of practice will help us get everybody on the right team. Non-contact begins Monday, July 26th!

Where can we get more information?

We are having a meeting on Tuesday May 4th at 7 p.m. in the Prairie Trail auditorium. Everyone interested in football this fall is encouraged to come. You can meet the coaches, other parents, other players, etc. You can learn about volunteer opportunities and what tackle football is all about. We will talk about camps that are available, our philosophy as coaches, calendar dates upcoming, and answer all your football questions. And we will cast our vision of a football club, talk about what it means and what we hope to accomplish in the coming years. We hope that you will join us, and we look forward to meeting with each of you.

Great Expectations

Coach Self's comments about expectations were right on the money. At Kansas, where basketball tradition is long and great players are everywhere, a loss to Northern Iowa really stings.

It is a terrible habit of mine, but I coach every football game with a certain expectation. I should know better, but I do it anyway. Consequently when we meet or exceed what I thought we'd do, I'm a pretty happy guy. When we fall short, it is a personal failure.

I will give you two games from last year as examples.

ONW Black played Garder-Oropoza and lost 26-14. We were tied at half, but we'd out-gained them substantially. In the second half they scored on two long touchdown runs, and returned a punt to the one yard line to set up their final score. We finally scored a meaningless late touchdown, but were three touchdowns behind in the fourth quarter.

That game makes me angry to this very day. We were better in the first half, by a wide margin. They took a full minute between plays to try to keep the ball away from us. I used a timeout when we were ahead in the first half to get the ball back, and that actually backfired, leaving time on the clock for them to tie the game. I was mad at myself for that error, and I could not wait for the second half to begin. I knew that they could not stop us. But critical penalties and turnovers damaged our offense in the second half, and they had that big punt return. The expectation I had throughout the game - that I hold to this day - was that we were better. And that particular loss will stick with me for a long time.

As the other example, ONW Blue played SM East Luetje and lost 22-14. We ran out of time, 25 yards from the game-tying touchdown. At that point in the season the Blue team was still winless, and by the end of the game we were showing what I thought was marked superiority to our opponent. They could not stop us. With two more minutes, we'd have won the game.

Was I frustrated? Actually, not so much. We'd met my expectations for that game. We'd competed, improved, and played better, and made great progress. By the end of the game I knew we were better than they were - but that improvement happened during that game, and the strides we made to become better exceeded my expectations for that point in our development.

In both cases I thought the better team lost. The Black squad lost by a wider margin, and the Blue squad just missed it's first win. You might think that the Blue squad's near miss would have been more frustrating than the Black squad's debacle.

But such is the weight of expectations, that I was far happier after the heartbreaking close loss. And now my emotions have run the entire gamut that Self described. I'm just past angry, right in the heart of competitive, and desperately anxious to arrive at teaching football again.

Coach could Play

Not me - I couldn't play a lick compared to this guy.

Before he went on to play at KU, Coach Schriner played for the Shawnee Mission Northwest Cougars. In this first clip, have a look at his interception of future NFL star Rodney Peete.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqmTzUScEt8

And he was known as a speedy guy too - here's a punt return. Evidently coach was P. Browne before there was a P. Browne.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MANbIucQK4



Finally, I'm always looking for running backs that block. Watch the tailback - yep, coach Schriner again - lay out the defensive tackle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL7twfCFrdk

25 Years Later, youth football still the same....

Coach Lee obviously had too much time on his hands staying home one day with a sick kid. Here is some football of his team when he was 9 (1984).

Concepts are still the same in youth football. Get to the edge and have the fastest kid! Check out the extra point kick on the second video!

My Fondest Hope

Someday, some coach we play will sputter, stammer, and flagellate the English language in just this way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viVVk7OnZas



Such is the power of the option.

The Triple Option, Week One

This is an example of one of our option plays. In this case, the play called was Wishbone Option Right. That's just about as basic as we get. The video has some narration, so turn your speakers on if would like to hear my description.

This was our first touchdown in league play this year, and it was on a true triple option. It was pretty well done for the 4th grade, if I do say so. Credit the boys for paying attention and understanding their jobs, and the coaches for their patient persistence teaching.

Our QB, BK (#5) reads pull from the defensive tackle going inside, and then gets a pitch read from their defensive end. Our halfback is in great pitch relationship position, makes the catch, beats the corner and the OLB to the boundary, and they're not going to catch him.

A couple of things to note about this version of the play. The dive read was the head-up tackle on Ox (#00). He was the 4th man, counting from outside in. Here's what their defense looked like. I colored the dive read key red, and the pitch read key blue:

X  X    X     X  X

 X  X X   X X  X

  O O O O O O O

        O

        O

     O     O

The way this version of the option play is designed, the fullback's running path should have been to the guard-tackle gap. In our offense, we call that the 4 hole. Our fullback ran to the 2 hole, which is more or less where he runs on the Midline version of the option.

(For Midline, the dive read would have been the man head up on our right guard. If our guard can rip inside of him, we give the ball to the fullback. If he gets hung up, or the dive read jumps to the A gap, we pull. We also have what we call a 'veer' version that is really just an outside option off-tackle.)

But back to this one - it was supposed to feature the FB to the 4 hole, but often times young kids want to run to the path of least resistance. The quarterback nevertheless made the correct read, and our offensive tackle did too. He knows that if the defender crosses his face, he blocks him down, and that's what he did.

The quarterback moves down the line, and the defensive end - the #2 man from outside in - comes right at him. With ideal timing, our QB makes a good pitch.

Because it was off the frame, you couldn't see that our lead halfback pretty much missed the #1 outside man, the cornerback. This was early in the year, and like I said in the video, we weren't perfect on this play. But the corner took a step inside toward the quarterback too, and by the time he realized that a pitch was going to happen all he could do was dive at our halfback's feet. Normally defensive coaches will make that #1 man responsible for the pitch back, and if we don't get at least a piece of him, we're in some trouble if we pitch.

Our tight end was supposed to block the outside linebacker, who would be the #3 man. I don't think he got very much of him. But he may have forced him to the inside briefly, because by the time he re-appears in the frame, he has very poor angle to try to tackle a kid as fast as our halfback.

One of the neat things about the option is that even if you don't do things perfectly, you often have just a little bit of space to let a good athlete make some things happen. In this case, the space was out on the perimeter, and our halfback (Peyton, #21) was plenty fast enough.

We won this game 12-0, and yes, we did throw it a couple of times on them. Had to really, as they had no safeties at all. 

What Coach Said, From Dad's Point of View

I have four kids in sports. I've had the opportunity to coach them all at one time or another. But I have actually spent far more time as a parent, watching them coached by others, than I have as their coach.

One of the frustrating things about being the non-coaching parent of a player is that you don't know entirely what the coaches are saying. You suspect that your child is perhaps a better player than he's showing, or that the coaches might be telling him two different things and he's confused. Or maybe they just aren't playing him in the position in which he needs to be play. Or perhaps you suspect your kid isn't quite there where you want him to be yet. Sometimes it is difficult to tell, but that in itself is frustrating.

To reduce my frustration, I try to do three things every time I'm talking to my kid about their participation.

• I always ask my kid, "How did it go out there?"
• I always ask my kid, "What did coach have to say afterwards?"
• I try to remember to always tell my kid "I really enjoyed watching you play."

I picked some of this up from the NAIA. I do enjoy watching my kids compete. And I think it helps them love the game more, and it is my way of thanking them for being involved and playing the game.

Regarding the first question, especially in football or soccer, you might think that I know how things went, because I have some coaching experience. But the truth is, I don't know. I wasn't out there. I didn't experience the game the way they did. My arm didn't get whacked by that helmet, the ball didn't skid away from me because of a bad bounce. I don't know how hard things were, when things were going badly.

I also want to know their mindset, and an open-ended question like "How did it go out there?" gives them opportunity to expand on any topic they want to discuss. I think it helps that I have a genuine interest in the nuts and bolts of what they experienced, but even if they want to talk about the officiating, or their opponent, or the weather, or the field - whatever - they're the star of that conversation.

But this post is really about that second thing I always ask. Doesn't every parent want to know the thoughts of the coach? And why is that? For me, about half the time I want to reinforce what coach said, and the other half of the time I want to modulate it or improve it.

But nowadays, in my advanced age and medium-depth wisdom, I try not to do either. When I ask my athlete what coach had to say, I'm trying to make sure that they've listened, and that they know from my asking that I think whatever coach had to say is an important part of the equation. But my response to whatever it was that coach had to say is non-committal. Or, at least I try to keep it that way in front of my kid.

I really do try to avoid editorializing, criticizing, or even applauding the opinions of the coaches. If I undermine what coach says, or if my kid can only wait until I've approved what coach said before they can accept it, that hurts his development. He can't be as successful as he might otherwise become trying to serve three masters - coach, dad, and himself.

For a parent, letting go of what coach said - being non-committal, when you just KNOW that the coaching they're getting isn't what you'd do - is quite difficult. But it's the right thing to do.

I did a little math, and determined that I now have accumulated 105 youth, high school, or collegiate parent-of-the-athlete seasons, with three more in progress at this moment. My children have had almost 70 different adults that coached or assisted coaching them. In all that time, among all those coaches, I've had a grand total of one coach for two seasons that I thought MAYBE did more harm than good.

That's not to say I haven't had issues with coaches, or questioned whether they were doing it the way I would do it - that's pretty much a daily occurrence in my little brain. What I'm saying is, in the biggest equation - relatively good, or relatively bad - my wife and I have been blessed by the adults that have coached our kids.

As you engage your kids about their athletic experiences, I understand you'll want to know what we coaches had to say about things. And in your shoes, I do the same thing. But this fall my two college kids won't be where I can ask them what coach had to say, and consequently I can't be any sort of barrier, buffer, filter, or lens for them. But I think they'll be ready.