Advice for Rookie Coach with 6U Players
Today I received an email from a Rookie youth football coach looking for advice coaching a 6u pee wee football team. Here is my response.
I wanted to reach out to see if you have any advice for a first-year coach. I have a couple questions for you if you don’t mind answering them or at least helping me try to get an answer for them.
How to get the kids focused and paying attention?
How to make practice fun and also useful.
Any must have equipment we should get?
Any advice at all on training the O-Line.
Hey Coach,
Your players look pretty good in the practice video for 6U. Thanks for your email. Just have fun with the kids. You and the coaches can make it fun.
- Kids focused at 6U.
Good luck, this is very hard. Small pod groups, lots of coaches / helpers, short timeframe stations 15 minutes or less, keep them busy, wear them out, always doing something, no standing in line and waiting, you must keep them always active otherwise lose they attention. We have Ice Cream or sno-cone days if we need kids to focus or for wins. We also have a helmet award practice sticker for each practice, and maybe 2 or 3 get one. Kids love the helmet award stickers. —
https://coachparker.org/2008/06/22/gold-star-motivation/
2. Practice / Fun and Useful
Here are some coaching videos that answer many of your questions now and future.
Turn all drills into some type of Competition drills. This makes the drills more fun vs just doing a drill. You can also name the drills funny names and then award helmet stickers or prize for the best at the drill. I have a drill I call the Hootchikawdawa and the kids love the name. Its just a blocking box drill but we name the best 3 Prince Hootchikawdawas and the best at the drill King Hootchikawdawa for the entire practice. Kids talk about it today when they see me out and around town. I also call Butts, Bootockies. So I will say we are doing Bootocky Rolls. It sounds fun. For my favorite play I names it Tank, since we run between the two Offensive tackles in the unbalanced line. You must make it fun. Parents come up to me and ask, What is a Bootocky? LOL. Everyone has a good laugh.
3) You need at least two blocking shields, and long agility bags. I have a set of 30 rings and about 50 cones. Here’s a long list of equipment you can acquire over the year
https://coachparker.org/2011/07/28/whats-in-your-youth-football-coachs-bag/
4) Blocking focus on it and tackling — Make the blocking rule simple, I use JAW everyone track blocks down and eats up the Defense like an Alligator in its Jaws.
https://coachparker.org/2020/09/06/jaws-coaching-youth-football-lineman/
https://coachparker.org/offense/coaching-offensive-line-in-youth-football/
Here’s an overall rookie coach post — https://coachparker.org/coaching-youth-football-basics/
To be honest at 6U do not worry about winning as much as coaching fundamentals — blocking and tackling. Just let the kids learn football.
But yes, Play for FUN and Winning is Funner!
Hope this helps….
Good luck,
Parker
