Many coaches of youth football don’t understand the significance of controlling the time of their players during youth football. If you’re playing weak or average teams, you need to make the most of every advantage you can get. This was the case for my team from 7th-8th grade this year. We were the least sized Middlegets team we had in our 90-team league, and by a substantial amount. We were actually the most insignificant Midget team I’ve observed during my 20 years of youth football. In a league with an unlimited weight limit there was only one player over 138 pounds. Many of my linemen weighed less than 120 pounds, and I only had one back that was more than 120 pounds. We frequently played teams with many 200+ pounds linemen. We finished 9-1. In at the very least, in two of our games were won the clock management played a major impact.

If you’re not sized properly or athletically inept, the management of your clock is often a major factor in your team’s performance or success or. If you are running the no-huddle method like we did this lets you control the pace of play. We were confident that we could get the ball to anyone with good execution, it’s more difficult to conceal the any lack of strength or size when it comes to defense. Our defense actually performed exceptionally well in the past with us ranked among the top 15 percent within our conference, we were determined to do all we could to prevent them from taking the field. With only 21 players on our team We started a few of our best players in with both teams and special teams. To give the youngsters the opportunity to play for four quarters, and to keep teams’ offense from the field, during many of the first games we had a max defense at the start of the game. I would not signal the play until the clock was at 10 ticks on the clock’s 25 second timer We would usually snap the ball when there were only two or three seconds remaining to go. We also had a number of excellent side kicks, which gave us more chances to play and also kept opposing team’s offense away from the field. We only punted one time throughout the season We also had two extremely effective fake punts which we played twice, both of them for first downs that were deep within our home territory. Also, this allowed us to keep other team’s offense away from the field.

In Nebraska the wind can be quite strong at times and we were battling speeds of 25-30mph. In those games, we made sure that we had the wind blowing in the fourth quarter and then we went to max slowdown when we were heading towards the winds. In one crucial game which we won, we played the entire 12 minutes by using an onside kick, a max slowdown drive onside kick, and the max slowdown drive. The kids did a fantastic job of keeping in boundaries, getting up slowly and waiting for the call to play on the field of the scrimmage. As we experienced wind, we shifted the speed to maximum. The other team, not only was frustrated but also were a little anxious as well. We were at a maximum slowdown in the wind and at maximum speed when we were in the wind. Both games were extremely intense and the pace we set was an important element in the final outcome. In other games we were very badly hit with the flu, during one game, we had 4 players missing three of whom were players. We were forced to take a slowdown to the max because we were playing with just bare bones in skills and numbers. Sometimes, that’s all you can do, keep going all the time that you can , making as much money off of the timer as possible in order to keep your two-way players in the field.

Many youth coaches don’t know how to make the most of their time. After a game has been completed, the referees usually take around 20 seconds to identify the ball. Once they announce the play the time limit is 25 seconds to play off. The majority of referees begin counting their hands when they are five seconds remaining. If a timeout is not granted, the ball isn’t pushed out of bounds or becomes unfinished, the majority of running games are expected to take wap spbo between 40-45 minutes to complete. The referee has no obligation to accelerate the play due to the fact that time is getting short, in fact they are prohibited from doing this.

Tempo needs to be worked on just like everything else. The practice of max speed tempo will not only help prepare you for the last two minutes of the half or game, it also aids in keeping your team in the game. In certain games, it might appear like the team “clicking” on all cylinders or even has some momentum. If I observe that I frequently increase the speed to maximum it is common to make the opposing team fall on the back foot and get the players to panic quickly when you increase the speed. When we are at our maximum speed, our players rush towards the goal and I’m calling play before the 25 second clock has yet to be whistled. We attempt to capture the ball within 5 seconds after the ball is whistled.