I recently came across another article on football and safety. This Time magazine article, Is the NFL Safer than High School Football? updates much of what I’ve read in the past, while highlighting the challenges I’ve previously written about. There are updates on the latest in CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) research. While the article’s title refers to high school football, it also questions why some safety-related changes introduced at the professional level have not been implemented at the high school level (or in youth football). I’ve written almost a dozen posts that speak to the challenge of youth football safety. However, I realized that this blog is intended to be a resource for youth recreational sports coaching, and I’ve made a concerted effort these last couple of years to focus on that subject. Since youth recreational sports coaches are also overwhelmingly youth recreational sports parents, I suggest this topic is relevant.
The article reminded me of a concept I wrote about almost 10 years ago, called “Modified Tackle” at the time. The idea of a progression into tackle football for kids makes a lot of sense. The idea of “Modified Tackle” led me to amend my previous recommendation to include it in the path to kids playing tackle football. I wondered, whatever happened to “Modified Tackle”? As of the time I wrote about the idea, it was a pilot program. Turns out “Modified Tackle” persists and is now called “Rookie Tackle”. “Rookie Tackle” is part of USA Football’s development model that also includes flag football (there’s a great video that demonstrates the progression on the page linked above).
Again, why this discussion of youth football safety on a recreational sports coaching website? As a youth recreational sports coach, you are often the ‘go-to’ person for questions about youth sports from parents in your community. Whether you’re coaching a form of football or not, the parents might wonder about the safety of allowing their child to play football. My hope with this post was to update the conversation regarding youth football safety such that coaches and parents understand the risks and can make informed decisions.
Hustle & Attitude 