Youth Football Tryouts and Evaluations

By Jim Oddo

This is the most comprehensive book ever written on the subject of youth football tryouts and evaluating players. All tryout and player evaluation drills are explained in great detail. The book shows how to create a spreadsheet that will produce a power ranking of each player based on his performance during the tryouts.This book is written by a coach for coaches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mega Media Depot
• Release date: Aug 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476229492

Jim Oddo

I am a proud father of two wonderful children. I have been married to my wonderful wife for 20+ years. I have four siblings and great parents.When I was 19 years old, I went to work for my dad who owned an insurance agency. I worked there as an employee and purchased the agency from my Dad in 1998. The Insurance Agency is still going strong to this day. I am currently the sole owner.Approximately 10 years ago, I moved the insurance agency from an office building to my house. This was a very smart business move to make at the time as the Internet has changed the way of doing business. I have been working at home for over a decade.In my personal time, I enjoy coaching youth sports. Since I was 17 years old, I have been involved in coaching either a basketball or football at the grade school level. When I was in high school, I coached my first basketball team, which happened to be at the grade school I attended. I had over 20 years of coaching experience before I had the pleasure of coaching my own two sons.In 2001, I founded Mega Media Depot, which has been a book publishing, printing, marketing and media sales company. Some of the highlights for this company include listing over 1,000,000 items on EBay at one time as well as achieving a current feedback rating of over 100,000 stars.In my free time, I like to speculate on horseracing and the money-management angle of gambling and speculation. This has been a nice release from the daily grind of work.One of my passions has been watching and trading the stock and futures market. I traded commodities exclusively until three years ago when I changed to trading nothing but the Forex market.

Book preview

Coaching Youth Football – Tryouts and Evaluations

By Jim Oddo

Coaching Youth Football – Tryouts and Evaluations

Jim Oddo

Copyright 2008 by Jim Oddo

Smashwords Edition

About the Author

I am a proud father of two wonderful children. I have been married to my wonderful wife for 20+ years. I have four siblings and great parents.

When I was 19 years old, I went to work for my dad who owned an insurance agency. I worked there as an employee and purchased the agency from my Dad in 1998. The Insurance Agency is still going strong to this day. I am currently the sole owner.

Approximately 10 years ago, I moved the insurance agency from an office building to my house.  This was a very smart business move to make at the time as the Internet has changed the way of doing business. I have been working at home for over a decade.

In my personal time, I enjoy coaching youth sports.  Since I was 17 years old, I have been involved in coaching either a basketball or football at the grade school level.  When I was in high school, I coached my first basketball team, which happened to be at the grade school I attended. I had over 20 years of coaching experience before I had the pleasure of coaching my own two sons.

In 2001, I founded Mega Media Depot, which has been a book publishing, printing, marketing and media sales company. Some of the highlights for this company include listing over 1,000,000 items on EBay at one time as well as achieving a current feedback rating of over 100,000 stars.

In my free time, I like to speculate on horse racing and the money-management angle of gambling and speculation.  This has been a nice release from the daily grind of work.

One of my passions has been watching and trading the stock and futures market.  I traded commodities exclusively until three years ago when I changed to trading nothing but the Forex market.

Special Thanks to:

Diane Oddo, Guy Brumley and my parents. To all assistant coaches who have helped me over the years. Without their help and dedication I would have never have lasted as long.

Table of Contents

Overview

Chapter 1- Evaluating Personnel

Chapter 2 - Parent & Player Evaluations

Chapter 3 - The Youth Football Tryouts

Chapter 4 - Organizing Tryouts

Chapter 5 - Power Ranking

Chapter 6 - Sample Spreadsheets

Chapter 7 - Tryout Week

Chapter 8 - Coaches Players Form

Chapter 9 - Cut Down Day

Chapter 10 - Closing Remarks

Special Bonus

Overview

This I wrote this book for the head coach or for anyone aspiring to be a youth football head coach. I have over 25 years experience-coaching youth sports so I think I can share some insight.

As the head football coach, you are in a sense the CEO. The team you are running is the corporation. All aspects of running a successful business should be applied to coaching your team.

This book is about the administrative end of being a youth head coach. You need to be organized and know what you are doing if want to have the respect of the players and their parents.

I have over an 80% winning percentage over my entire coaching career that has included undefeated teams and teams with only two wins. I have been through it all.

I refuse to make any wild claims or guarantees that you will win no matter what your talent level is or experience coaching. This statement is pure nonsense. These are just wild claims made by individuals trying to sell products that do not work.

I will give you is an overall organized plan that will make your coaching experience realistic and hopefully enjoyable.

Chapter 1 - Evaluating Personnel

There are generally two types of teams that you will coach. They are a cut team (also called a select or A team) and a set team (also known as a B team). The set team may use a draft to divide the players evenly. The first team is a cut team, made up of the cream of the crop. You will need to make sure to run the proper drills to get a good look at every candidate.

The second team will be all the kids who did not make the cut. You may be assigned players or draft them to fill in the rosters.

Either way you want to make sure, you get a good look at each player. The skills and drills presented in the book have stood the test of time and are to this day. I still use everything in this book to this day. I find it effective to use a standard system you can depend on to evaluate this year’s team and talent.

I will break this book down by the different evaluation skills, and then show the drills I use to evaluate them. The last part of the book will show you how to organize a specific number of the drills and organize them into a spreadsheet that will compute an unbiased

power ranking number for each player.

This number gives you a non-subjective ranking order for each player. I recommend using this list as a tool in selecting the teams.

Please read the entire book to have a better understanding on how to evaluate your players.

Evaluating Speed

This is the big one. You cannot coach or teach this. You need speed to compete at every age level. You can win without speed, but it is much harder. Below is a list of different ways to evaluate your players speed.

The 40 Yard Dash

This is one of the most famous and popular ways of evaluating speed. That statement alone should tip you off about how wrong it is. When is a player ever running against a stopwatch?

Remember we are evaluating 4-14 year old kids, not college or pro athletes. I see too many coaches following the crap they see at the NFL combine. This is a pure waste of time.

Most of my problems with the 40-yard dash include

• It is not a relative distance for youth football

• The measurement is not the same. Unless you are at the track, it is hard to have the distance precise every time.

• Most youth programs use a different location for practices so the surface is different for testing players who arrive late.

• Not every stopwatch is started equally at the same time for each player and each race.

You will hear some nonsense that it gives each player an equal evaluation number. No, it does