NFF Riverside County Chapter

Message from the NFF Riverside County Chapter President-Wally Clark

I hope all of you had a great summer!

This is the second year of sending out our newsletter!  We hope you find it helpful and informative.  I encourage your feedback and input! 

Football 2009 is starting and we wish all of you the best of luck. 

The 2010 NFF Scholarship Banquet is scheduled for Sunday, March 14, 2010 at the Mazestone Restaurant at the Country Club at Soboba Springs.  Please mark the date on your calendars.  At the end of the year, we will be distributing information on what is needed to submit your star scholar-athlete to be a successful recipient of the scholarship award.

Visit the following two websites;  www.nffriversidecounty.com and www.cifss.org

Congratulations again to last year’s recipients. We are proud of you and your accomplishment:

 Good Luck this season!

Wally Clark

NFF Riverside County

Chapter President

Football Playbook

 Practice Better

As I began my 13th year coaching at Centennial High School, we have accomplished some amazing feats, including 10 League Titles, 5 CIF Championships, and a State Championship. 

I am constantly being asked the question: “What makes you so successful?”  I believe one of the biggest reasons for our sustained achievement is the way we practice.  Most have heard the age old adage, “Failure to prepare is preparing to fail,” but we live by this creed.  I believe that in comparison to other high school programs, we spend less time on the actual field but much more time in preparing a practice plan.  Our practice is structured to eliminate down time, reduce transition times, and to function as efficient as possible to maximize our time on the field.  Here are some of the key principles and organizational guidelines that we use to plan our practices:

Organization.  No practice during the week has the same structure but will follow this format:

-          Individual

-          Group

-          Team

-          Interspersed Special Teams

-          Interspersed Competitive Situations- it creates competition and teaches game situations

When I say interspersing specials teams and competitive situations, I am referring to placing these periods throughout various times during practice to create game like scenarios.  For example, a typical practice begins with stretch and then we might go directly to a goal line period or set up a situation where the offense has the ball at the 30 yard line going in with 10 seconds remaining, down by 3, and no timeouts.  This creates competitive game like situations elevating the intensity level of practice.  Be sure to consider the logistics of the field to best utilize your space and minimize transition times between drills and periods.  For example if you are rotating Quarterbacks between an inside run drill and a half field passing drill make sure the drills are in close proximity to reduce the transition time between drills.

Script your practice.  I learned a long time ago the pen has a better memory than I do.  Almost every offensive rep we get in practice is scripted, from field position, formation, play, defensive front, blitz and coverage.  I am ensuring I get the look I want and the plays that I anticipate using versus that opponent.  We will go so far as to script our one on one man routes and even ensure quarterbacks throw the same amount of time to the right as they do to the left.

Tempo, tempo, tempo.  When I was in college, I hated all the standing around  I did during practice. I hate it even more now that I am a coach.  I believe kids learn best when they are moving and actually participating rather than by being told what to do.  I believe it creates a more intense atmosphere and gives the opportunity for more repetitions in practice.  Our general guidelines are to get over 2 plays per minute in team periods, and over 3 plays per minute in group periods.  Due to our high tempo, we do not schedule any periods longer than 20 minutes.  In a 10 minute 7 on 7 period we will script 36 plays and in a 20 minute team period we will script 48 plays.  We do not have to spend time on conditioning because of the high repetitions and tempo of practice. 

No water breaks. Water breaks take too much time and gives the kids the opportunity to lose focus.  It doesn’t matter the age if the kids when you put 30-100 of them together at once with no structure, nothing good will happen.  The reality is they probably spend more time goofing off than drinking anyway.  Don’t get me wrong, we allow our players to drink as much water as they wish but it is done during practice.  Each individual position has its own 6-pack carriage of water bottles (positions with large numbers have more carriages) and they are responsible for keeping the bottles full and taking them to every period throughout practice.  We also have the luxury of having water girls to make sure the players have plenty of water.

Same skills, different drills. Someone said that “variety is the spice of life.”  If you do the same drills over and over then the drill becomes mundane and boring.  If it is mundane and boring to the coach how do think the kids feel that are performing the drill?  There is skill set or technique that you are trying to teach, then provide different drills or variations on drills that will also utilize the skill set you are trying to get mastered.

Don’t play against air.  The opponents we play are good and well coached.  They will line up every Friday with the intention of beating us.  There is no conceivable way that I can prepare a kid to play on Friday by running plays versus air.  Always, always, always have some type of look to work against.  We use trash cans to emulate defensive fronts, secondaries, and you name it.  We will always work versus some type of look otherwise I believe we are wasting time and repetitions.

Don’t be afraid to try something new. Do not fall into the idea that “this is the way it has always been done and it has to be done that way.”  Try something new and if you don’t like it, you can always go back to the way you did it before.  Always look for new ways to do things and accept input from your staff or other coaches.   

Better practices is one of the key reasons we have been successful and I hope you can use some of this information to help your team get more out of your practices.

Matt Logan

Head Football Coach, Centennial High School

Keeping It Simple—While Confusing

When approached to write this article, I was tearing my hair out trying to figure out what exactly to write about.  I toyed with several ideas, but discarded them as being overused or lacking interest.

I finally settled on our philosophy of “keeping it simple, while confusing”. Hopefully the reader will find some merit in this article.  Simply speaking, this means we try our best to keep it very simple to our players while appearing confusing to our opponents. 

We only have five different running plays at La Quinta.  We do however, run them from a variety of formations, and different motions, giving the impression we are running a bunch of different plays.  On numerous occasions I’ve had opposing coaches come up to me after games and comment on how “much stuff you guys run” and how it takes so much time to prepare for it all.  This is exactly what we want to hear, but quite frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. 

We have learned over the years that it is much easier to teach receivers and running backs formations and a few motions, than it is to teach linemen a bunch of different blocking schemes for a bunch of different plays. 

advantage or mismatch by these different sets and movement.  While our skill guys are down learning their part, the linemen can spend much more time working their blocking schemes against any front we may see.  To simplify even further, three of the five plays we run have the same blocking scheme. 

We are a block down and kick out team.  We like to have the leverage of a down block and the momentum of the kick out, whether it is a guard or fullback.  Many of us are in the same boat when it comes to our linemen-- that being many of them go both ways.  We simply don’t have enough practice time to work zone, or combo blocking—for us the huge amount of practice time for that just hasn’t been worth the dividends.  That may not be true for all your readers, as many of you run very effective zone and combo schemes, but I find that most effective at schools where they have the luxury of one way linemen.

When you stop and figure it, if we run an Iso play from seven different formations, it can appear as seven different plays.  Then factor in three or four different motions from seven different formations—you can see how it may appear like a lot of stuff when in essence we are just running Iso.  Our linemen are still blocking just one play.

 We also like what we call “blocking them by formation”.  This simply means we will try and get into a formation (or motion) that will cause a defender to have to vacate his area of responsibility.  For example we may empty motion the tailback or fullback to draw a linebacker out of the box, and then run QB Iso in the vacated area. 

I think this day of the running QB has really changed the defensive game planning.  Before you never really accounted for the QB, so in essence you had eleven defenders vs. ten offensive players.  The running QB has balanced the playing field.  Even if your QB isn’t the niftiest guy in the world he can still be very effective in the running game if used correctly. 

Our passing game philosophy is exactly the same as the running game—we have a play action pass off of every running play, and hopefully it will look exactly the same at the onset of the play.

Again, we will run them from several different sets, and with motion, to give the appearance of many passing plays, but we only have five.  At this time I would also like to remind the reader that the opposing team has to take the practice time to go over every set and motion.  If not we do have the capability to throw to an uncovered receiver.

I think by now you get the gist of what we at La Quinta are trying to accomplish—few plays and passes that we can practice and practice—while giving the opponent a myriad of different looks, thus the philosophy “keeping it simple, while confusing.” 

I hope the reader enjoyed this article and maybe it can help you down the road.  As I stated, particularly for the teams that don’t have the luxury of two platooning your guys, I think this philosophy can be of benefit.

Best of luck to all of you this season,

Dan Armstrong

Athletic Director/Head Football Coach

La Quinta High School

Training News

Heat Problem may be your Problems

Football and sports in general, has changed again. On September 1st, 100 people returned to the court room at 9:30 a.m. in the case against former Pleasure Ridge Park High School, coach David Jason Stinson was charged with homicide. Eight jurors were dismissed Tuesday afternoon. Lawyers are trying to reduce the remaining pool of 100 jurors to 15. A grand jury indicted David Jason Stinson former head football coach in the death of Pleasure Ridge Park offensive lineman Max Gilpin. Stinson is being tried on one count of reckless homicide and wanton endangerment charges connected to the death of 15-year-old Max Gilpin.  Gilpin had collapsed at practice in August 2008 and later died. It is an unusual case for a coach to be prosecuted for a player's heat-related death.

Here is some brief information that occurred that day.

At 5:30 p.m. gassers began. About a half an hour later, the first player collapsed, and Stinson sent him to a nearby tree for shade and treated him with water and ice packs, according to the coach's notes.

Gilpin collapsed 15 minutes later, at about 6:10 p.m., as the rest of the team headed for the shade tree for an end-of-practice meeting.

Assistant coach Steve Deacon called 911 when Gilpin stopped responding to ice packs and water. In the call, made at 6:17 p.m., Deacon describes Gilpin as pale, with a "big rapid pulse."

"Yes ... he's breathing ... yeah ... he's going ... kinda going in and out on us though," Deacon said.

Christina Spiva, the mother of another Pleasure Ridge Park student, called Gilpin's mother a few minutes later. "You need to get here quick. He's been down here for a while, and I don't think they are moving fast enough," Spiva said.

Crockett arrived at the school at 6:27 p.m. and found her son limp, with bloodshot eyes staring straight ahead, an ice pack behind his neck and a hose spilling water over the pack. Two people were pumping his legs to "keep Max's circulation going,"

Paramedics arrived about the same time and made an unsuccessful attempt at putting a tube down Max Gilpin's throat before rushing him to the hospital, where he remained for three days before he died of septic shock, multiple organ failure and heat stroke. His teammate who collapsed was released several days later.

It was 94 degrees out that day and when Max got to the ER his core temperature was 107.

Never before that I know of has a coach been charge with a homicide for an incident on the field of play. This will be a very hard case for the coach to win because all the literature states that heat illness is preventable.

It is always easy to second guess someone after the event. I’m sure that coach Stinson never premeditated killing one of his athletes.  In his mind, he was probably trying to get the best out of them to prepare for the season.

When dealing with injures, I always say doctors cheat. They see all their patients in the comfort of an exam room with the ability to run tests and x-rays to determine the extent of an injury or illness. Where as you, the coach, will evaluate the injury in some, if not most cases, without an athletic trainer and with limited injury evaluation knowledge or testing / evaluating equipment that a physician has. Plus you may be doing it in front of a couple thousand people where a few of them may be video recording your every move from different angles. That does not happen with a physician in their office.

So with that thought in mind here is some information on heat problems.

Recommended Water Intake

The average person should drink between 8-12cups (1/2 – 3/4 gallons) of water a day.

During activity, an athlete should consume an additional 4 ounces (1/2 cup) every 15 minutes of exercise.

Therefore, during a 2 hour practice, the average athlete should intake 8 cups (1/4 gallon) of water. (16 ounces per hour x 2 hours) = 32 ounces every 2 hours 32 ounces = ¼ gallon

For every 25 players, it would take 6.25 gallons of water for proper hydration. (25 Players x ¼ gallon = 6.25 gallons)

If the average team has 75 players, then the school should provide 19 gallons of water.

Since most water coolers can hold 5 gallons, at least 5, 5 ounce coolers (with ice) are necessary to hydrate the entire team.

- In addition, electrolytes and sodium (salts) need to be replenished in order to better avoid dehydration, stabilize body volume, and avoid muscle cramps. (for some of you that have been around for a while this means salt is back) A good way to do this is through the consumption of sports drinks such as the new “G – no excuses” by Gatorade.

There are also time released salt tablets for those heavy salt sweaters. You can tell these athletes by the white lines of salt on their workout clothes. Also Thermotabs Salt Supplements for the heavy salt sweaters and crampers.

Signs and Symptoms of Heat Illnesses

* If an athlete is suffering from flu or flu symptoms, they are more susceptible to heat problems.

Heat Cramp: Abdominal muscle cramping, as well as cramping in the extremities caused by prolonged exercise in heat and the loss of salts and water caused by sweating.

Heat Syncope: Weakness, fatigue, and fainting due to the loss of salt and water

Heat Exhaustion (Water Depletion): excessive weight loss, reduced sweating. Elevated skin and deep body temperature, excessive thirst, weakness, headache, and possible unconsciousness.

Heat Exhaustion (Salt Depletion): Exhaustion, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps, and dizziness due to profuse sweating and inadequate replacement of body salts.

Heatstroke: Nausea, high body temperature, hot dry skin, seizures, disorientation, and possible unconsciousness or coma related to thermoregulatory failure. This is a medical emergency that may occur suddenly without being proceeded by any other clinical signs.

Gradual acclimation to hot weather is largely important for the prevention of heat related problems. In order for an athlete to acclimatize, or adjust, to the heat a graduated physical conditioning program in the heat is suggested. 80 percent acclimatization can occur within the first 7-10 days of conditioning, with the final stages marked by increased sweating and reduced salt concentration in the sweat.

Remember water and salts lost during exercised must be replaced daily. Modest salting of foods after intense exercise is recommended to replenish the body. Proper hydration is the most important safeguard to the health of an athlete. For this reason water must be readily available to all athletes at all times. By providing an unlimited quantity of water and checking to ensure that the athletes are drinking a sufficient amount at each practice or game, one can reduce the risk of heat illnesses. It is imperative that athletes consume an ample amount of water before, during, and after physical exercise.

If  heatstroke or heat exhaustion occurs, urgent medical attention is vital. Immediately cool the body while waiting for transfer to a hospital. Remove clothing and apply cool water to the body, get the athlete to a cool area, place ice in arm pits, around the neck and in the groin region. Fanning can also be used as it will cause evaporation and cooling. If the victim is conscious and able to swallow, fluids can also be given in order to cool the body. You should always have an Emergency Action Plan in writing, and it should be practiced. If it is not, it does not exist.

Best of luck and have a safe season.

Jim Clover, MED, PTA, ATC, CPT

Coordinator, The SPORT Clinic www.mysportclinic.com

1st Annual National Football Foundation

 Riverside County Chapter
Scholar-Athlete Fund Raiser Golf Tournament

NFF Riversided County held their 1^st Annual Scholar-Athlete Fundraiser Golf Tournament June 30, 2009 at the Country Club of Soboba Springs.

Coaches, School Administrators and NFF supporters participated in a shotgun at 8:30 a.m. and enjoyed the opportunity to play the championship golf course at Soboba Springs.

Afterwards, all enjoyed a lunch buffet and announcements of the days highlights and winners.

Following are the award winners:

·          First place team - Greg Bowman, Tom Malone, Rick Alkire and Mark Winslow

·          Longest Drive - Tom Malone

·          Closest to the Pin - Todd Naylor

·          Highest score winners - Loran Whitehorn, Wayne Weisman, Bruce Weingarten and George DeFrank.  Better luck next year!

Thanks and appreciation goes to The Country Club at Soboba Springs.  The food and service was exceptional.  The Pro-shop and staff made sure the day went smoothly.  2nd Annual National Football Foundation - Riverside County Chapter - Scholar-Athlete Fund Raiser Golf Tournament in Spring 2010.

A big thank you to the sponsors helping make the event successful:

·          Albertson’s

·          Whitehorn Construction Company

·          Pacific Coast Investment Management

·          Tri-Lakes Sportswear

·          Tulips, Trophies and Treasures.

Everyone enjoyed the day, and we encourage all of you to participate in next years’ tournament.

To view pictures, go to our website, www.nffriversidecounty.com

Click on the Golf Tournament link.

Calendar of events

Mark your calendars for the following events.

NFF Annual Scholar-Athlete Football Banquet

Sunday, March 14, 2010

6:00 pm – 9:00 pm

The Mazestone – Country Club at Soboba Springs

2nd Annual National Football Foundation

 Riverside County Chapter
Scholar-Athlete Fund Raiser Golf Tournament – Spring 2010

Country Club at Soboba Springs

Home of the Southern California 2009 Soboba Classic

Miscellaneous

Please let us know of your upcoming events. We would love to include them in the newsletter.  Please send us information on any events you would like to share with others.  We will help you get the word out.