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Cutting the Players during the Youth Football Tryouts
If you are in charge of cutting a squad of youth football player's I have found this simple method to work best. I suggest you split the group into three groups based on age, experience and expected new players.
The first group is your experience youth football players, which includes players that have played at this level, returning players and the upcoming stars from the younger level.
The second group consists of first year youth football players, and if this is a tackle youth football team it will include the flag players who are all older.
The third group is the younger youth football players, players with no experience and first-time football players.
It is very important to give each youth football player a fair chance at making the cut squad. Therefore, I have these three groups compete based on speed, agility and eventually West Point drills. I will move the players that excel in each group up to the next group and the players that perform poorly down to the lower group. I will run each test for about 20 minutes.
Please read the entire section on Evaluating Players and Tryouts for a detailed description on all drills and evaluations that I use.
You will be amazed that in a matter of a few days how each of these groups will find their way to balance out.
I usually have 65 to 80 youth football players trying out for each level, and make teams comprising of approximately 15 kids per team.
The top 15 performers will be our “A” team with balance of players split equally to form the “B” teams. All youth football players get a rating of one to three, and each will be split evenly on the remaining “B” teams.
The goal of our youth football league is to make the three remaining teams as equal as possible. Therefore, we will split up three-rated one, two and three players equally by talent age and potential positions.
Related Links on Youth Football Tryouts
Breaking the Large Group into Smaller Groups during the Youth Football Tryouts
3 Days No Contact - What to do During your Youth Football Tryouts
1st Contact Day for New and Flag Players during the Youth Football Tryouts
Youth Football Tryouts and Evaluations Cut Down Day
May 1st means 3 months until Youth Football Tryouts
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