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Youth Football coaching Drills for evaluating players speed using 10-20 yd competitive speed races
Speed kills at the youth football level. Our definition of speed is the kid who can out one the entire defense to the sideline. He is the rare player that can take a pitch and go the distance for a touchdown.
Please note I am not referring to the fastest kid on your team or the fastest kid at the local school. I am talking about the fastest kid in the league. The kids that can out run every team in the youth football league.
In my twenty years of youth football coaching I have had that kind of speed only twice.
Think about that for a minute. In over twenty years, and in many of those years I was coaching more than one team, only two teams our speed was the best in the youth football league.
The first was a 14 year old travel team, who won the youth football championship, with only one loss. The talent was so deep that many of those kids went on to the local High School and won the first ever state championship in the School’s history. The one loss happened during the last week in the regular season versus an opponent who was on a 6 year undefeated winning streak.
The weather was miserable that late October day with a driving rain storm that had started the night before and continued throughout the entire game. It was a rain soaked game with no footing on the field. The loss was on an offensive turnover we had early on our first drive that was returned for a touchdown. The rest of the youth football game was a standstill.
The second team was an in-house (not cut), flag football team made up of five, six, seven and eight-year-olds. This youth football team went undefeated, and there were no playoffs.
We were fortunate enough to have the fastest 8 year olds in the “In House” flag league and had our entire offense return from a 7-2 campaign last year.
These 2 teams came over a decade apart. The point I’m driving home is that most of you will have average talent most years and you need to plan for that.
If you are blessed with the best speed in the youth football league go to church and thank God. Please do not over think your season or play calling and just enjoy the good fortune.
Again it is not rare to have good speed, just great speed.
The best test I have found to evaluate the speed of your players is to let them compete versus their teammates in 10 and 20 yards sprints. This is as easy as it sounds. Set up two cones at a ten yard distance and two cones at a twenty yard distance. Run at least 3 groups and have the winners move to the group on the right and the losers move left to the other group.
The set looks like this
Have a coach stand 10 or 20 yards away where I have the label at for each Group. Set one cone there with a coach behind it. Set the second cone in between each player 1 and 2 in each group. Have the balance of the players stand in line behind player one.
The coach should straddle the cone and extend each are straight out explaining that on the “Go” command each player is to run the race and the first one to touch his hand is the winner. Player one needs to touch the coach’s right hand while player 2 must touch his left hand.
Each player must run straight in a line and will lose by forfeit if they interfere in the runner’s lane.
You should run all three lines continuous and they do not have to be on the same count.
To keep it simple if you are in Group C and lose you stay in Group C and go to the end of the line. If you win in Group C you move over into Group B.
If you are in Group B and lose you go to Group C. If you win in Group B you move up to Group A.
Group A winners stay and the losers go to Group B.
You can run this drill for about twenty minutes and you will have all the fast kids in A or B.
Your fastest kids will continue to be showing up in Group A.
There is no stop watch, bad timers, poorly measured distances or changes in field conditions when you use this method.
Too many youth football coaches use the 40 yard dash as the barometer of testing speed. This is a joke at the youth football level. You can not use a stop watch to judge speed. Remember this is not even High School let alone the Pros. This is youth football and we need to keep it real and fun for the kids.
You will see I use this 3 or more line evaluation system time and time again.
There really are two different kinds of running speed. There is open field speed that once a player is in the clear he runs like a gazelle. Once that player breaks free from the initial 10 or 20 yards run he is off to the races.
The other kind of speed is what I refer to as “Impact” speed. This is the time it takes a player to get going from the moment he touches the ball.
Impact speed is different for the different positions. Below is a list of positions showing what I look for in speed.
Running backs – How fast they hit the hole. If you are running a standard QB Exchange it is the time from when the ball hits his belly to when he hits the hole.
Quarterbacks – While passing it is his ability to tuck and run. While running the ball it would be his ability to hit the corner when running the option, bootleg or sweeps.
Direct Snap Backs – The time from the direct snap to the hole.
Receivers – The time from catching the ball in FULL STRIDE to turn and cut up into the secondary.
When coaching your football team please keep these different positions in mind when looking at he speed of each player by position.
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