- November 27, 2024
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The 220-pound fullback busts through the A-gap on an inside handoff and brushes aside an arm tackle. There’s just one man — a kid really, a 14-year-old cornerback — left to beat. The defender decides to go low to stop his bigger opponent. But he hesitates, shuts his eyes, and drops his pad level. Upon collision, the top of the defender’s helmet hits the runner’s knee. Lights out. It’s a concussion — or worse.
That’s exactly the type of scenario Seabreeze coach Marc Beach and the Heads Up Football organization are trying to avoid by holding coaching clinics like the one in Daytona Beach Saturday. About 50 coaches from Pop Warner through high school levels attended the clinic and learned proper terminology and tackling techniques to teach their players.
Even some common terms which span generations have been updated to align with proper technique.
“We used to call it ‘wrap up,’ and now they call it ‘rip up,’ as a form of tackling meant to keep your head up,” said Charles Fordam, a Daytona Beach Pop Warner coach who’s also on the staff at Atlantic High School. “Hitting with your eyes open is another way to avoid head and neck injuries.”
Each coach received a binder with refreshers on positioning and terminology. After seminars devoted to concussion awareness, dehydration and other topics, the group moved to the gym to participate in hands-on drills.
The tackling process was broken down into steps, and after listening to instructions from certified staff, coaches took turns teaching each other to reinforce the lessons.
With the increased notoriety surrounding head and neck injuries these days, more and more parents are opting to enroll their kids in “safer” sports (not football). Long-term effects of these injuries, like CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and ALS have been directly linked to repeated head trauma. But much of the damage is the result of repeated poor form, and coaches can limit it by starting kids young with the proper technique.
“I think it’s important because there’s such a drop-off in players at the Pop Warner level because of concussions,” Beach said. “So, we’re trying to make the game safe.”
For coaches like Fordam, it’s all about cultivating good habits in younger players.
“We want to keep the training going on all the way from Pop Warner up through high school and college,” he said. “Once you’ve learned the technique right, you’re always going to do it. It’s hard to change somebody who has been doing it wrong for 10 or 12 years.”
Beach, who’s in his 14th year coaching at Seabreeze, has witnessed first-hand the results of poor form.
“We’ve had to have kids taken to the hospital because of concussions, because of ducking their heads or not being in the right position to make the tackle,” he said.
As a result, the Sandcrabs incorporated Heads Up training into their spring practice regimen.
“We don’t want to lose kids because of the fear — of concussions, neck injuries, and things like that,” Beach said.
That doesn’t mean they’re preaching flag football.
“They’re trying to make the game safer — not trying to take the component of being physical out of the game, but just teaching the proper techniques of it,” Beach said. “We want to make it a safer and a better game.”
