Let’s Talk a “Little” Football

When I say little, I mean youth football. I have heard some talk over the past several months of a disagreement on which youth football program kids should be playing in. Pop Warner football makes a lot of sense to me. This is as close to “High School” football rules and play as you can get, with the utmost of safety concerns being with their player weight restrictions.

Pop Warner football has been around for years and is the league of choice throughout the country.  Spokane has not made a name for itself in the sports world as a football mecca. Maybe if we put a little more effort into our youth sports programs, we can change that. This season I saw some young high school teams make dramatic changes in their schools programs and the majority of these players played Pop Warner football the past two seasons. On top of that, freshman coaches are seeing more and more players turning out, the majority of which were introduced to youth football via Pop Warner.

Now, I understand that there has been widespread speculation as to how well the Pop Warner football’s administration has been run. But let’s put that aside for a minute. In the first three seasons in existence, here in Spokane, we saw record numbers for player participation, an overwhelming percentage of satisfaction from parents and players, a huge bolster to the quality of our high schools programs, due to Pop Warner football.  Now because the organization has made some questionable choices on who is running their program, we have to tell our kids that they are going to have to go learn the game of football in a youth program that doesn’t teach the game the way they will play it when they get to high school nor allow players to play all the positions that they may want to try, in turn handicapping our high school coaches and programs because they have inexperienced players trying to learn different positions and in essence, a differerent game. If it’s an administration issue, let’s fix that!!!! This is about the kids getting the best possible option to learn and play the game, let’s not ruin for them. It’s a family affair for a lot of us, what can we do?