Game Stats for Coaching Youth Football

I have kept game stats for every youth football game I have coached. I must know which of my players are being effective on game day. There always seems to be the ultimate practice player who disappears on game day. The stats serve multi purposes on game day as well as for later.
On game day, you want to be able to track the following things
The success of your first down plays The success of your primary running plays The success of your primary passing plans Your leading rusher Third down conversions Fourth down conversions Leading tacklers Opponent’s leading rusher Opponent’s leading tackler
With the Game Day Stats Sheet I use you can review all of the above quickly. A copy of the actual sheet I use is available on my website (www.jimoddo.com). It is a great simple tool for gathering data as the plays develop. It is a job for a parent who will be at all the games. The benefit for that parent is they get to go up and down the sidelines. In the last few years, I have had other parents help the Stat parent by giving him jersey numbers.
The sheet contains Down, Distance, yard location, run stats area, pass stats area and defensive notes area. It is very easy to use during the actual youth football game.
The other reason for keeping stats is that you can pass out copies at the year-end party. One of my assistants for the last couple of years makes an awesome set of “player cards” for each player. He then adds some of the stats along with a picture of each kid. This has been a big hit with the kids and parents. In past years, I have had a youth football yearbook, which also contained the full year stats.
Jim has over 22 years of hands-on experience as a youth coach. The system he has used with great sucess for both youth football and youth basketball. His personal teams have won over 80% of their games.
Jim has over 200 Free Youth Football Articles at : www.jimoddo.com
Copyright 2009 Jim Oddo, jimoddo.com, Oddo & Oddo, Ltd., Mega Media Depot and http://www.jimoddo.com republishing this article in it's entirety or any parts of it without including this paragraph is copyright infringement