As a coach, your greatest challenge will be time. It is important that you never ask your players to do a technique or run an offensive play, defense or special teams play that you have not had time to practice prior to the game. In preparing your players, always try to think in terms of quality rather than quantity.

In the USA Football material, you will find suggestions for setting up your practice. Because of time restraints, you will find that the more organized you can be in your daily practice plan and the more you follow the plan on the field, the better prepared your players will be when it comes time to kick off versus another team. I encourage all coaches to remember that practice means focusing on attaining maximum repetitions for the players and not lengthy lectures by the coaches.

During practice, try to keep the drills short and brisk and design drills to teach one technique needed to be part of a total skill that the players will need during the game. Keep them moving, make minor corrections during water breaks, offer every player encouragement, and let them have fun.

Always teach in a positive fashion. Tell the players what they need to do and what you want them to do. This will often require more thought and study on your part, but in the end the benefit to the players will be enormous.

Unfortunately, many coaches feel it is easier to yell at a player not to do something than it is to tell the child what he or she needs to do to be successful. Try to develop this style of coaching as much as you can during his first year on the field.