Maricopa Life: Fundamentals from father to son

With youth flag football sign-ups around the corner, it is time to get to work in the Schrader household. Austin, my 6-year-old, has one year under his belt and has a base for what the game is and how to play.

However, for him to truly excel, there is a great deal of work to be done even before practice begins. So, we hit the backyard, sometimes with a ball and sometimes without. Austin has incredible ability, but we haven’t found a way to focus that ability and translate it to the playing field just yet.

It will come, but it will take some work and some camaraderie.

There are two areas of concentration in the early off season. First is simple footwork and anticipation, working on seeing where the play is going and putting yourself in a position to make a play, whether on defense or offense.

For this, I get to have a great deal of fun starting with the ball from one side of the yard and trying to make it to the other without being touched. I get to throw spin moves, jump cuts, jukes and all-out sprints to get Austin to naturally react to go where I am going, not where I am. On the other side of this drill, we reverse roles and Austin’s job is to make me think he is going one way and then go the other to get past me. This is accomplished through footwork and body control. 

The second area of focus is to get him to understand why we play the game, and who we play for. It will take years for him to fully appreciate this, but the game is played because we enjoy it and because of the people we play with. Teamwork is the foundation of any great team, and, at some point, we will realize that we don’t just play for ourselves, we play for our teammates.

Amazing things can be accomplished when someone else is relying on you to do your job on the field. This one is a little trickier and involves some off-the-field work, watching great teams work together, talking about how an offensive lineman does his job with little or no recognition, even though it is one of the most essential functions to victory.