Coaching Youth Football (Baffled Parent's Guides)

Features the expertise of one of the nation's top-ranking college football coaches

Author Paul Pasqualoni, head coach at Syracuse University, is renowned for the hands-on style he developed over years of coaching football at all levels. Like all Baffled Parent's Guides, Coaching Youth Football takes an upbeat, inspirational approach to coaching, with an emphasis on creating a positive, supportive environment. Pasqualoni offers the fundamentals of motivating, controlling, and encouraging a disparate group of children of varying skills and dispositions. Readers learn the secrets of coaching football, including how to determine a child's position, how to teach blocking and tackling safely, and how to calm a player's­­and parent's­­fear of being hurt.

• Takes a drills-based approach to teaching basic skills
• Q&A sections provide solutions to problems most new coaches face

Using very, very easy to understand terminology, any parent interested in becoming a very, very special component of their child's life should read this book. I keep my guide in a very, very special place... next to my Bible.

It's a very, very special gift for coaches at all levels: from novices to mediocre/middling collegiate coaches at a highly respected national university located in Syracuse, NY (name withheld to protect the innocent). It's the kind of gift you'd like to put in a little box and put a very, very special bow on the top and open it up at a very, very special time.

From coaching special teams, to underwhelming secondary play, to a complex offense which is too difficult for its own good, Coach Pasqualoni leaves no stone unturned on how to become an integral part of a football teams success and more prominently its failure.

Most importantly, the very, very special feature on how to not fire your assistant coaches when they fail to achieve satisfactory/mandatory results will charm the soul and question the logic of common intellect.

I would rush out today and buy as many of these very, very special books as I could possibly squander my money on.


Very Helpfull for the Beginner   September 12, 2005
John Johnson (Grand Rapids MI)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful

This is my first year coaching and I found my knowledge of the game,and conditioning and prep drills lacking. This book may be too simple for those that have played the game a lot and are more than arm-chair quarterbacks.
I found the breakdown of practice sessions helpful because they stressed the different areas of the game but kept the pace moving to help keep the kids from getting bored.
This does not contain a playbook and if you are looking for this you might be disappointed.


Mostly Explains Football, Not How To Coach   May 30, 2005
kenu-raido
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

This is an okay book, but the first half of this already thin ( about 120 pages 10"x7") book is just about something most guys who watch or have played football will already know. How wide is the field? How long is it? What's an even versus an odd defense? And so on.

The second half is very dilute, which is the real meat of coaching football. If you are an absolute novice, then buy this book. If you can get it free somewhere or very inexpensive, then it's worth a quick glance, but it is not a book you go back to over and over after the first reading, in my opinion.

Good luck to you coaches ... and remember the priority:
1. Children Safety
2. Build character
3. Win football games within spirit and letter of rules