Quote:
Originally Posted by razorbacker
My 9 year old played pee wee football this year. Our league had no weight limits, but we played in a few tournaments that did have limits. In league I saw a few hard hits, mostly in practice. The big concern is the coach walking over to a parent and saying "he got his bell rung" and two minutes later the kid is back on the practice field. Most of the time a kid got his head hurt was from being slung to the ground causing the back of his head to bounce off the ground. I also saw a lot of poor technique that was never corrected.
We played in two travel/all star tournaments and holy crap was that an eye opener. Though they had weight limits, I saw more violent collisions in one practice than I saw all year in league football. In league ball, someone is usually backing down, in travel football most of the kids are going full speed with the intention of blowing someone up. My kid played QB and his job was to get everyone lined up and hand the ball off to the stud RB or pass to the stud WR. If he had played any other position I would have taken him off the team. Our first game out, the opposing RB suffered a compound fracture in his arm. In our final game the opposing QB broke his wrist and we had two kids on our team knocked completely out.
I am a hypocrite, as I will probably let my kid continue playing football, but I think most kids shouldn't start playing until Jr. High.
this is a great post. first-hand experience of regular and "elite" pee wee ball. I started playing when I was 10 and played through college. I'm pretty sure I suffered 2-3 concussions in hs and one in college. it's a pretty distinct feeling when your brain says, "WTF?"
there should not be 'traveling' pee wee football, I agree, but if you wait until kids are big enough to generate some real speed (while also being bigger) before they learn proper technique, the results would be worse imo.