First two practices complete - what did we accomplish?

We had our first two team practices last week (technically only about 1.5 practices as we did warmups as a big group then announced teams on Thursday night). Here's what we accomplished:

• Held our parent meeting after the first practice. This is where we introduce all the kids (and have them introduce their families), discuss team rules and expectations, and hand out the team handbook, offensive playbook, and defensive playbook.

• Established our pre-practice and warmup routine. We expect the kids to be self sufficient in their warmups, lead by their captains for the week, with minimal guidance from the coaching staff. We assign each player a buddy for the week and designate 4 captains. We also hand out Captains patches from USA Football that the kids can sew onto their practice jerseys.

• Established our indy (position-specific independent) everyday drill routine for the offensive line, offensive backs, and wide receivers. The o-line has a self-directed routine with four drills that they are able to lead on their own and get through in about 15-20 minutes. This allows the coaches to focus on observing, correcting, and even pulling a player aside while the others proceed.

• Worked through our core buck series plays - buck trap, buck sweep, and the boot. Ran these separately by group, on air, against coaches and helpers with bags, and finally in a thud-style scrimmage on Friday night. Unfortunately two of our starting linemen were out the latter half of last week so we were pretty thin, but on the positive side it gave some backups a bit more time to work on these core plays.

We have our first live test this coming Saturday in our jamboree at Tigard High School. I suspect we'll be playing teams from Tigard and Tualatin - two first rate programs that generally have very strong teams. This week we hope to accomplish the following:

• Add our core belly series plays. This includes our FB off-tackle play, our WB counter, and a play action pass off the fake off tackle.

• Install our defense: at a minimum I want to get our core 3-5-3 installed, ideally our split-6 base as well which we can get to quickly from the 3-5-3. I've got about 3 of our 8 hours available this week - not much, considering. I also have a significant amount of observation to do to make sure I've got the right kids in the right spots.