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ryby6969
05-09-2011, 09:41 AM
My son is trying to play Pop Warner this year and I am wondering if anyone on the site coaches Pop Warner or has any affiliation with Pop Warner? The reason my son has not been able to play for Pop Warner is because of the weight limits that are set. He has to lose about 8-9 pounds to be able to play this season and it is frustrating to tell a 9 year old to lose weight without hurting his self-esteem.

steelerfan
05-09-2011, 10:10 AM
My daughter is on the drill team for one of the teams in the league I played in when I was a lad.

What frustrated me, as a kid, was when I moved. I had played here in Texas for 3 years and was always 5-10 lbs under the weight limit. I moved to Ohio during the summer between 5th and 6th grade and their weight limits were significantly lower so I was now like 10 lbs over and couldn't play. I had to sit out that year and wait for Junior High football the next year. Very frustrating because at that age, I had little body fat as I played football, baseball and basketball - something year-round. I was just a big damn kid.

I've always thought that weight limits for youth football were incredibly dumb. If you're afraid that your kid will be hurt by a bigger kid, don't sign your kid up. When I was a kid, the guys like me who were close to the weight limit all played at least through high school. The smallest guys didn't even play past grade school. We are excluding the wrong end of the spectrum.

I don't think there should be a weight limit (we see all this Play 60 propaganda, then tell the kid who needs the exercise the most to stay home). If there is a limit, put a minimum not a maximum. It's football for Christ's sake. The littlest guys will quit before high school anyway. They can go play soccer or gymnastics or get into horse jockeying, lol.

CLW
05-09-2011, 12:05 PM
Not a clue but perhaps the best way to go about it is to not tell your son anything but to try to get him on a diet/exercise program w/o him knowing it?

JerzeyReign
05-09-2011, 02:33 PM
Don't make it seem like he's fat. Tell him he has to lose the weight so he doesn't hurt the other kids. Tell him he's a beast and this is a way to keep him in check. Make it sound cool.

ryby6969
05-09-2011, 02:33 PM
He knows about the weight limit bit he is just a big kid.(5th tall and 130lbs and he is only 9) It frustrates me that older kids who are smaller can still play, but big kids are forced to try and shed pounds when they should be worried about learning the game. The doctor even told us a few weeks ago it would be almost impossible for him to lose the weight because he has so much muscle already. We are really going to try, but we will see what happens.

ram29jackson
05-09-2011, 06:00 PM
He knows about the weight limit bit he is just a big kid.(5th tall and 130lbs and he is only 9) It frustrates me that older kids who are smaller can still play, but big kids are forced to try and shed pounds when they should be worried about learning the game. The doctor even told us a few weeks ago it would be almost impossible for him to lose the weight because he has so much muscle already. We are really going to try, but we will see what happens.



look, its just my opinion, but he is only 9 so wait a year or 2 and play and teach football to him.

Dont feed him the politically correct crap these paranoid pop warner coaches are telling you/him so he starts developing the mindset of a coked up female teen age model.

while I do hope you are treating your kid right and he is normal and exercising/playing. You damn well dont worry about losing weight at 9 years old !

morsdraconis
05-09-2011, 09:03 PM
look, its just my opinion, but he is only 9 so wait a year or 2 and play and teach football to him.

Dont feed him the politically correct crap these paranoid pop warner coaches are telling you/him so he starts developing the mindset of a coked up female teen age model.

while I do hope you are treating your kid right and he is normal and exercising/playing. You damn well dont worry about losing weight at 9 years old !

I completely agree. Unless he truly wants to do it to play football, explain to him he'd probably be better off to wait a year or two and just keep playing for fun and teach him yourself/buy some instructional videos to go over with him on proper technique and such.

It is utterly absurd to expect a 9 year old to lose weight. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

SmoothPancakes
05-09-2011, 09:06 PM
I completely agree. Unless he truly wants to do it to play football, explain to him he'd probably be better off to wait a year or two and just keep playing for fun and teach him yourself/buy some instructional videos to go over with him on proper technique and such.

It is utterly absurd to expect a 9 year old to lose weight. That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

Agreed with everything both ram and mors said. He's still young enough and has plenty of years ahead of him to work on football. He can learn just as much from you and from instructional videos, watching live practices, or something similar as he would playing Pop Warner and having to lose a bunch of weight at only 9 years old just to be accepted in.

ryby6969
05-09-2011, 09:13 PM
This thread has kind of taken a turn I didn't expect. I am not really worried about my son. Like I said, he knows what is going on and it frustrates ME about the whole weight limit. I really made this thread to see if anyone had kids who played Pop Warner or if anyone coached for Pop Warner. He has already played football for 2 years in a different league, but it is not a very good league and is poorly run. People are in it for the wrong reasons(money) and he just does not receive good coaching to help him improve his fundamentals. Right now, he gets by on his size and athletic ability, rather than technique and fundamentals. This is the first year I am going to be able to try and coach, but only if he makes weight because the other league's season starts sooner.

The really screwed up part about the weight limit is the fact that he is 9 and could possibly be playing with kids who turn 13 during the season because of the cut off date for birthday's. They have to be under 100lbs, but to me a 13 year old weighing 100lbs is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a 125lb 9 year old.

baseballplyrmvp
05-09-2011, 10:16 PM
might be worth it to ask the league officials to see if they'll make an exception? they're usually pretty strict about it though, so i wouldnt expect good results, but its at least worth a shot.

i was screwed out of several all star teams and summer leagues growing up because of my summer birthday. i was too old for the league by 5 days and they said if i wanted to play, it had to be with the older kids, even though i was about average size for the kids my age.

ram29jackson
05-09-2011, 11:51 PM
This thread has kind of taken a turn I didn't expect. I am not really worried about my son. Like I said, he knows what is going on and it frustrates ME about the whole weight limit. I really made this thread to see if anyone had kids who played Pop Warner or if anyone coached for Pop Warner. He has already played football for 2 years in a different league, but it is not a very good league and is poorly run. People are in it for the wrong reasons(money) and he just does not receive good coaching to help him improve his fundamentals. Right now, he gets by on his size and athletic ability, rather than technique and fundamentals. This is the first year I am going to be able to try and coach, but only if he makes weight because the other league's season starts sooner.

The really screwed up part about the weight limit is the fact that he is 9 and could possibly be playing with kids who turn 13 during the season because of the cut off date for birthday's. They have to be under 100lbs, but to me a 13 year old weighing 100lbs is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a 125lb 9 year old.


....I only weigh 160......

HuskerBlitz
05-10-2011, 12:13 AM
I've always thought that weight limits for youth football were incredibly dumb. If you're afraid that your kid will be hurt by a bigger kid, don't sign your kid up. When I was a kid, the guys like me who were close to the weight limit all played at least through high school. The smallest guys didn't even play past grade school. We are excluding the wrong end of the spectrum.

I don't think there should be a weight limit (we see all this Play 60 propaganda, then tell the kid who needs the exercise the most to stay home). If there is a limit, put a minimum not a maximum. It's football for Christ's sake. The littlest guys will quit before high school anyway. They can go play soccer or gymnastics or get into horse jockeying, lol.

I've got to disagree with the top paragraph. The weight limits are not dumb, they are for the protection of the players. And at that age there is a wide range of sizes of kids. My son is almost 12 and is built like me, slender but very coordinated and fast. There were some older kids on his team that were almost twice his size. It takes time to teach kids how to tackle properly and at that age a lot of tackles are done by dragging, which with a kid at that size falling on a smaller kid could result in a broken bone.

Now I'm all for participation for all kids. The league my son played in had a ball-carrying limit so if a kid was over a certain weight, he was a lineman on offense only. Any kid being excluded to play, I agree with you is dumb. But the limits are there for a reason and it's for the safety of the kids. Let them experience playing before we go half-cocked into football not being for pussy spiels.

JerzeyReign
05-10-2011, 03:36 AM
He knows about the weight limit bit he is just a big kid.(5th tall and 130lbs and he is only 9) It frustrates me that older kids who are smaller can still play, but big kids are forced to try and shed pounds when they should be worried about learning the game. The doctor even told us a few weeks ago it would be almost impossible for him to lose the weight because he has so much muscle already. We are really going to try, but we will see what happens.

I actually coach this age group and I'm surprised y'all don't have a 'X-Man' rule which means if the kid is the right age he can only play on the line (DT/G). My heaviest kid, a nine year old, was 160 pounds. We faced a lot of 130-140 pound kids. Then again we're in Europe where we have to open the limits up but I'm surprised Pop Warner is governed in the same fashion.

ryby6969
05-10-2011, 07:36 AM
....I only weigh 160......

Yeah, well I am 6'2, 240lbs. :)

ryby6969
05-10-2011, 07:44 AM
I've got to disagree with the top paragraph. The weight limits are not dumb, they are for the protection of the players. And at that age there is a wide range of sizes of kids. My son is almost 12 and is built like me, slender but very coordinated and fast. There were some older kids on his team that were almost twice his size. It takes time to teach kids how to tackle properly and at that age a lot of tackles are done by dragging, which with a kid at that size falling on a smaller kid could result in a broken bone.

Now I'm all for participation for all kids. The league my son played in had a ball-carrying limit so if a kid was over a certain weight, he was a lineman on offense only. Any kid being excluded to play, I agree with you is dumb. But the limits are there for a reason and it's for the safety of the kids. Let them experience playing before we go half-cocked into football not being for pussy spiels.

If it about safety, then why allow kids 3-4 years older play with younger kids just because they are 20lbs lighter? The mentality and aggressiveness of a 100lb 13 year old that has played football for up to 7 years is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a 125 lb 9 year old with 3 years of football experience. In the league, the teams that do good are the ones with the "older, lighter's" as they are called. They are the ones making the big hits and are typically the stars of the teams. Some of the teams we play can have as many as 8-10 of these older players on their team.

steelerfan
05-10-2011, 09:34 AM
If it about safety, then why allow kids 3-4 years older play with younger kids just because they are 20lbs lighter? The mentality and aggressiveness of a 100lb 13 year old that has played football for up to 7 years is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a 125 lb 9 year old with 3 years of football experience. In the league, the teams that do good are the ones with the "older, lighter's" as they are called. They are the ones making the big hits and are typically the stars of the teams. Some of the teams we play can have as many as 8-10 of these older players on their team.

Agreed. The thinking in your first sentence is what's "half-cocked". Safety is the skirt that those who impose these limits hide behind. Letting kids "play down" is dumb and dangerous. A 13-year-old has no business being on a football with 9-year-olds. And the argument that "a big boy might break a bone" is lame too. It's football, broken bones can happen on a hit between 2 70-lb 8-year-olds.

If my kid is 9, he should be playing with 9-year-olds. If your kid is too frail, sit him. Don't tell the big kid he can't play, then put your 100-lb 12-year-old with a bunch of younger kids so he can dominate. The tiny kids (and I mean the ones who you look at and fear for) will quit when they hit junior high. They can play flag football.

HuskerBlitz
05-10-2011, 11:26 PM
I didn't say anything about age. I was talking strictly weight.

ryby6969
05-11-2011, 05:37 AM
I understand that, but if the whole motivation of the league is to promote safety, then why have older lighter's?

CLW
05-11-2011, 05:52 AM
This thread has kind of taken a turn I didn't expect. I am not really worried about my son. Like I said, he knows what is going on and it frustrates ME about the whole weight limit. I really made this thread to see if anyone had kids who played Pop Warner or if anyone coached for Pop Warner. He has already played football for 2 years in a different league, but it is not a very good league and is poorly run. People are in it for the wrong reasons(money) and he just does not receive good coaching to help him improve his fundamentals. Right now, he gets by on his size and athletic ability, rather than technique and fundamentals. This is the first year I am going to be able to try and coach, but only if he makes weight because the other league's season starts sooner.

The really screwed up part about the weight limit is the fact that he is 9 and could possibly be playing with kids who turn 13 during the season because of the cut off date for birthday's. They have to be under 100lbs, but to me a 13 year old weighing 100lbs is a hell of a lot more dangerous than a 125lb 9 year old.

I was SHOCKED when I saw the ESPN special recently on a FL league where parents/people were betting on games and basically paying parents to have kids switch teams.

psusnoop
05-11-2011, 10:47 AM
I was SHOCKED when I saw the ESPN special recently on a FL league where parents/people were betting on games and basically paying parents to have kids switch teams.

I must have missed that somehow on ESPN, but that is crazy.

I'll just give my 2 cents here, my son is very tall and lanky like myself but I for one would not feel right if he were to play with kids younger then him just because of his body size. He needs to man up and play the game with the kids his own age. Just my 2 cents. Heck I don't even know if my son is going to play football when he gets older, if he does he just wants to tackle. SS it is...hahahaha

SmoothPancakes
05-11-2011, 11:34 AM
I was SHOCKED when I saw the ESPN special recently on a FL league where parents/people were betting on games and basically paying parents to have kids switch teams.

I saw that too. I was just flipping through the channels when I happened to catch it at the beginning. I was shocked as well. And the fact that it happens so OPENLY, dozens of people sitting there with wads of money in hand right there in the stands, constantly trading bets/money all game long.

ram29jackson
05-11-2011, 08:54 PM
I saw that too. I was just flipping through the channels when I happened to catch it at the beginning. I was shocked as well. And the fact that it happens so OPENLY, dozens of people sitting there with wads of money in hand right there in the stands, constantly trading bets/money all game long.

I heard the late night radio version- usually driving home late Saturday nights from having a couple beers- while its sad, it is also incredibly laughable.

these people are so mentally inept, they think they want to /need to/have to , bet on kiddys football games. I thought the peewee and pop warner coaches who say, "I only start my best players," were dumb but this is hilarious

DariusLock
05-16-2011, 11:07 AM
Lol I've never seen a football league with a weight limit here in Mississippi, this thread just blew my mind. I was like 9 playing in a league similar to Pop Warner/Kids Baseball at the baseball fields when I was little. In our championship game I played TE and went against a 160 lb 11 year old....he wasn't as strong as someone who is older and that big may be. Either way this whole thing is funny, we had kids of all sizes playing with us. It's still the same way around here as far as I know...

ryby6969
05-16-2011, 09:52 PM
Saturday we had Kendall Reyes (DT #99 for UCONN) talk to the kids after conditioning. It was really cool to see all of their faces as he talked. He is also freaking huge! His stepmom is good friends with my wife. He seems like a really good kid. Someone I will be cheering for this season for sure.

psuexv
05-17-2011, 08:45 AM
Just as long as his talk didn't go like this


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfHOQAT0-Mk

ryby6969
05-17-2011, 08:56 AM
LOL, nah, he did seem a little bit nervous though.

Sinister
05-23-2011, 10:02 AM
ryby got to http://www.usafootball.com/# most pop warner and other youth football leagues are certified from this site they also have clinics for coaches, Q&A webinars and other stuff. I should be getting my certification from them this year.

ryby6969
05-23-2011, 09:47 PM
Yeah, I have to go and get certified in the next few months.

ryby6969
08-29-2011, 06:25 PM
Just to update this, he worked his butt off literally and made weight this past weekend. He ended up having a good game even in a loss racking up about 6 tackles in the game.