Newsletter
Alex Croyle
Ogden, Utah
Exercise Science
Leadership Track
Youth Football Camp Newsletter
For my project, I designed and ran a camp for youth football players. I decided to put together this camp for players that have the determination to improve their skills. The goal of this camp is to educate young athletes and provide them with high quality training to become not only better athletes but leaders. Athletes will be taught the fundamentals of football in a fun, safe, high energy environment. This camp will be led by past and current SUU football staff and student athletes.
Kids that have registered received t-shirts. The t-shirts were a great way to get the athletes excited for the day ahead of them. The camp was a one-day camp, lasting for about 90 minutes. We started the day by teaching the importance of stretching and getting warmed up. In these 90 minutes, the players were split into groups and rotated through various stations where they were taught basic skills and techniques for each position on the field. The day ended with competitions for prizes and a dance battle.
My inspiration for this project came from my love for football. I have been fortunate enough to attend many football camps and I wanted to give young football players an opportunity to attend a camp as well. I am very grateful for the many opportunities football has brought into my life and I wanted to give back to the community. I believe it is important to give back to these young athletes that came out and supported me and my team. Football has brought me close friendships, helped build my character and leadership, taught me discipline, and showed me the importance of balance of school and athletics; those are some of the things I wanted to teach these young football players. I wanted to create an opportunity for kids to play football and better their skills, while developing leadership and teamwork skills.
One of the challenges I encountered during this camp was adjusting the way I teach to fit the needs of each player. My leadership style differs from other leadership styles and I believe that is a good thing because each leadership style brings different attributes to the team. No two players are the same, each person responds differently to different types of leaders and coaching. I realized that working with children can be a difficult task and that coaching is a lot more challenging than it comes off to be. Coaching and leading takes time and effort.
Hopefully, this project mainly benefitted the kids thought got to attend and learn. I found that along the way I was benefitting because I was able to share my love for football to these young athletes. Football has been a huge part of my life and I am excited that I had the opportunity to share my knowledge with other athletes. Through this camp I expanded my knowledge of coaching and I found some leadership techniques that worked and didn’t work. This project also had an impact on how I will plan future projects. I was taught that you can never be too prepared. By doing this camp, I learned that I am interested and do want to pursue a career as coach.