About Me (circa 2009)

My name is Chris Brooks and I coach youth football in Sherwood, Oregon. I have another blog where I talk about boardgames, travel, and family stuff. As of 2009 I'm coaching my 4th season of football, assisting Jim Nappe at the JV level (mostly 7th grade and some 8th grade).

Let's get that straight from the start: I'm not really qualified to talk about coaching football. I didn't play football past junior high and had no football coaching experience prior to getting drafted into it 3 years ago. Still, I've had some success and maybe there are others out there like me looking for some tips on practice management, youth football defense, game strategy, and (ahem) parent management. For the past 2 years our teams have made it to the championship games (losing each one by only a touchdown) and our teams have steadily improved throughout each season.

I'm honored to be a part of an amazing youth football program here in Sherwood. We get tremendous support from the high school coaching staff (Greg Lawrence, Wes Montgomery, and the other assistants) and the collaboration amongst the youth coaches is remarkable.

I specialize in defense but have also spent a lot of time coaching the offensive line. All Sherwood teams run the Delaware-style Wing-T offense and it suits us well. This is a challenging but very fun offense for kids to run: challenging because the blocking assignments can be very difficult, fun because everybody gets in on the action and there's lots of misdirection. Defensively, my teams favor the split-6 / 4-4 / gap-air-mirror style of even fronts, but this year we'll be running quite a bit of 3-5-3 to prepare them for high school play.