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posted 01/10/2012 Hi WWYF Family!
Happy New Year!
Yes that's right! I said WWYF Family! We are now Wayland Weston Youth Football & Cheer (WWYF). I mentioned the possibility of this move briefly at our end of year banquet in November.
As of Jan 1st, we have officially made the move to another program which offers our participants, regardless of size, to compete in a safe environment within their grade.
Over the past 12 months, our previous board have studied the differences between Pop Warner and American Youth Football (AYF) so we’d either feel comfortable with where we are or move to a program which better suits our families and the size of our towns.
In the end we voted (this past December) to move to the AYF. AYF and Pop Warner are both very similar and different. From practice, game day, league rules, and competition, they are about the same but from a participation standpoint, vastly different. They main difference between AYF and Pop Warner is that we'll be playing in a grade based system where all participants play with their grade. Also, we can open this up to players of all sizes. There is very little correlation between size of players and injuries but we discovered that there is a correlation between teams playing within different age groups and injuries.
We will be joining the Bay State Conference this year and competing with the following towns:
Natick, Framingham, Wellesley, Needham, Milton, Walpole, Norwood, and Weymouth.
I wanted to share with you more details of the decision process so you all know the reasoning’s behind this move, we did an analysis on both football and cheer programs and we deemed both seemed better with AYF. For this message, I will focus on why we made the changed based on the youth football aspect.:
Older Lighter Rule:
Probably the one of the top reasons to move is the Older/Lighter Rule of Pop Warner. Older/Lighters (OL) are players that can meet the minimum weight requirement to move down to the next level. At first glance this seems like a good rule to have but over the years it has turned into a more competitive advantage for the larger towns we played in Pop Warner (Billerica, Brookline, Dracut, Methuen, etc.). These towns are much larger than Wayland/Weston combined. The true spirit of the OL rule is to have much smaller players play down on what is perceived to be a safer. In most cases the OL rule was used to make sure teams would win. Players that were OL could play on their mean grade level team but where chosen to move down to make the lower team more competitive.
Also, in many cases, OL that move down, because of their maturity and coordination over this lower grade, seem to land in the higher skilled positions at that level reducing the roles for participants who fit in the mean age group at that level.
If we look back of the success of our teams (very few OL’s) over the past years, teams we played against that had minimal OL's we fared quit well with and were very competitive. Teams that had many more OL (40%-50%+) was not even a contest. Also, we sustained many of our injuries during those games.
Our OL’s were mostly on the younger team as they weren’t heavy enough to play with their grade. They way that PW is set up today, the OL rule is used as a competitive advantage and this does not help small towns like Wayland & Weston.
The AYF conference we'll be playing in next year is grade based. There is no OL rule and all players must play with their grade (this even included players how may have stayed back a year in school, they still play with their current grade).
We are a small organization:
The population of Wayland/Weston combined is about 20K. That is the lowest of any Eastern Mass PW team. We lose some kids because they are too big or small and can't play within their age group. I think as coaches we tend to see the kids as X's and O's and not so much kids that are out there through August because all of their friends are there as well. We had one first time 6th grader that was too heavy this year that could not play on the C-Team (too heavy & in his age group) or B-Team (too heavy) and the parent just didn't want him playing on the A-Team.
So with the size of our towns, we needed to find a program the encouraged the most participation. We lost a few experienced kids that could not play in their age group and weren't having fun. With grade based, we hope to pick up a few more kids at each level to make it a better experience for all.
Development for our HS Program & allowing all kids to play:
Over the years, Pop Warner has seemed more of a "Team Building" program where some towns coalesce around a particular level(s) in hopes of making a run for the playoffs. We can see that, year over year, when we play some towns with one strong team and then 3-4 weaker teams. We want to move more into a "Development Program" for our high schools. We see youth football as a feeder system for our high schools and we feel that a grade based system will be the best way to achieve this.
Pop Warner has served us well but it is also an exclusive club. Meaning that it excludes participant that are either too big or too small. Blocking participants based on size is not the type of program we want to continue with. Pop Warner based football rules is one of the only (maybe only) youth sport organization that excludes children based on their size. We can all agree that our children need more activity and excluding some can make them more inactive. Also, being part of a team really brings out the best in our children. This was one of the major reasons for this change.
From a competitive standpoint, playing at the Patriot division (Pop Warner’s only unlimited division for the A-Team only) this year really solidified our reasoning. We played teams that were mostly, if not all, grade based. It allowed 4-5 more kids so we could field a team. They had never played before and it was good to get them ready for high school. We were competitive as well, we finished #7 of 20 teams in Eastern Mass. So to us, being grade based we are more competitive or at least know where we stand and each year get the same kids and work with them not wondering who is too small or big, year over year.
Safety:
This was one of our top reasons. We did a lot of analysis and although Pop Warner has an OL rule for safety reasons, we feel a lighter, older, faster, more physically developed player is more dangerous on the field then a player who happens to be 30 lbs. heavier than that OL and is not all that athletic or fast.
So we have studied the difference between OL injuries and unlimited (within the grade) injuries the organizations with OL injuries we slightly more. I have a paper from the Mayo Clinic I can share with you that basically says there is little to no difference in injury rates in grade based program but more chance of injury in a weight based program.
In the end, those were most of the factors. AYF did not sell us, we reached out to them and did our own analysis. Pop Warner has done our organization well over the years and we are very grateful to have been part of it. As a board, we just needed to make sure that our organization is in the best program to develop our young players and offer this great team sport to children which previously may have been an option.
As much as we obviously feel winning is important, we feel the true success of our program is making sure we create an environment in which our participant sign up year over year.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions. We will get a FAQ (Frequent Asked Questions) link on our webpage.
By the end of this week, we’ll be able to share with you registration start dates and summer practice schedule.
Thank you for your time and attention,
Go Warriors!
On behalf of the WWYF Board,
Shawn Fennelly
President, WWYF
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