Triple Option and Youth Soccer Training
How beautiful is it to see a well-executed triple option team? If you’re like me, it’s like poetry in motion. I’m a huge fan of Navy and Georgia Tech, just the way they handle triple so well. As a Nebraska native and fan, I was raised on option football and managed it in high school. Of course, when I got my first youth soccer coaching job back in 1986, I went back to what I knew and loved, alternative soccer.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that youth soccer and college play are very different animals. While both are played on the same field and use a ball in similar fashion, there are many differences that significantly affect the ability to replicate the college game on the youth field. We won’t even get into the advantage that NCAA rules give teams of choice over the NFHS rules that 48 of the 50 states use as the basis for their youth soccer rules and include both Pop Warner and AYF.
Most people don’t even realize that many of the option plays they are seeing on the college field are NOT triple option football, despite what so-called TV “analysts” may tell them. Did you know that options guru Tom Osborne’s Nebraska Cornhuskers never executed the triple option? Read Tom Osborne’s book, all they did was a double call option, not a true triple. The reason Osborne didn’t practice triple is that he said he felt he didn’t have enough practice time. Mind you, that was with a bunch of 18-22 year olds who practiced 6 days a week, played a game on the 7th, and also had spring practices. On the other hand, most youth teams practice 3 times a week, about half the time as college teams. Once you add in spring practices, movies, and class sessions, the youth player is practicing about 20% of what a college player practices.
Keep in mind that many of the option plays you see on TV on Saturdays are NOT triple option plays, they may look like triple option plays, but when was the last time you saw a pitch on an inside play by Veer? Much of what we see on Friday nights and Saturdays is double options, like what Nebraska did in its option heyday and 3 national titles in a 4-year period.
There are other things to consider, in college football offensive players only play on the offensive side of the ball. Those optional quarterbacks for Navy and Georgia Tech don’t start at linebacker or corner, like they do for their youth football teams. Those great quarterback and running back options aren’t returning kicks or kicking PAT’S like the kids on your team.
There just aren’t many two-way players anymore and very few of the starters play on special teams. In the youth game, all of your players will have positions on offense, defense, and in most cases, special teams as well. In college football, offensive players, especially skill players, practice on the offensive side of the ball 90% more percent of the time. At the youth level, those skill position players are your best players, they’re going to play both ways and on special teams, they may never leave the field. Those guys are practicing offense, defense and special teams, obviously much less specialization than college players. When you factor this into your effective practice time equation, the youth skill position player now gets 7-10% of the offensive setup as the college player. We get that by taking the 20% rate and multiplying it by the amount of offensive practice time one might get in a typical youth practice, which would be 35-50%.
At the college level, all the players have experience in the game, most of them have reasonably good fundamentals. While fundamentals are key at all levels of soccer, most college kids have a basic level of proficiency and have gotten over their fear of contact. In youth soccer, that’s certainly not the case. At the collegiate level, there are no standards, goals, or minimum game requirements, at the youth level for most programs out there. At the youth level, we are spending an inordinate amount of time teaching fundamentals and how to play, not to mention getting kids comfortable with their gear and overcoming their fear of contact. At the youth level we have to invest time that the school coach never has to worry about.
In youth soccer, the size of the teams varies between 17 and 30 boys. In college football, teams range in size from 105 to 180 players. In youth football, you expect to have only one durable quarterback and running back as a pair of competent average backups. In college football, most teams feature 5 scholarship quarterbacks and 5-10 scholarship running backs, all of whom were likely the superstars of their respective high school teams. At the college level, when a player goes down, most teams have a good backup that can step in and get the job done.
In youth soccer with small teams, we just don’t have that luxury. Even with very good coaching, the difference in talent level of a quarterback and first-team running back is usually quite dramatic compared to the replacement. In youth football, if you decide to run triple, you better have at least 2 very good, durable quarterbacks who never get sick, injured, or struggle academically, even for your Fullback and main Running Back threat.
I coached optional football at I Formation and Veer for seven years. Even just running double options or the midline option is a GREAT investment of time if you’re going to be very good at it. When we had great quarterbacks, great fullbacks and a great running back AND stayed injury-free, we had good seasons. When we didn’t have that stud quarterback, solid fullback and stud running back, we didn’t have very good seasons and my teams had double options, not triples.
My quarterbacks were making a single read, not two reads in a span of 2 seconds or so. That’s a lot to ask of a college quarterback according to Tom Osborne, not to mention a youth quarterback. At the college level the triple option is seen as an equalizer type offense, at the youth level and even at the high school level to some degree it is not an equalizer. The reason is that these are two completely different sets of equations with different limits.
Are you in love with the idea of running the triple option at the youth level? Consider all of these factors before committing. Think about your limitations and where you’re going to steal all that practice time you’ll need to become reasonably proficient in the option game and what that will do to your team on the other side of the ball. I found out the hard way many moons ago and I didn’t want my seasons to be totally contingent on whether or not God dropped a bunch of highly skilled position players on my doorstep that season.
Now, don’t label me an option fan or a dork, I still love option football, just not for my own teams.
