Successfully Connecting Your Football Program to Your High School Program

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The full text of “Successfully Connecting Your Football Program to Your High School Program” by Jeremiah Behrendsen, from the Vol 1 — Winter 2019 issue.

Successfully Connecting Your Youth Football Program to Your High School Football Program Jeremiah Behrendsen Dakota Ridge High School Varsity Offensive Coordinator (CO) Dakota Ridge Sports Association Vice President D akota Ridge High School, and its articulation area, makes up a unique setting in the southern part of suburban Jefferson County in the Denver Metro area of Colorado.

What makes it so unique is that there are 16 other high schools with football programs within about 15 miles of our school, 2 of which are our larger rival schools and both of those are within 5 miles of our school. Due to the close proximity of our articulation area and the articulation areas of our two rivals the three of us shared a youth sports association.

I want to take a little time to first talk about why we decided to split from such an accomplished youth association and what steps we needed to take so that coaches who do not yet have a youth sports association can have some added insight.

Our previous sports association did a marvelous job over a number of years providing a top notch youth sports experience for the families that it served, but because they catered to 3 different major articulation areas it was missing something that I am very passionate about…a strong sense of community. Having played in and been raised in a small town setting belonging to a tight knit community was engrained in my DNA.

Culture is so important within football programs and I believe that a strong football program has a unique opportunity to excite and unite their community.

Our head coach had a similar vision and wanted to provide the students and families of Dakota Ridge with more than just a top notch sports experience, we wanted to create an experience that was enjoyable but would also unite kids and their families to more than just one team or one year. We wanted kids to learn who they were, where they were going and whose legacy they were truly adding to. Because of this the football division of the Dakota Ridge Sports Association was born.

Since we knew how important it was to do this the right way for our community and its families we had a couple of non-negotiables that had to be taken care of. First, we needed to put a strong leader with great experience at the top of the program. Our head coach had the perfect candidate and not only did he accept the position he jumped right into the roll without hesitation.

He did an exceptional job of reaching out to our community through social media and “town hall” meetings to create awareness of our program and to get them excited about being an Eagle. Additionally, he was able to help us with our second item of joining a premier league within our area that families would respect and want to be a part of. He helped prepare and make our presentation to the most storied and successful league in our area.

We now had what we believed to be our key pieces in place…great leadership and a premier league for our kids to play in. Over the course of the past 5 years we have seen our program grow from about 50 participants to nearly 200. Now let’s take some time to talk about what we feel has helped us successfully not only grow our youth sports program, but has turned our program into a true community based program from Kindergarten through 12 th grade and beyond.

It’s helped us connect 5 feeder elementary schools and one middle school to Dakota Ridge High School to create a true “Eagle’s Nation”. Creating the community program that we have can be broken down into four key components. Below are those components as well as our strategies for attacking them. Gaining the trust of our community, that we care about their kids and that keeping their kids safe is our #1 priority.

• We have “town hall” styles of meetings to talk about our plans for the program and what we do to help keep our kids safe. • We provide 1 hour youth coach’s clinics on Monday evenings throughout the spring.

• We host a 3 hour capstone event at the conclusion of our Monday clinics to talk with coaches about our objectives for the community, tips from our head coach on a variety of topics, and to allow our youth coaches an open forum to ask questions, collaborate and develop ongoing relationships with our high school staff.

44 • We host an open practice in May for youth coaches to attend to see many of the drills and techniques we have been discussing first hand. • We provide our youth coaches the opportunity to attend Glazier Clinics with our staff. • We host a free 2-day contact camp for all youth football players and their coaches so that we can directly coach our youth players on best practices and develop a relationship with them and their families.

Opening lines of communication between our high school program and our youth program to ensure that they are informed, have opportunities to ask questions and can provide feedback to help shape our programs into something that will best serve our community. • Every March we host a Meet the Coaches Night so that our Head Coach can directly interact with the community and answer questions.

• We constantly send communication from our program to our youth coaches, players and families through our youth association email system to ensure they are kept up to date on anything we have going on.

• Our high school football program publishes a monthly newsletter, each edition includes a message from our head coach, an instructional or schematic article from one of our high school coaches, a spot light of a current DRHS senior football player, a listing of important dates and information for our high school and youth football programs and a message from one of our excellent youth coaches or directors.

Showcasing all of our student-athletes and teams to make sure that our youth coaches, players and their families truly know how much we appreciate them and their contributions to our community. • We host a Youth Appreciation Night at one of our varsity home games, players get in for free and all of our teams are brought down on the field to be recognized in a program at halftime. • Every August we host a large community festival, called EagleFest on our campus. It has food, music and fun!

It also includes the first opportunity for the community to check out our Freshman, JV and Varsity teams in our Navy/Cardinal Games. Additionally, we host pre-season scrimmages on campus for all of our Dakota Ridge Youth Football teams. • All of our varsity players and coaches attend at least one game for every Dakota Ridge Youth Football team throughout the year to cheer them on and show our support.

45 • We invite youth players and teams to our DRHS Legacy of Champions Banquet at the end of the school year to be recognized. Connecting the Eagles from the past, present and future together as one family. • Our head coach is not only visible but is actively involved in our entire program from Kindergarten through 12 th grade and beyond. He is the expert in Dakota Ridge Football and personally strives to connect us all together. • As mentioned before the youth players attend our games and we attend theirs.

• We actively encourage our alumni who are interested in coaching to start with our youth teams. They are energetic and have played in our system which makes them perfect candidates to add to the wonderful youth staffs we already have in place. • EagleFest is the ultimate opportunity for us to connect our alumni, current students and future Eagles together on our campus for an exciting day to kick off a new season and school year.

Successfully connecting your youth program will help your high school program thrive, but if you’re doing it the right way it becomes about so much more than wins and losses. It’s about bonding together the past, present and future for a greater cause to create a community where people stand up for each other and relish in the opportunity to help make it the best place to live and raise a family.

Coach Behrendsen Bio Jeremiah Behrendsen just completed his 15th season at Dakota Ridge High School in Littleton Colorado, his 9th as the Offensive Coordinator/Quarterbacks Coach. He also serves as the Assistant Head Coach. Over the last 9 seasons, Coach Behrendsen has held a number of positions including freshman offensive coordinator, varsity RB coach, and JV head coach in addition to his current role. During that time his teams have a record of 112-46.

Jeremiah has been recognized by Dakota Ridge High School as the Assistant Coach of the Year 4 times.

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