The Youth Game

The game of Football stretches all the way from 5-year-olds wearing flags around their waist, to 36-year-olds on the verge of retirement at the professional level. Most people hear and learn about the pro-level rule changes on a yearly basis. College gets some attention, but then it drops off. High-school football, for many years, had been largely unregulated. Outside of weight limits, youth football was the same-until recently.

While most rule changes focus on high school football, their effect stems all the way down to the youth level. Participation is down across the board, and continues to drop every year. Safety and health concerns about letting their kids play a hard contact sport like football has lead parents to keep their kids off the field and into other sports.

Some towns have pushed back the starting age of tackle football by 1-2 years, keeping kids just to flag football in an effort to allow them to grow more and develop proper skills. Another issue that is hoped to be avoided by this is the discrepancy in size between kids at these young ages as some kids as well all know simply hit growth spurts sooner. Putting more defined weight restrictions on different leagues has also helped to solve this problem.

At the youth level, our own town is a perfect example of how the sport is slowly disappearing. Flemington once boasted 3 entirely separate teams that played all the way up until highschool: The Junior Red Devils, the Pioneers, and the Falcons. Now? The pioneers have already disappeared, and next up will be the last two programs merging together in the coming year.

While the main cause of this is a lack of younger players signing up to play, there are actually a few positives from the merger. Hunterdon Central head football coach Casey Ransone was not a fan of the “division” that used to exist in the town due to all the separate programs. “This will do wonders for bringing the town together.” Said Ransone.

People involved in local Flemington Midget Football estimated that about one third less kids are playing football in the past couple years in comparison to what they recall from 5-10 years ago, but no exact numbers were given. However, a 6.8% drop off in youth football has been reported on a national level across the entire country. Regardless, the trend is clear: kids are choosing other sports, despite efforts to make football safer.

The main cause for concern from most parents? Head injury. According to Seattle Children’s Research Institute, about 5% of football players between the ages 5-14 sustain a head injury over the course of one season. The more society learns about concussions and the negative long term impact that they can have on players, the more likely they are to hold their kids out of contact sports.

So what’s the solution? Well, who knows. Maybe the solution is to keep your kids off the football field. It’s definitely the “safer” bet, but there are certainly ways to make the game is safer to play. From proper tackling, to better coaching, to practice regulations, a solution is needed sooner rather than later to save youth football from disappearing altogether.