New Team to the NFL!

Roger Goodell has officially had it with the Detroit Lions and want to create a new team to replace them. It is my job along with the rest of my group to run some tryouts for students to try and make the new team! That was the story we used today in our Skill Acquisition Concepts of Team Sports class. We were assigned to give a flag football lesson that lasted 15 min to a class of about 15 students. My good friend and fellow classmate Jack Murphy had a very creative idea of making this lesson into "tryouts" for a professional team. I really like the idea of using stories behind your lessons because it really grabs the students attention. The best way to make the students want to be involved in the lesson is to relate the lesson to them. Knowing that the majority of the class likes the NFL, we used that as the basis of our lesson so we could get students interested. AND IT WORKED!! No surprise there!!

My group and I taught the class the basic cues for a pass, and an upper and lower catch. We kept the cues simple and easy to remember to avoid any confusion between students. We started our lesson off with a fun and exciting game of "Ultimate Football". This is generally the same game as "Ultimate Frisbee" but played with a football. Although it does not guarantee the students will be using the proper form for throwing, it really helps them practice catching from different levels. This game also just gets the students moving and warmed up for the following activity.

Our group then started the class off with a simple activity to practice the basic cues and steps for a pass, and a lower and upper pass. Students got with a partner and stood about 25 feet apart and simply had a catch with each other, tossing the ball back and forth. Since this activity is kind of boring and not much activity is involved, we only let it go on for a few minutes just to get the idea of the movements presented. The next activity we introduced is a form of intra-task variation of the first activity. We played a little "monkey in the middle". This is really the same game except there is one defender in between the partners trying to take the ball away. This provides more of a challenge for the students who are finding the skill to be to easy. Another variation that we applied is having the students running routes. This activity would be considered a game like situation drill, and is very useful when your final goal is to get the kids to play in a full game.

Last but not least, our final drill was a modified game. We split the class into 4 teams and assigned different teams to play each other in a small 5v5 football game. Students wore flags so there was no contact. We made sure to emphasize this in our directions so that no one got hurt. Overall, our lesson went great and the class had a lot of fun doing it. We also have found a couple of potential players for Roger's team. I'll have to call up Roger and let him know. Maybe the NFL will be introducing the Cortland Red Dragons team in the near future. Disney World here I come!!