My son attended Offense-Defense (O-D) Football Camp in Atlanta this week. It is one of the few camps that allow full contact football. Let’s just say I was less than impressed. There were far too many kids, and far too few coaches.
The camp lived up to the promise of full contact football but fell short of the promise of teaching fundamentals. They started to teach fundamentals on the first day, but it was quickly apparent that the coaches would pick one or two favorites to spend time correcting. I would be surprised if the coaches knew my son’s name even with it written in large letters across his helmet. Although they showed the group of kids the techniques, I don’t remember them correcting my son once as he did them.
As the week wore on, the drills disappeared after the second day and it became more of a scrimmage in preparation for the final day game. There is value in experience playing, but they were running plays without correcting the blocking techniques, etc. The coaches only seemed excited by the tackles and the hitting. There was a clear preference for some kids over others. My son was assigned to the “2nd team defense” which apparently means he only gets to participate in about 20% of the plays even though every kid pays the same amount to attend camp. By the third day I felt I was paying for my son to drink Gatorade and watch the 1st team practice all day.
This scrimmaging was supposed to culminate in the O-D Bowl on the final morning where you are supposed to see all the progress your son has made all week. He was put on the offensive line for 3 plays in the first half even though he had been taught defensive line and running back all week. With 4 minutes to go in the second half, he hadn’t played another down. Finally, I decided to say something to the coaches insisting to know why he wasn’t playing. After all, this is an instructional camp, not a competitive league. Finally he got in a few more plays at the end, but they put him at wide receiver which he has never played and ran running plays away from his side for the remainder of the game.
During the week, the “national sales rep” continually pitched the camp urging us to sign up for next year and save $200. He would throw out the same famous names over and over again as proof that attending the camp could lead to scholarships and maybe the NFL. I hate to burst his bubble, but anyone who got into a Div 1 program or the NFL was going to get there anyways. There is no way this camp could have improved the players that much in just 3 days. I think they prey upon the vanity of the parents who want to make their children into superstars. It’s like the people who play the lottery actually count on winning to fund their retirement. There are some “serial football campers” who attend almost every camp they can with their parents all summer long.
My son didn’t complain once about the 8 hours/day they practiced, but he does not want to go back. Some of it is because of the fights he saw off the practice field. He was particularly disturbed by one where older kids beat up on a younger kid. Next year, we will probably go to a Sports International Camp like we did last year going to Matt Light’s Patriots Camp. There wasn’t full contact, but it was better organized and the kids got autographs from Patriots every day. That’s really what they want.
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