buffet, I think you are over playing this angle. I, like most of us on here, played high school football. I started playing in 4th grade, any experience I got in youth sports had really nothing to do with any success/failures I had at the high school level.
maybe you get that "fear" of contact out of you a bit if you start younger but any technique or skills you have is because you have it, nothing to do with what happened on a field when you were 8.. I know people that started at 8 and I know people that started at 14, any success or failures was because of their athletic ability/size/speed etc.
last fall, I went to the kids/youth south park football games (My daughter was cheerleader) and id' watch the games. all it is really is giving the one kid who matured faster than others a pitch to the outside and he'd score on sweeps. that's 95% of youth football. the 3rd grader that has tall parents and had an early growth spurt gets the ball and runs faster outside than everyone else..
tackling and blocking isn't a skill that takes a decade to learn. lets not make footb all more than it is here.. These players we root for on Saturdays and sundays are successful because they were born with God given athletic ability, not because they learned tackling techniques as a 2nd grader.
Facts are facts.
Most cities and towns start football players off at 5 & 6 playing flag football.
From there they move up!
That's the way successful organized sports work.
Baseball, wrestling, basketball, and soccer work exactly the same way.
There's a reason why this process exists in all sports t-ball, flag fooball, youth wrestling, youth basketball, youth soccer it's not just a random process.
All of these sports are competing for the same kids in a town or locality.
Starting kids early allows them to identify with the sport and they're likely to stay with it.
When they start early they'll know if they like football and want to continue playing the game.
Youth football summer camps when our kids played (90's) were swamped with kids ages from 7-12.
I agree all kids develop mentally and physically at different rates.
I coached youth football for 10 years and witnessed kids getting better every year they played.
Fyi- I ran the football youth program for many of those years and if you coached you Couldn't coach the team your kids were on. Volunteer and coach another team. A good rule of thumb!
I've seen a lot of physical kids wash out due to lack of knowledge, discipline and the inability to repeat what they're learned.
The longer you play the better chance you have at being good at something!
Both our kids were average early youth football players and developed
into all conference football players at the HS level, lettering three years each. Early playing helped their development.
In wrestling they were below average youth ( started at 5) wrestlers. Both lettered three years on a team that won a lot of PA team state championships. One kid was on one of those teams.
Experience over time is an advantage that's why youth sports start early 5 & 6.
They started early, over time they learned how to be disciplined, physically fit, gained skills each year, played different positions, learned a lot about the game over the years, and ending up passing over a lot of the early physical developers.
This happens with lots of players.
Playing sports at an early age helps with a kids mental development too. In sports you have to do certain things in a certain order to be successful.
Experience counts and kids pick up all kinds of skills from an early age.
Wrestling is a perfect example of picking up and remembering skills from when they start at 5.
It's cumulative!
