BLOOMINGDALE - Monday and Thursday nights in July became football night in Bloomingdale where at Delazier Field, the town’s youth football players and coaches took part in a one-hour mini-camp. The league’s four teams, based on age, are broken out and drilled in the skills that they will be using during the season. This is a concentrated version of the more intense summer camp that will start in August.
"This year we decided to put a little camp together, a free camp, and 95 kids came out," says John Dunleavy. "The real motivation was to bring in kids that never played before and of the 95 that came out 20 of them never played before so we’re trying to give them a little taste so they can see if they like it."
The teams will play an eight game regular season then will go through a play off round culminating with a Super Bowl to crown champions at each level. For now, Dunleavy and the other father/coaches are trying this out for the first time and judging from the turnout, the idea was a rousing success.
The cost was free, so while that may have some affect on the attendance, the enthusiasm and hard work shown by the kids as they went through their drills could not be denied.
"Part of the reason for the camp was to get them indoctrinated and the other part was to just wake the kids up from baseball and say football is on its way," says Dunleavy. "We also wanted to give them a little taste of conditioning, especially the younger guys."
Football is an intensely popular sport and at the high school level, it has become ingrained in the culture of small towns across the area as well as the nation. Teaching young boys how to do things, the right way, maximizes their enjoyment as well as protects that from serious injury.
By having this mini-camp Dunleavy hopes that when August’s training camp begins, the kids will already be in the football mindset and going from vacation mode to football ready will be a quicker, less difficult transition.
"We only have a month to get ready for our first game and with the little guys, you can take two weeks just getting them to understand center, guard, tackle and end," says Dunleavy. "It will probably save us a solid week of practice."
Depending upon the boys’ age, the level of instruction will vary. While the little ones are learning the proper way to hold and run with the football, how to stay balanced in a three-point stance, the older kids are schooled on the offense, the run-and-shoot, which is used at Butler High School.
To that end, Dunleavy hopes to bring in some of the high school’s coaching staff into the camp to introduce themselves to the future Bulldogs and help reinforce what they are being taught. The Bloomingdale youth league has been acting as a feeder program for years but this synergistic effort can only help to foster the level of cooperation.
"We’re trying to get the older kids to run what Butler High School is running so in August we’ll have the high school coaches come down and run a practice with us," says Dunleavy.
