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Cambridge Football Is Unified!
By Coach Paul
Apostolos M. Antonopoulos
CPW Director of Football Operations
August 2006 I am thrilled to announce that IT HAS HAPPENED!
What in January 2006 was an idea, a hope for the future, has happened.
Cambridge Football is officially UNIFIED. The plan to institute ONE
SYSTEM across all levels of football ball had its official start on
Thursday, August 24, 2006 as Cambridge Pop Warner scrimmaged
Somerville at Foss Park. All of the Cambridge Pop Warner Teams used
the same terminology to call their plays that the high school uses.
They DID NOT RUN the same plays the high school uses, but they used the
same LANGUAGE to communicate.
This point I believe is the reason the Pop Warner coaching staff has
embraced and implemented the whole idea.
At the now historic January 2006 coaches pizza party at the Hacienda,
attended by all the CPW coaches and Paul Gonnella, CRLS Head Coach, I
first proposed the idea of instituting the high school terminology
across Pop Warner. I had heard that this had been tried before and had
NOT been successful. In previous years the high school coaches had tried
to teach their "plays" to the CPW coaches.
No coach wants to be told what PLAY to run.
That is the coaches decision depending on his team and their capabilities.
So...we didn't tell the CPW coaches what plays to run, we asked them to
simply use the same terminology as the high school, as applicable to the
level of each team. All of the players in Cambridge Pop Warner will
learn some of the Falcon System as they progress through Pop Warner.
When they get to high school, it will not be a "start from scratch"
situation.
ON DAY ONE, they will know what "21 Personnel, LEFT, SPLIT, LIZ, 5 -
839, FLAT/FLARE" means.
Would YOU like to learn "that" at preseason camp as an incoming freshman
or would you rather learn it spread over a couple of years?
The CPW coaches learned this system during the OFFSEASON. While most
of the community put football aside, we ran clinics for both the coaches and the players. The knowledge acquired during those clinics was put on the field last night.
I want to first want to thank Paul Gonnella, CRLS Head Coach, for all
the time he spent with us, our coaches and our children and his willingness to help us in the way we asked and for all the Friday/Saturday clinics he ran. His TEACHING, on the board and on the field has been outstanding, to both the players and the coaches. Secondly, I want to thank John Bernard and the CPW coaching staff, Dave Christie(A/B), Arnold Dobson(C), Frank Kelly (D) and Jermaine Mackenzie(E). Without their cooperation none of this would have been possible. I can' tell you how thrilled I was to see all of the coaches using the same terminology last night, Dave Christie's notebook with over 20 plays, Arnold Dobson's poster boards...that he made himself....was just thrilling.
Here's hoping this leads to great seasons for years to come.
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