- May 15, 2025
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To the untrained eye, tackling in football might look like unorganized chaos.
The 100 youth football players who showed up to a Nextlevelz tackling clinic at the East Manatee Bulldogs field in Lakewood Ranch on April 26 learned that’s not the case.
Tackling is an art form, and there were 20 youth football coaches on hand to drive that point home.
Coaches from Lakewood Ranch, Braden River, Out-of-Door Academy, Parrish Community, Lennard, Saint Stephen’s Episcopal, Sarasota and Southeast high schools partnered with Nextlevelz — a local youth football development program — to instruct young players how to tackle safely and effectively.
There are several components to tackling, but the most important one for young football players to learn is how to do it with proper form.
Participation in youth football has faced a steady decline over the past 10-plus years.
According to participation reports by the National Federation of State High School Associations, participation took a hit from the 2009-10 school year through the 2021-22 school year, dropping from 1.1 million to about 975,000 players.
Participation has since ticked back up above the million-player mark, but that’s still trailing behind where it was 16 years ago despite the population of the United States growing by over 40 million people during that timeframe.
It’s no secret why parents have been choosing to have their kids play other sports.
There have been several studies, articles and media coverage about concussions in football and how that can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
That’s one reason why Nextlevelz owner James Abelson hosted a youth football tackling clinic.
“A big factor that made me want to do this is that there are a lot of youth families who are afraid to get into tackle football at a younger age because they’re afraid that their children will get hurt,” said Abelson, who coached high school football in Pennsylvania and at Saint Stephen’s before starting Nextlevelz. “A lot of moms are apprehensive and a lot of dads that maybe played the sport but were never taught the right way. I want to make sure that if a kid gets in that they have a foundation put in place to be comfortable and confident in what they’re doing.”
Youth football players from first through eighth grades learned how to tackle safely. That means tackling with your head up to avoid head-to-head collisions, using leverage appropriately and tackling confidently.
Proper tackling form is key to reducing head and neck injuries, but the basic fundamentals of tackling that aren’t focused on safety are just as important.
If a young player is going to make a tackle, they have to commit to it and know what they’re doing.
“Tackle football is confidence. It’s similar to wrestling 101,” East Manatee Bulldogs Pop Warner President Greg Lawson said. “If you go out and feel confident in your ability and someone manhandles you or overwhelms you, it’s a normal natural human reaction to either withdraw from that or feel less confident. Putting these structures in place allows them to grow and have self confidence.”
Some of the stations at the Nextlevelz tackling clinic included taking the appropriate angle to a tackle, using a teammate to leverage a tackle, exploding up into a tackle, wrapping arms around a player and driving through a tackle with force.
Though these drills were non-contact — except with the unsuspecting tackling dummies and doughnuts — the coaches on hand made sure to drive their points home.
Elijah Hodge, an inside linebackers coach at the University of South Dakota, implored one player to pay attention to the details after he ran through a drill incorrectly.
When that player tried to go to the back of the line, Hodge called him back.
“If you do it wrong, you’re going to do it long,” he said before instructing how to properly complete the drill.
Once each group of kids had run through all of the drills, the coaches wrapped up with a clinic discussing strategies and various teaching methods.