Young Tigers Seek Improvement On And At Fribley Field
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Mark Howe-mhowe@timesuniononline.com
One of the strong suits of the Warsaw Young Tiger football and cheerleading program has been continual progress and improvement. To that end, the focus lately has been to add lights to the organization’s home base, Fribley Field, and insure the coaches are well equipped to teach youngsters the fundamentals of the game. The field is named in remembrance of David Fribley, the first solider from Indiana killed in the line of duty during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Fribley died March 23, 2003. One of the goals of the Young Tiger program is to honor Fribley by having a first-class youth facility. “We have one of the best fields in the area, and we want to give the boys a better experience,” said Andy Owens, vice president of the organization. “We want Fribley Field to be the best youth football field in the state of Indiana. We want to give the kids a chance to play under the lights, and also honor David by having this field be the best field in Indiana.” Board member Shanon Jones added “we teach our kids discipline, respect and honor of their community, and what we’d like is to have them have the full experience, just like the high school players do, of playing under the lights, and have that sense of accomplishment within themselves that they did this: they made their own effort during practices and other games to get to play under the lights at their own home field, and have that ‘awe’ feeling of ‘this is my prize. This is where we belong, and this is how we honor Lance Corporal David Fribley. “This generation of kids will get the honor of helping make the field special, just as kids have in the past to get us to this point.” The lights will cost about $125,000, and won’t go up until all the money is raised. The organization is taking donations through the website gofundme.com. “A lot of our stuff comes from donations from the community. We do have help from the parks department as far as upkeep and everything,” Owens said. “But everything we’ve done, from the turf to the buildings, has come from donations. “For the most part, we’ve never been in debt. So the lights won’t go up until the money’s in place.” On the field, the program has put its coaches and board members through training offered by USA Football, which puts an emphasis on fundamentals, proper techniques and player health and safety. “All of our coaches are now USA Football certified,” Owens said. “We all had to go through a ‘Heads Up’ certification; basically two hours of going over everything from heads up tackling, heat and hydration, concussion awareness, sudden cardiac arrest, proper equipment fitting. “Myself, I’m the player safety coach. I had to go through an additional eight hour course, then come back and teach the coaches everything I learned to make sure we followed the Heads Up Football program all year round. “It’s just a little more aware ness of the problems that have come up as far as concussions. We’ve had to send more of our coaches to training, in places like Detroit and Indianapolis. We had 13 coaches go through off-season programs this year. “We’re trying to get our coaches more involved with the safety clinics so we can bring it back here and teach these boys and girls better, so they have a better, safer football experience.” Owens said practice structures have changed as well “We can only hit, or have live contact, for 30 minutes per practice,” he said. “We’re not out there like in the old days where you’d go out and bang heads for two hours. There’s a greater emphasis on quality of practice and drills to teach the fundamentals. Jones said that, as a football mom, the additional coaches training has brought her some peace of mind. “As a mom who has a boy that’s played the last four years in the program, I’ve noticed in the last two years since the Heads Up has come into play, that there’s been a lot more emphasis on the proper way of hitting, how to avoid helmet-to-helmet contact and use the shoulder pads instead,” she said. “They use their hands, using the torso and their body more so than the doing the ramming thing between the shoulders.” She feels there’s a reduction in injuries since the proper techniques have been implemented. “The coaches have a passion for teaching the proper techniques, and I trust my child 1,000 percent with the coaches out there,” she said. For more information on the program, visit www.youngtigerfootball.com or see the organization’s Facebook page.
