Welcome to the 34th year of White Bear Youth Football. As always, we are excited to embark on another year of teaching the children of the White Bear Lake area how to play tackle football. This year for the first time in more than 25 years, White Bear Youth Football will have new leadership. Mike Mason & Tom Sohrweide, the Co-Chairs for the 2016 season, have both been board members since 2008. Mike has two sons that went through the program and Tom had one. Their goal is to continue to keep White Bear Youth Football one of the strongest youth sports programs in the area.

At the end of last year we took a season ending survey to help us review our program. Based on the feedback we received, the following changes will take place this year:

1) The season will begin August 22 and end with Championship Sunday October 16th with the intent to minimize any conflict with hockey tryouts. We feel it is important that children play multiple sports and we are trying to lessen the times they have to choose one sport over another.

2) We were asked if we could do something to eliminate or minimize additional expense at the beginning of the year. The registration fee will now increase to cover the cost of putting the names on the jerseys, helmet decals, socks and also a water bottle for each player. With this change, we expect no additional expense for “team fees”. Unfortunately, there was no equitable way to include team party fees or concession tickets as that varies greatly from team to team.

3) At the 8th grade level only, we are raising the ball carrying weight by 5 pounds; this will allow some players that historically have not been able to carry the ball the opportunity to do so prior to high school. 5 pounds may not seem like much, but based on last year, 57% of the eighth graders were able to carry the ball. If we had added the 5 pounds, that percentage jumped to 71%.

There were many comments and suggestions about team formation. We would just like to take a moment to briefly clarify how this is accomplished:

4) We do not draft teams.

5) In order to keep the selection process as non-biased as possible, all players are assigned a number within their grade level and then plotted on a map using that number. Based on the number of registrants we then determine how many teams are in each level with the goal being 15-17 players per team. Sometimes that just is not possible - for example last year our 4th/5th grade teams had 19-20 players per team as we did not have enough coaches to field additional teams. We then start with the outer-most registrant and work in until all players have been placed on a team. While we do our absolute best to keep neighbors on the same team, sometimes in densely populated neighborhoods a team boundary could fall between houses. While we try to balance the weight of the teams as best we can, sometimes that is not possible while keeping the primary focus on neighborhood teams.

6) Once the teams are formed, we then look at who has signed up to be a head coach & place them accordingly with the team in their geographic area. Head coaches have no input as to who is on their team and they may need to move to a different area - at the boards discretion - if more than one signs up on a given team. We will not move a player to a different team in order to allow someone to be an assistant coach with another team.

Thank you for considering White Bear Youth Football and we’re excited to have the opportunity to teach your child the game of tackle football.

Sincerely,

White Bear Youth Football Board of Directors.