The last day to register for the Broomfield Youth Football Association season is Aug. 14. The first tackle practice is Aug. 20, with the first game on Sept. 1.
Divisions are Minis (ages 8 and 9), Minors (10 and 11) and Majors (12 to 14).
The first flag practice (for ages 5, 6 and 7) is Aug. 21 and the first game is Aug. 28.
All games are played in Broomfield.
The league will hold a 50th anniversary celebration on Sept. 29.
For more information, go to byfa.com or call 720-722-BYFA (2932).
Oklahoma drills, sprints and the pop of pads -- Henry Sahlieh lives for the player assessment combine.The PAC, which was Monday through Thursday at Broomfield County Commons, is the main tool the Broomfield Youth Football Association uses to create team parity and competitive football seasons. And after 14 years as a coach and administrator in the league, the kickoff to the season never gets old for Sahlieh.
But it is more than the shot at gridiron glory that gets the longtime coach's juices flowing.
"What I really get a kick out of is just seeing kids playing football and becoming involved with sports," the BYFA veteran said. "That never gets old."
Numbers for BYFA -- which this year will celebrate its 50th anniversary -- are up, but the buzz around the combine did not revolve around participation.
What captured most of the chatter at Wednesday's assessment was the first major tweak in more than half a decade to how teams are formed in the league. BYFA is instituting a controlled draft this season, allowing individual coaches to pick players in the league's two upper age divisions -- the Majors (ages 12 to 14) and Minors (10 to 11).
The move is big change from how teams have traditionally been formed in BYFA, but is a tweak many coaches have pushed for over the years.
"It might allow you to build a team that's bigger, faster or will work for a certain offense," said Joe Harris, who has coached in BYFA for 14 years. "Or it could allow coaches and players who worked well together in the past to be on the same team again."
Giving coaches more of a say in how their teams are formed was balancing act, BYFA director Pat Stacy said. One of the biggest selling points of BYFA is parity among teams, with the league striving to keep talent spread throughout a division.
Stacy illustrated what the youth football program aims to do by pointing to the Minor division's finish last season.
"After six games, we had four teams at 4-2, two teams at 2-2 and two teams at 2-4," he said.
To maintain an even keel in talent, the draft involves certain controls, so no one coach can corner the market.
BYFA still relies on the PAC to produce raw data on each player. The players go through drills, which are scored and then fed through a computer program to produce a score between one and four, with four being the highest. The highest-rated players -- impact players in the parlance of BYFA -- are split up four per team, then the draft ensues.
In the draft, coaches choose from batches of eight similarly ranked players, starting with the next highest rated. This goes on until each team roster is filled.
It is not yet known how many teams the league will field this season, with players able to register until Aug. 14 and a final PAC set for Aug. 15.
"We think its going to be a lot of fun for the coaches, but still not threaten what we've been able to achieve in competitiveness," Stacy said
Most coaches seconded Stacy's sentiments on the draft maintaining the integrity of what BYFA has been able to achieve. And for some, it has the potential to improve certain aspects of the league.
"I think it does away with the perception the board is in control of everything and that the league is centralized," Harris said. "It makes the process more transparent."
BYFA plans to track how its new process plays out this season, with Stacy and the board set to pour over the season's results.
Regardless of how the draft experiment shakes out, the process of forming teams is light year's away from how they were made as recently as 10 years ago.
"It's a lot more than a 40-yard dash anymore," Sahlieh said. "But the change has been good. We evaluate the players in depth and build competitive teams. Compared to before the combine, we hardly have any blowouts any more, that's important. It keeps kids in the game."
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