NE Iowa Football Camp stresses up-to-date tackling techniques

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Some refer to football as a simple game of blocking and tackling.

Except it’s not so simple anymore.

“You’ve got to keep up with all the changes in the game,” Charles City head football coach Darren Bohlen said. “Safety has become more of a concern.”

During Monday’s opening day of the annual Northeast Iowa Football Camp sponsored by the Charles City YMCA, Bohlen addressed the game’s proverbial “elephant in the room”.

“Lately, there’s been all this talk about concussions in football,” Bohlen said to a group of campers gathered on a section of the Comets’ practice field.

“There are concussions in others sports … soccer, girls basketball … and football is one of the few sports where players always wear protection for their heads,” Bohlen said. “Yet football seems to get most of the negative attention when it comes to concussions.”

Stopping short of reducing tackle football to touch football, or even flag football as has been proposed for the high school and middle school levels, a proactive approach in teaching safer ways of tackling has been embraced by coaches and programs across the nation.

“The Seattle Seahawks released a YouTube video recently on safer tackling techniques,” Bohlen said. “It’s something we want to teach here.”

The video produced by Seahawks assistant coach Rocky Seto stresses a more heads-up “eyes to the thighs” approach to stopping ball carriers as opposed to using the helmet as a human-missile warhead.

Bohlen showed these techniques to the campers and suggested they should log onto the YouTube video themselves for further review.

“We’re always trying to make the game safer and better,” Bohlen said.

Charles City’s coaching staff has been providing instruction for the NE Iowa Football Camp for more than 20 years. The camps caters to incoming grades 5-12.

Many of the Comets’ returning lettermen were present at the camp, and some served as examples for the drills.

“We don’t start officially practicing until next week,” Bohlen said of the varsity program, “but today you can say is the real start of football season.

“This is like a mini-camp. We like to get as many of our guys out here for this.”