Here’s what’s new on the Norcal Football site.

• 7/9/2014 Updates
  • 2014 Team Strength
  • 2014 Home and Away Schedule
• 6/17/2014 Updates
  • 2014 Calendar Updated
  • Past Champions
  • All Nor Cal associations are members of Heads Up Football
  • 2014 NorCal Procedures
• 4/3/2014 Updates
  • 2014 Schedule Notes
• 11/19/2013 – Final Playoff Results/All Star Schedule and Game Notes
• 10/22/2013 - Week 8 Results and Final Regular Season Standings

CHAMPIONSHIP LOCATIONS:

1. Congratulations to the Solano Warriors will be hosting the D1 Nor Cal Football Championships on Saturday Nov 15.
2. Congratulations to the Bay Area Spartans who will be hosting the D2 Nor Cal Championships on Sunday Nov 16.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

NEW INFO: Each team MUST HAVE THEIR HEAD COACH OR AN APPROVED ALTERNATE ATTEND ONE OF THE CLINICS IN ORDER TO HAVE A TEAM CERTIFIED.  Signing in and out will be a requirement.  It doesn’t matter which clinic a coach goes to.

COACH’S CLINICS JULY 19, 20, 26 – Listed below are the dates, times and locations of the Nor Cal coach’s certification clinic.  Every team must send their head coach.  Difference in times below are due to different start times, guest speakers, lunch and break schedules but for the most part it is a 5 hour clinic.  Coaches must sign-in and sign-out at the appropriate times in order to get credit for attending the event.

JULY 19 Coaches Certification Clinic in VALLEJO (Ranon coordinating)

Location: Vallejo Boys and Girls Club

1 Positive Place

VALLEJO, CA 

Time: Football coaches 9 am – 2 pm.  Cheer coaches 12 to 3:30 pm

July 20 Coaches Certification Clinic in SAN JOSE (Kathy)

Location: Oak Grove Hall

107 East Alma Street

San Jose CA

Start Time: Football coaches 10 am – 2 pm.  Cheer coaches 11:50 to 3 pm.

JULY 26 Coaches Certification for Sacramento (Kim)

San Juan High School

Multi-Purpose Room

7551 Greenback Ln,

Citrus Heights, CA 95610

Check in at 8am

Certification begins: 10am

JULY 28 – Deadline for Background affidavits and Insurance Certificate (proof of Ins) to be emailed to Nor Cal (Denise Wallace) before can start your first practice.  These documents should be emailed to Kim as soon as you get them.  Do not wait to the last day to fill out the affidavit.  You can fill it out and send it in even if all coaches backgrounds are not completed as the affidavit is your guarantee that all backgrounds will be done BEFORE a coach is let on the field and/or allowed to deal with kids on behalf of your association.  REQUIREMENT: Any association that takes the field and practices without sending in their Background affidavits and their Insurance Certificate is in violation of National AYF rules (Section 7, Section 9C and Section 16 paragraph 2) and will be suspended from Nor Cal.

JULY 28 – Practice starts

AUG 9/10 – BOOK CERTIFICATION STARTS.  It is Mandatory that you bring your books to the Aug 9/10 Certification.  Details will come from your Certification Leader (Kathy, Ranon, Mike or Kim).  Practice starts July 28 and kids cannot practice unless they have a physical, parent signature etc.. and the association has sent in proof of Insurance and their Background Affidavit.

NORCAL Youth Football & Cheer  is now a member of USA Football’s Heads Up Football program for 2014.  Created by USA Football, Heads Up Football has earned the endorsements of leaders in medicine and sport, including the Pac-12, the NFL and the NFHS.  Heads Up Football will provide NORCAL Youth Football & Cheer with resources to establish important standards and address player safety for the betterment of athletes in our game.  In addition to receiving the latest information on equipment fitting, concussion awareness, coach education and heat and hydration, participating programs will also receive instruction on USA Football’s Heads Up Tackling model.  Developed with leaders across football and medicine, Heads Up Tackling is a step-by-step teaching technique created to reinforce proper tackling mechanics for stronger fundamentals and safer play.

Important information on the schedule:

1. DATES FOR PLAYOFFS – Please review the attachment with the playoff dates each association is hosting in 2014.
2. CHEER COMPETITION – The date set up with Jamz is Sunday Oct 26 so the Tiny Mite Bowl and Play-in games must be hosted on Saturday Oct 25.
3. EXTRA TEAMS SCHEDULE – The updated schedule includes the home and away dates plus opponents for associations with extra TM and Cadet teams.
4. JAMBOREE – For information on your Jamboree please get with your Certification Leader.

Below I have listed any teams with extra TM’s or Cadets, less than a full family TM – JM and who does not have Midgets:

EXTRA TEAMS OVER A FULL FAMILY:

• Vallejo Jaguars have a second TM.
• Vacaville Bulldogs have a second TM and a second Cadet team.
• Vacaville Bengals have a second Cadet team (no extra TM).
• Oak Grove has three additional TM teams and two additional Cadet teams.
• Richmond Steelers have an extra TM
• Grant Chargers have an extra TM
• San Francisco Bombers have a second TM and a second Cadet team.

NOT A FULL FAMILY TM TO JM:

• SFF has no JP and no JM

NO MIDGET: PAK, VBE, SOL

View the schedule

THE AYF EXPERIENCE

From: Dee Grayer [mailto:deegrayer@yahoo.com]

Hello Everyone,

The AYF Experience is being planned and we are considering the Dates and Locations for this Unique Inaugural Tour.  This combines activities that have taken place during National All Star Week, in which we only expose to the 60 8th Grade Football All Stars and 20 8th Grade Cheer All Stars.  It’s a great week, so we want more of our members to enjoy this type of experience!

The objective of this tour is a weekend of education for our AYF Members and Their Local Community, with National AYF participation.  Working together with Football Players, Cheerleaders, Coaches and Staff, Parents, and Leadership!

Friday:  Free Coaches Clinic, followed by networking: 300-500 for General Session and Rooms for Breakouts)

Saturday:  Football Camp, Cheer Camp, and Parent Camp – Cost will be provided (includes shorts and shirt for each participant) – Need Football Field with Bleachers, Indoor Facility with Cheer Mats (All in Same Location)

Saturday Night:  The Epic Camp AYF Party! – Cost will be provided

Sunday:  Leadership Brunch (Association and Conference Leaders) – Brunch Cost will be provided

We will have a Hotel Partner that will be used with a set rate for those that travel from out of the area to attend Camp AYF Weekend!  Details to follow.

All fees will be minimal as possible to encourage participation from all.  Host Leadership organizations will benefit from the fundraising opportunity (funds for scholarships, national travel, academics, etc)

Camp AYF Tentative Tour Schedule

4/5 – Arizona (Phoenix)
5/10 – Southern California (San Diego)
5/16 – 18 – Northern California (Vacaville)
5/31 – New England (Providence/Boston)
6/7 – Nations Capitol (MD/VA/DC)
6/21 – Texas (Austin/Houston)
7/12 – East (New Jersey/Philadelphia)

GAME NOTES FOR FINAL PLAYOFF WEEK

CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND SPORTSMANSHIP NOTES:

1. We had 103 playoff games over the past 4 weeks and there were NO PLAYER OR COACH EJECTIONS
2. Congratulations again to the Vallejo Raiders and South Sac Vikings for winning the Sportsmanship Award for 2013.  Both associations will have their Nor Cal fees in 2014 covered by Nor Cal next season.

CHAMPIONSHIP WEEKEND COMPETITION NOTES:

1. Championships were spread out.  Out of 12 possible Championship titles won last weekend, 9 different associations won either a D1 or D2 Nor Cal championship.
2. No association won more than two Nor Cal Championships.
3. In D1 Midgets 6 of the 7 playoff games were won by a touchdown or less including the overtime Championship game.
4. For the second year in a row there were NO UNDEFEATED TEAMS ON THE UPPER LEVELS (PEE WEE THROUGH MIDGET) by the conclusion of the Nor Cal season.
5. We did end up with a total of 2 undefeated D1 teams (Solano Cadet and VBE JP) at the conclusion of the 2013 season.  Last year we had only one undefeated D1 team (OGS Cadet) by the time the Nor Cal championships were over.  No team has repeated going unbeaten over the last two years.

GAME NOTES FOR PLAYOFF WEEK 3

SPORTSMANSHIP NOTES:

1. 89 playoff games to-date: NO EJECTIONS
2. Congratulations again to the Vallejo Raiders and South Sac Vikings for winning the Sportsmanship Award for 2013.  Both associations will have their Nor Cal fees covered by Nor Cal next season.

COMPETITION NOTES:

1. 8 different associations will be represented at the D1 Nor Cal championships in Oakland on Saturday.  10 associations will be participating in D2 Championships on Sunday in Vacaville.
2. 10 of the 14 playoff games on Saturday were won by a touchdown or less.
3. In D1 Midgets 5 of the 6 playoff games over the first two weeks were won by a touchdown or less.  The number 5 and 7 seeds reached the Nor Cal finals.
4. Only two games (JP and PW levels) this week match the D1 #1 and #2 seeds against each other.
5. We are down to 3 undefeated teams (one Cadet, JP and PW) as three previously unbeaten teams lost last weekend.  Last year we had only one undefeated team (Cadet) by the time the Nor Cal championships were over.

GAME NOTES FOR PLAYOFF WEEK 2

SPORTSMANSHIP

1. NO EJECTIONS THROUGH THE FIRST TWO WEEKES OF PLAYOFFS.
2. Congratulations to the Vallejo Raiders and South Sac Vikings for winning the Sportsmanship Award for 2013.  Both associations will have their Nor Cal fees covered by Nor Cal next season.  NOTE: We normally award two winners – one for the NCSC and one for the Alliance but no Alliance teams received any votes so the award is given to both SSV and VR.

COMPETITION:

1. 18 of the 26 football playing associations still have teams in the playoffs (over 67%).
2. 17 playoff games this weekend were decided by one touchdown or less compared to 10 games won by 30 points or more.

WEIGH-INS/ARRIVE ON TIME – Teams must be ready to go at the start of the scheduled game time or their game is subject to forfeit.  You are to be at your host field no later than 1 hour before the scheduled start of your game time for weigh-ins.  We have 7 GAMES PER FIELD THIS WEEKEND AND CANNOT FALL BEHIND.  We don’t want the 7 pm game starting at 830 pm and ending after 1030 pm so get to your FIELD ONE HOUR BEFORE and start the game ON TIME.  If a team is not yet finished weigh-ins or is not done warming up at the start of their scheduled game time that team will forfeit their game.  The teams can scrimmage but the game is forfeited.

NO 8^th Grade All-Star team for Nor Cal – due to not being able to get financial commitment from 18 – 22 players.

GAME NOTES FOR WEEK 7:

In response to some questions on DIVISION 1 playoffs, below are the rules straight out of the Nor Cal rulebook.  We will have one playoff with 8 teams (combination of NSCS and Alliance teams moving up to D1).  There will be two semi-final brackets – one for teams going to AYF Nationals in Florida (D1N) and one for teams NOT going to the AYF National Championships (D1L). The two semi-final winners, including the D1N Regional championship winner who qualifies to go to Nationals by winning the D1N semi-final bracket on Nov 9/10 and the D1L semi-final bracket winner, will meet in the Nor Cal Championships on Nov 16 in Oakland.

For 2013 the top 8 NCSC teams by regular season record qualify for the D1 playoffs. Unless all teams on a level agree to participate in the national championships or all 8 teams decide not to participate, the teams will be broken down into two brackets including the top 4 teams who want to go to nationals (D1N) and the top 4 teams that are not going to AYF nationals (D1L) for any reason (such as less than 16 players or cannot afford to travel etc…). D2 teams who wish to move up to D1 playoffs must notify the Nor Cal president in writing no later than Sunday of week 6….Teams forced to play in D1N do not have to go to nationals while teams forced into D1L or D2 did not qualify for D1 nationals.

GAME NOTES FOR WEEK 6:

HOW THE TM BOWL WORKS: We are NOT having a 25 yard tournament this year.  Instead we are playing full TM games.

1)      To reduce travel teams are placed at the closest TM Bowl host location possible unless teams volunteered to move to help even out the number of teams at each location. Teams were broken down into two 16 team brackets.  Locations are as follows:

2)      Bracket “A” AT Vacaville Bulldogs (6) – SOL, VBE, VJB, VBO, VJ, VJ2.  AT Sac Matadors (10) – EG, GC, GC2, SSV, LL, RW, SCF, SL, SM, WE

3)      Bracket “B” AT OAKLAND (8) – OGS, OGW, OGC, OKD, PAK, RS, RS2, BAS.  AT FAIRFIELD (8) – SFB, SFO, VR, FF, SFF, RE, SR, NSH.

4)      First round match ups for each location will be drawn out of a hat at the playoff meeting on Oct 21.

5)      Week 2 (Nov 2/3) and Week 3 (Nov 9/10) will be the Bracket Quarter-finals and Semi-finals.

6)      The two remaining teams in each bracket will meet in the Bracket Championship games at Oakland (Nov 16) or Vacaville (Nov 17)

7)      If both coaches and presidents of the two Bracket winners want to play for the Nor Cal championships, they will play on Nov 24 at one of the two all-star game locations.

HOST TEAMS PLAY AT HOME WHENEVER POSSIBLE - I make every attempt to have your teams play at home if you are hosting however if 2 teams are playing against one another and both associations are hosting, the higher seed or if tied the team that won their regular season game or tie-breaker will be at home and the other team will be on the road.  So for example (This is an example only – it did not happen as listed) if both SR and VBE have identical records and are hosting and their JP and JM are scheduled to play in the playoffs, the JM game would be at SR if SR won the regular season game and the JP game would be at VBE if the VBE JP’s beat SR during the regular season.  If a host has a request (i.e. “I need my Cadets as the last game of the day because they help with clean up”) let me know and will try to incorporate your requests into the playoff schedule but no guarantees can be made on fulfilling the request.

NOTE ON D1 and D2 PLAYOFFS:

1)      Super Conference associations – All Teams in the NCSC are Division 1.  The top 8 make the D1 playoffs.  NCSC teams that qualify for the playoffs with 3 wins but are not one of the top 8 teams will be moved down to D2.  Movement by a team to D2 is not by choice but by record.

2)      Alliance associations – All non-Super Conference members are considered D2 unless they put in for D1.

3)      An association cannot send both a D1 and a D2 team to nationals in the same year.  So if you qualify both a D1 and D2 team, the D1 team must go and the D2 team cannot go to nationals.

GAME NOTES FOR WEEK 5:

SPORTSMANSHIP: Coaches are doing a great job in this area.  Through 5 weeks Nor Cal has not had one coach ejected from a game and we have had no suspensions of any coaches for any reason!  Players are also doing extremely well in the area of Sportsmanship too as we have not had a player ejected and suspended the following game since week 1.  We have not had any players ejected and suspended on the TM – JM level all season (only a few Midgets the first week but that also stopped starting with week 2).

COMPETITION: There were sweeps of all games by a visitor or home team on only 2 of the 12 fields this weekend.  In addition we had 15 games decided by one touchdown or less last weekend compared to 12 games won by 30 points or more.

GAME NOTES FOR WEEK 3:

SPORTSMANSHIP – Over all we had a very good third week.  For the second week in a row there were no reported ejections of any players.

COMPETITION BALANCE: 9 of the 14 associations with at least one undefeated team also have at least one winless team.  Over the first 3 weeks, on 27 fields where there are at least 4 competitive games (Cadet – Midget), we have had only 3 sweeps by a home or visiting team.

BATTLE OF THE UNDEFEATED TEAMS THIS WEEK:  We have 12 undefeated teams from 8 associations facing off against each other this weekend including:

Midget: Elk Grove Dukes – Oakland Dynamites.  Historically two of the top Midget programs in Nor Cal.  Oakland has EG this week and undefeated NSH in week 6.

Cadet and Pee Wee: Richmond Steelers – Vacaville Bengals. Two of the top programs in Nor Cal face off with undefeated teams on 2 levels.

Cadet and Pee Wee: Bay Area Spartans – Lathrop Lions.  Last two undefeated Cadet and PW teams in the Alliance face off this weekend.

Jr Pee Wee: Sac 49’ers – North Sac Hurricanes.  Undefeated NSCS teams vs undefeated Alliance member.

GAME NOTES FOR WEEK 2:

SPORTSMANSHIP – Congratulations!! We did not receive any complaints about poor sportsmanship last weekend.  Sometimes small complaints come in during the weekend but major issues we hear about right away and this weekend there were no major reports of poor sportsmanship by coaches, players or fans.

COMPETITION IS BALANCED – Of the 13 NSCS association (out of 15) that have at least one team with a 2-0 record, 11 of them also have at least one team with an 0-2 record.  In the Alliance 7 of the 11 associations have a least one team with a 2-0 record and of those 6 associations have at least one team with a record of 0-2.

GAME NOTES FOR WEEK 1:

SPORTSMANSHIP – Overall a great first weekend to start the season.  Refs reported great sportsmanship at our games last weekend.  We had only one major incident with the Midgets and it was more fans acting up than players or coaches.

COMPETITION – There were no sweeps at any of the 12 fields last weekend.  Every association in Nor Cal won at least one game and lost at least one game.  14 games finished within one touchdown compared to 12 games with team winning by 30 points or more.

We would like to welcome all players, coaches and board members to NorCal Youth Football. The conference was established with the goal of building a highly competitive youth football organization in the Bay Area. The mission of the NorCal Conference is to provide a safe learning environment where children can participate in an activity which teaches values and skills that become part of the child’s experience and impacts their lives in a positive way. Under the umbrella of the national program, American Youth Football, our local conference will strive to teach the importance of self‐respect and dedication while building character and self‐confidence.

Whether you realize it or not, your actions set an example for the children you coach. As an adult volunteer we ask you act with integrity at all times and strive to do the right thing for the right reason. Thanks and have a great season!

NorCal Board of Directors