Youth sports in Salem and Keizer have become increasingly fragmented over the years.
In baseball alone, there are so many options it becomes confusing.
The six head football coaches of the Salem-Keizer Public Schools have come together to try to help that situation in football.
The six coaches – Brett Rhodes of McKay, Jeff Auvinen of McNary, Jeff Flood of North Salem, Scott DuFault of South Salem, Jay Minyard of Sprague and Shawn Stanley of West Salem – are supporting the move of the youth football programs in Salem and Keizer to the Tualatin Valley Youth Football organization starting in the fall.
Sprague’s youth football teams, as well as the rest of those associated with the Salem-Keizer public schools, will move under the Tualatin Valley Youth Football banner this year.
“We started this process of trying to refine the youth sports, at least the football version of youth sports, probably two years ago,” Flood said.
“The six of us have met over a dozen times just to try to get a better grasp on what’s out there and the type of coaching they’re receiving. Where we’re at now is not something that came about easily or flippantly. It’s been a well-thought out process.”
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Other Mid-Valley schools that have teams that play in Tualatin Valley include Salem Academy, Woodburn and North Marion.
All of the youth football programs in the McNary area moved to Tualatin Valley last year, and some West Salem teams were formed to play in the association starting last fall.
“They liked the way the league was run,” Auvinen said. “It was probably more like what we’re used to traditional football. There was less of a weight/age matrix, more of a if you’re this big you can’t carry the ball.
“But all of the kids that are growing up together are playing together and in the eighth grade we’re really going to try to get that middle school program going and we’re not going to offer an eighth grade team because we want all of those kids to play for the middle school.”
Most of the youth football programs in Salem and Keizer were run through Pop Warner before this year.
But Mid Valley Pop Warner was run through the district office in Albany and control of things like scheduling and sponsorship was out of the hands of the local officials.
“Pop Warner, that was great, and especially in the Sprague area it was,” Minyard said.
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“It could have been very easy for me to say, nope, we’re going Pop Warner and being separate, but I really do believe that we all want to be on the same page, and if that means that we all go this direction, that’s fine. I have no problem with that.”
As part of joining Tualatin Valley, each school has to have an association to organize its own youth football organization.
In some schools that’s a harder proposition than others.
But it also allows for greater local control.
McKay’s youth football teams in Pop Warner, for instance, didn’t get to play a home game last season because of the schedule set by the league.
It creates a disconnect when the youth don’t play on the same field as the high school team.
“We’ve started developing those relationships with the kids a lot earlier,” Rhodes said. “It creates, I wouldn’t say sustainability, it would be the kids saying I’m growing up a Royal Scot and in six years, seven years, my goal is to play under the lights at McKay High School.
“I think it creates more long-lasting relationship.”
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Though the programs in town will be organized through Tualatin Valley for third grade through seventh grade, the eighth grade programs run through the Salem-Keizer district will be encouraged by the high schools.
Flood has a unique perspective as his father, Bob Flood, was the long-time head coach at Judson Middle School.
“That’s something we want to support,” Jeff Flood said. “From my own perspective I know how important middle school football has had in Salem with my dad coaching middle school football for decades.
“Football’s a tremendous galvanizing sport when you have kids wearing school colors. I think it creates an atmosphere in a school. The more you can do to promote a sense of belonging and a sense of pride the better it is.”
DuFault said that one of the benefits of the move is that the Salem-Keizer athletes will be exposed to the athletes from the Portland area.
His South Salem teams swept the Greater Valley Conference the past two years, but were swept out of the state playoffs in the early rounds each time.
Being in a league with mostly Portland-area teams will allow the Salem-Keizer teams to play them at younger ages.
“It’s kind of been something we talked about over the past three, four years,” DuFault said. “We’re hoping to make it a full-scale transition, if we possibly can. I’m sure there are some people who kind of hang on to Pop Warner.”
There are still the options of youth football in Salem for children in Pop Warner and Boys & Girls Club.
The hope among the Salem-Keizer football coaches is that the majority of children will all play with Tualatin Valley affiliated teams now.
“In some sports in town, there’s 17 different options for kids,” Stanley said. “Really our intent is just to have one. It lets us being the parents and coaches in Salem be in control of our own destiny.”
bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6701 or Twitter.com/bpoehler