In late January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would reject a proposed ban on tackle football for children under the age of 12 in California; though, he still acknowledged the dangers of the sport, according to ESPN.
However, you can always teach a player to tackle, said DJ Blas, Pepperdine senior and assistant football coach at Moorpark High School. While tackle football is a great sport, the player’s safety is important, Blas said.
“But, I mean, how much is a 10-year-old going to really understand playing tackle football,” Blas said. “So, you know, keeping them safe. They’re still growing at that age, and they could still learn the same skill set when they’re 12, 13 years old.”
The City of Malibu community sports department offers recreational sports for children from kindergarten through eighth grade, wrote Kate Manisco, Malibu recreation manager for the Community Services Department, in a Jan. 31 email to the Graphic.
Malibu does not have a tackle football program, Manisco wrote. Programs are weekly classes that develop “fundamental skills” such as “hand-eye coordination, footwork, confidence and teamwork.”
“We [Malibu] offer a weekly recreational flag football class (ages 7-11) for approximately ten participants emphasizing throwing, catching, and offensive routes,” Manisco wrote. “The program is Coed and open to participants of all abilities.”
Playing the Game
Pepperdine senior Adian Imbrogno said he played flag football from first to sixth grade and switched to tackle football in seventh grade — playing until his senior year of high school. He played as a linebacker, defensive end and kicker.
The switch was intense, Imbrogno said, as he went from swatting hands and avoiding having his flag pulled to “blindsiding” people.
“It was a violent switch,” Imbrogno said.
A look at the percentage of the types of football injuries sustained by high schoolers in the 2022-23 academic year. Ignoring non-responses, the largest proportion of injuries were concussions, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Survey for 2022-23.
Even after Imbrogno learned how to tackle, he said the team would often have 15 to 30 minutes of practice devoted to tackling.
In terms of injuries, Imbrogno said he received a broken wrist due to a bad tackle but also meted out injuries of his own.
“My position was just running really hard into people and trying to make them either fumble the ball or tackle them,” Imbrogno said. “Just [to] create disruption and do so in a very physical way.”
His coach encouraged him to play linebacker because it would give him a chance to direct others, Imbrogno said.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m really interested in that,’” Imbrogno said. “I prefer to just be on the defensive line, which is where D-end is, and just run into people because that’s how I was getting all of my tackles.”
Blas “fell in love” with the game of football at a young age — he started playing flag football around age 5 and played it until high school, when he switched to tackle football.
Tackle football was more intense and a larger commitment, Blas said. He played all sides of the ball and just wanted “to be on the field.”
Tackling is involved in nearly half of football injuries, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Survey for 2022-23, which collects data from 100 schools.
Playing football, Blas said he has broken “four or five fingers,” tore his ACL, broke his foot, broke his ankle and tore his rotator cuff.
“But, I mean, if you can’t deal with the pain, you can’t play football,” Blas said. “So, you had to be willing to understand you’re gonna have bumps and bruises when you play football.”
An explanation of the most common injuries resulting from football. Information courtesy of the University of Rochester Medical Center.
The Importance of Coaching
At Moorpark, Blas said the team uses the spring to focus on players’ tackling form.
“And then, once you get the pads on in the summertime, then you can really start enforcing it,” Blas said.
The coaches set aside time to teach tackling and correct tackling errors such as when a player hits with their helmet, Blas said.
“When you get a lot of high school kids, a lot of kids are very immature, and they just want to go hit as hard as they can,” Blas said. “So, you have to learn how to be safe and learn how to protect your body because, at the end of day, if you’re not healthy, you won’t be able to play football.”
Tackling is involved in nearly half of football injuries, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Survey for 2022-23.
Blas said tackle football should be restricted for those under the age of 10 and utilized in junior high to prepare players for high school ball.
“Honestly, I feel that flag football prepared me very well for being able to play tackle football,” Blas said. “[In] flag football, you had to learn how to just not get touched, so it’s actually a little bit harder than tackle football.”
Melissa Shepard from Atlanta said her son, Jackson Shepard, started playing flag football in sixth grade and switched to tackle in seventh and eighth.
When deciding whether to allow her son to play football, Shepard said she looked at the injury rates for other sports at the school. For their particular school, the concussion rate was higher for basketball and soccer.
Safety precautions include teaching players to tackle at the waist rather than the head, Shepard said. After her son graduated from sixth grade, the school exchanged flag football with rookie football — a cross between tackle and flag.
“They [the school] wanted kids to start learning how to — at a younger age — how to tackle properly so that they didn’t get into middle school not knowing how to tackle properly,” Shepard said.
While flag football teaches the fundamentals, Shepard said rookie football provides a middle ground.
“I wish that my son, Jackson, had a couple of years of the rookie tackle before he just went into middle school into the full-fledged tackle because flag football to tackle football is a big jump, and so, it would have been nice to have that middle ground,” Shepard said.
Coaching, Shepard said, plays a big role in keeping players safe.
“If it’s [football] taught correctly, the research shows it’s not any more dangerous than other sports that the kids are playing.”
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Contact Samantha Torre via email: sam.torre@pepperdine.edu
