New era in Pop Warner comes to North
The North Fort Myers Pop Warner football and cheer programs started their fall workouts on Aug. 1 at the North Fort Myers Community Park, and for the football team in particular, it will be the start of a new era and a new way of putting a team together.
For the first time in the program’s 55-year history, there will be no weight limits for the competitive programs, and they will be determined by age and not by size, as many of the other competing programs have done in recent years.
Teams will be divided by 6U, 8U, 10U, 12Uand 14U, with the three oldest divisions having no weight limits.
Steve Brown, athletic director and coach on the 12U team, said about 170 players will play this season, with all five divisions having teams. For North, this new format is uncharted territory.
“There is a lot of research to determine the safest way to play, like age or like weight. Nearly all the research indicates it’s safer to play like age,” Brown said. “The lowest age groups will still have the limits because we want to ease them into the sport.”
Brown said the new format (which not every conference has adopted) will allow them to compete with other leagues that have been competing with Pop Warner for players and have used the age platform for years.
“It also brings the game to kids we’ve excluded, such as kids who are big-boned. Those kids had to play with those who were three years older than them, or not at all if you were too heavy,” said Brown, who believes this will help level the playing field for everyone in the Peace River Conference. There will be no more Division 2 or 3. Everybody will be Division 1.
For cheer, which will have around 70 members this year, they hope to get the same sort of results they got last season when three teams went to nationals.
Cheer will follow the same formula as in the past with Mitey and Tiny Mites, Junior Pee-Wee, Pee-Wee, Junior Varsity and Varsity.
Robert Babcock, cheer coordinator, said despite the lack of numbers created by boundary changes and the new football format, the teams look pretty good, even if they will be a little bit small.
“The kids are wet. It’s rained every day, and we can’t practice if the football players can’t,” Babcock said. “We can’t do much because the first 20 hours are all conditioning.”
Babcock said in cheer, they root for the team all season, before going to their competition for a 2:30 routine that can make or break you.
In football you have so many games and can come back the next week. In cheer, you have one competition where you win or lose,” Babcock said.
As usual, weather has played a huge factor in how and if the teams will practice. On Tuesday, practice got going around 6:30 p.m. after the lightning alarm gave the all clear.
The Red Knights got far enough along in practice to start doling out equipment. Contact got started quickly, as they needed to have 10 hours in pads before the Jamboree, which is Aug. 17.