How to Organize a Pop Warner Schedule

As a Pop Warner organizer, you need to learn how to navigate around scheduling troubles to keep your season on track. The challenge of organizing a Pop Warner schedule depends on the number of teams, the amount of playing fields available and the local school schedule. Before you organize a Pop Warner schedule, you need to consult with every team and with park officials to make sure every contingency is covered.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Calendar of Pop Warner events
• List of teams and home fields

Create a Pop Warner Football Schedule

1. Consider utilizing an auto scheduling program to avoid conflicts between your league's teams. Most scheduling software allows you to enter team data, field availability and the chronological boundaries of a Pop Warner season. Companies like D4 Sports offer inexpensive software that is a good investment over multiple seasons.

2. Establish a local park as your home field for the entire season. In order to schedule park space for the whole season, speak with the public parks office in your city about availability. Private parks at local schools or companies can usually be rented out for a small fee.

3. Set up a meeting with other coaches in the league to organize data for scheduling. As the schedule organizer, you need to know when each home field is available and the proposed weekly practice times of teams throughout the league.

4. Develop a binder that contains information on local school events and other scheduling conflicts for Pop Warner. Players or their parents can provide postings and bulletins that detail school-wide events that might conflict with a Pop Warner schedule.

5. Keep practice schedules light and flexible to deal with last-minute events that require player attendance. You can require attendance at one to two practices a week but daily practices may harm the scholarly mission of Pop Warner.

6. Limit exhibition games and scrimmages in your league. Pop Warner players may experience undue stress and poor performance if they have to play too much football while they are starting their school year. Organize one light scrimmage for each team to keep players fresh for the season.

Tips & Warnings

• Observe regional and national championship dates as mandated by the national Pop Warner organization. The organization's rules dictate that seasons end by a certain point to ensure that qualifying teams can travel to their regional playoffs. Talk to league representatives about other scheduling requirements like how many games must be played between divisional opponents in a large league.

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