Position Based Player Evaluation for the Finnish American Football National Team

Abstract

Every year the youth Finnish American football national team gets over 80 players at the first camp of the selection process. Before the first game there are normally three camps to cut down to a 45-man roster. To help coaches evaluate the talent of the athletes this project will make a template of the key performance indicators for each position and their performance objective. The template will include the physical and technical skill sets that can be graded clearly through evaluation at practice and film. The end purpose of the template is to give the coach a tool to help give structural feedback, rank the players, and track the developmental process of the athletes. This project consists of physical performance factors that are needed to excel for every position. Speed, agility/ change of direction, power and strength were concluded to be the top physical factors for every position. Studies showed that each of these physical factors have different results when comparing starters to non-starters. When looking at the performance objective for each specific position, information was gathered from books and sports articles written by coaches and scouts telling their way on how they evaluate each position. From that information the author was able to create a grading template to help coaches give athlete structural feedback and determine their strength and weakness. Doing this the objective is to help the athletes longer term devolvement and understand their strength and weakness.