Some say Minnesota’s youth football philosophy is holding back top players | Strib Varsity

The feeder programs that stock some of Minnesota’s high school football powerhouses — teams like Maple Grove, Minnetonka and Edina — are less concerned about winning at the youth level than you might expect.

From fourth grade through eighth grade, there are no playoffs or standings. They don’t even post the scores.

“We don’t do any of that,” said Chris Buboltz, director of the Lake Minnetonka Athletic Association (LMAA). “After the last game, everybody shakes hands and moves on to the next season.”

Other youth football programs in Minnesota do keep score. With few exceptions, however, every association purposefully spreads talent evenly among teams, instead of forming an A team, B team and C team, etc.

The A-B-C approach is common in Minnesota for other sports, such as hockey, basketball, baseball, softball, volleyball and soccer — but not football.

This frustrates some football leaders who say Minnesota’s philosophy is holding the top players back.

“I’m a huge believer that Minnesota has a ton of talent,” former Gophers assistant coach Mike Sherels said. “Having recruited the state for many years, I started to kind of connect the dots as to why we don’t have more top-end players.

“I don’t want to throw it on [community] associations because they’re doing what they know. But I think we’ve kind of gotten away from development.”