Inside high school summer football: What to know ahead of 2022 season
The race to get ready for the upcoming Indiana High School Athletic Association football season is on, with teams around the state doing what they can to prepare.
With kickoff just 56 days away, here's what the time between now and then will look like for most squads.
Summer preparation shaped by IHSAA football rules
When the summer period begins on the Tuesday after Memorial Day, there are some hard and fast rules set by the IHSAA regarding what a football team's schedule should look like.
Between the beginning of the summer period and its end, which comes on Aug. 1 in 2022, football teams are allowed 12 football activity days. By rule, a football activity day is when a school’s football coaching staff coaches two or more players from the school’s football team in football activities.
Of those 12 days, five are allowed to be football competition days, which are days when a school’s football coaching staff takes two or more players from a football team to compete against one or more players from another school’s team. Those typically take the form of scrimmages or seven-on-sevens.
Over the course of the summer, full contact, which includes tackling, is banned. By the IHSAA’s description, the ban is on “any intentional football activity by a player where the goal is to take one or more competing players to the ground as the result of a collision.”
In addition to that, players are also limited in the equipment they can wear during summer football activities. They are allowed to use a helmet, shoulder pads, a girdle and a mouth piece.
Because of those rules and limitations, football activity days are primarily used to develop fundamentals, especially early in the summer. Over the course of the offseason, teams put time into learning their systems by studying playbooks, as well as working on conditioning and building the strength, agility, stamina and speed they’ll need to compete on Friday nights.
Moratorium week splits up the summer
In the heart of the summer, things come to a halt around the state for the IHSAA's moratorium week. The moratorium week is a period that typically falls in the first full week of July — this year it's from July 4 to July 10. There is no contact allowed between coaches and athletes and no athletic activities planned by IHSAA mandate.
This period serves different purposes, but the biggest of them is to give everyone involved in high-school athletics around the state a break. It's the one week a year that's guaranteed to not contain any practices, workouts, scrimmages or games, making it an ideal time for families to plan trips and vacations.
Even for those who don't use the moratorium to take off, it still provides a much-needed break. There are plenty of multi-sport athletes around the state who spend the entire year moving from one sport to the next without much interruption. There are also those to consider who spend the year teaching only to spend the summer coaching.
The moratorium week also splits the summer into two segments. and When it ends teams will typically increase their urgency, particularly with regards to learning the playbook.
August brings official practice, contests
When the calendar flips to August, the summer period will be over and the official part of the preseason will begin. Aug. 1 is when teams will be allowed to conduct their first official practice. Three days later, teams will finally be able to have a full-contact practice.
From there, it'll be an eight-day sprint to scrimmages and a week later, on Aug. 19, teams will kick off their seasons with their first official contests.
Contact Times-Mail sports reporter Auston Matricardi via e-mail at amatricardi@tmnews.com or on Twitter at @amatricardiTM.
This article originally appeared on The Times-Mail: Inside high school summer football: What to know ahead of 2022 season
