Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

NFL reaches out to help Southern Nevada youth football

Chaparral Football Semifinal Prep

L.E. Baskow

Chaparral High School offensive coach Lito Soifua talks with players in November 2015. The NFL has reached out to the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association to help with youth football in the community in anticipation of the Raiders’ arrival.

It’s not too soon to anticipate how the arrival of the Raiders in 2020 will help the growth of youth football in Southern Nevada.

Through its nonprofit NFL Foundation, the league works with local agencies to support youth and high school football.

Roman Oben, the NFL’s director of youth and high school football, said that the league has reached out to the Nevada Interscholastic Activities Association (NIAA) to get the ball rolling.

“We’ll reach out to state associations just to find what’s going on in that market to see what are the challenges, what are the issues and how to engage with them,” Oben said. “It was really a preliminary, exploratory discussion.”

Although the Raiders’ move is still a few years away, having those initial talks now allows the league to get a sense of what it should focus on when the time comes to put the program into action, said Oben, a tackle who played 12 seasons in the NFL.

“It was us being proactive and saying, ‘You don’t want to wait until 2019, and then say OK, we’re here, how are we going to help the community?’” he said.

Oben said that the league received feedback about issues facing the sport at the younger levels in Nevada.

Donnie Nelson, the NIAA’s assistant director, said that he spoke with Oben about possible programs that would benefit the coaches and players.

“The NFL reached out about at some point offering clinics and coaching programs and things like that for our high school coaches,” he said.

The league will stay in contact with the NIAA to devise a plan to implement when the Raiders begin to call Las Vegas home.

A example of programs the NFL sets up in its teams’ cities is a partnership with USA Football in which coaches are certified in subjects such as heat hydration, concussion awareness, tackling and blocking training.

“How do you help those who are engaged in the game? How do you address head coaches who are doing it right?” Oben said. “There are also the other layers: Who doesn’t have the resources, the equipment and the training.”

Each NFL city has a unique set of challenges, Oben said.

“Some states that are solid at the high school level — you might just need to support them,” he said. “There’s character values or a character education discussion. There are a lot of different things we can do, so it’s wise to have these discussions early.”

In addition to the programs Nelson and Oben discussed, possible use of the stadium and other benefits associated with having an NFL team in the state are on the NIAA’s wish list.

“I think about some of our showcase events that would tie in the Raiders with the NIAA. It would be having a state championship game or a series of games with not just the 4A schools, but all levels of schools in the new stadium,” Nelson said. “If that led to a regional championship game in there, that would be fantastic.”

To have that take place, Nelson pointed out that the NIAA would need some financial assistance from the Raiders.

Nelson also mentioned hosting awards banquets in the new stadium and providing tickets for high school athletes and coaches who are standouts on and off the field.

“Maybe there are opportunities where they can reach out to our coaches and student-athletes to reward them for community service and offer tickets to those who do great things in the community,” he said. “These types of programs go on in other NFL communities, and they seem to work out great. It’s all about the Raiders providing an experience for our high school student-athletes.”

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