Grassroots Nation!!! Next Saturday and Sunday will represent one of the most important weekends in MD Youth Football History!!! Many of you dont understand the significance of the FBU National Championship Tournament to the State of Maryland. Many dont understand why Grassroots puts so much into developing these teams. I try my best to explain to anyone who will listen and we have all the details on the website, but not everyone has a chance to or the desire to read to find out. I wont do a complete and detailed post on this right now, but I will at a later date. The shortest version I can give you follows: I am committed to doing everything in my power to transform the perception of the DMV into a football hotbed of talent. We have long been considered a basketball hotbed. Much of that perception has to do with the success of our AAU Basketball Teams over the years. Once regions gain the perception of being a hotbed of talent, college scholarships are offerend in those regions in disproportionate rates. Our kids benefit from that in basketball already. Our football players do not because we have not gained that status yet. The Hampton Roads region, the Florida region, the Texas region, the Louisianna region, the Ohio and Pennsyvania regions, the California region, etc., are all considered hotbeds. That is where the colleges go first looking for talent believe they believe they have the best of the best players. Of the 16,000 HS football players that participate in the State of MD and DC every year, we only average 60 Division 1 scholarships on a yearly basis. I am obsessed with raising those averages so that more of our kids can have a chance to compete the life changing and destiny altering college scholarship offer that I had. We have always had great players from this region who went to college. We have always had great youth programs that have had success in National Tournaments. Programs like Beacon House, White Oak, Watkins, etc., have won National Championships for decades. They are just a few names of great programs. With all of this success, why have we not been considered a football hotbed? The answer is because it is not possible for one, two, or even 3 individual youth programs to represent an entire region. They are not made up of kids from the entire region. If a great program like Beacon House for example, beats a great program from Florida like the Broward Jets for a National Championship, that is an amazing accomplishment. It is great for the organization, it is great for the kids, and it is great for the city. But, it does not allow us to say that DC football is better than South Florida Football. We can say that Beacon House is better than Broward, but we cant change the perception of the entire region. The only way we can say DC Football is better than South Florida Football is if we can put a DC All Star Team together to play against a South Florida All Star Team under an umbrella that is Nationally respected. Once I studied that dynamic and realized that was our reality, I had to find a forum and platform that would allow us to put All Star Teams together from the DMV and play against the other regions that are considered hotbeds. To be the best you have to beat the best. FBU is owned and operated by All American Games. That is the parent company that owns the US Army All American Game, and the Eastbay All American Games. The platform is tied directly to the top HS Scouting services in the country and the top college coaches in the country because they all follow the US Army All American Game. FBU feeds right into the US Army Game because it is owned by the same people. When college coaches are looking for the next crop of HS stars, the go subject matter experts and the US Army All American Game creators are subject matter experts. Under Armour All American Game creators have the same benefit but they dont do the youth All American Games so the US Army Folks are the only game in town. That is why we focus so much energy on these FBU Teams. While MD is focusing on putting together All Star Teams at the 6th, 7th, and 8th Grade level, 63 other regions are attempting to do the same thing. We get an opportunity to hit the All Stars from Hampton Roads, who has a bigger perception than we do. We can change that. If we win the first two rounds, we get to play the winners from New Jersey and Ohio, who have bigger perceptions that we do. If we win the 3rd and 4th rounds, we will represent the East region in the Final Four in Naples, Florida. We are not interested in going to Florida for the fun and the sun. We are going to fight for scholarship offers for our babies in the State of MD. We will play the representative from the South in the Final Four every year that we make it there. Only one team from this region has the possibility of making it there. We want the opportunity to play Georgia, or South Florida, or Central Florida, or whoever comes out of the South. Check out the Bracket to understand what I mean: fbunc/bracket/8thgradebracket.html. If we get through the South like we did when we won the National Championship in 2012 with our 7th Graders, we change perception!!!! When we win National Championships in this tournament, we had to go through the best of the best from all over the country on the biggest stage. We are fighting for kids of organizations that hate us and want us to fail. They dont even understand that when we win, we win for their kids too. We are on a mission and we will not stop. We want you to join us and support us. We dont care what you have heard about us. We dont care what has been said. We convert people everyday who believed what they heard. When they speak to me they learn the truth and they join us in this movement. We are not trying to take over youth football like some people think. We are fighting for all the kids in the DMV and we need your support. We need you to be in the stands on Dec 6th and Dec 7th at Mt. Vernon HS!!!! We need volunteers to help us put on a great show. We need about 20 parents of Grassroots Alums that have benefited from the program. If you are interested in volunteering to help us pull this off, please email my assistant Tangie at t.golston@thegyfl or tangerine2u@gmail. You can inbox me or respond to this email and I will get you in touch with her!!!
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 19:05:19 +0000
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