Summer Passing Leagues: Is It Time Well Spent for Players? : Football: Some coaches say leagues help the passing game. Others say they develop bad habits.

Terry Henigan dislikes the phrase “passing league.” He says the description is only half correct.

Henigan runs a passing league at Irvine High School, where he is football coach. Certainly, the teams competing in the league are out there throwing the ball around every Thursday and Saturday during June and July. So passing is definitely part of it.

But a league?

“We don’t have standings, there’s no champion and we don’t even invite the same teams from week to week,” Henigan said. “So, you can’t really call it a league.”

What Henigan and other coaches do call it is essential. At the very least, they say, the leagues are helpful.

Summer passing leagues are nothing new. They’ve been around for approximately 20 years.

In the past few years, not only have the number of leagues increased, but summer tournaments have increased, giving coaches even more summer competition.

Some coaches say the leagues help their teams refine the passing game, help defensive players learn pass coverage and can develop team leaders. But others say the leagues develop bad habits and are limited because they work on only one aspect of the game.

“I don’t think people are any more active than they used to be and the leagues certainly aren’t any better,” said Martin Luczaj, a first-year coach at Buena Park who coached at Fullerton from 1980-87. “But I think they are more unrealistic. If they did away with summer football, I don’t think anyone would complain.”

Under Southern Section rules, a high school football team can compete from the end of school in June until the first conditioning period in August provided approval has been given by the school’s principal. The only restrictions the Southern Section imposes are no tackling and no equipment, which includes tackling dummies and blocking sleds as well as protective pads and helmets.

Without tackling and pads, there is no running game, which means there is no need for linemen. Some tournaments allow for an occasional draw play, but only to keep the defense honest.

Rules vary from league to league, but generally a brand of touch football is played in a seven-on-seven format. Quarterbacks are under a time limit to throw the ball to make it as close to a game situation as possible.

Henigan has been running a league at Irvine for the past eight years. Although there are no standings, there are winners and losers.

Teams do not advance the football, but Henigan has developed a point system. A team is rewarded one point for a completion of five-15 yards, two points for one of 15-30 yards and four points for a completion beyond the last defender. The defense is awarded one point for an incomplete, two points for pass broken up and four points for an interception.

On Thursdays, four teams compete in the league. Each gets three games, one against each team, which last about an hour. On Saturdays, there are six teams, each guaranteed five games.

“It gives your kids a chance to compete against someone other than their teammates,” Henigan said. “We like it from an offensive standpoint. You’re throwing the ball constantly, which improves your timing between quarterback and receivers. Defensively, because you don’t run the ball, I don’t think you get a lot out of it.”

Gary Meek runs a similar league at Esperanza, where four teams play every Thursday. However, no score is kept, which makes it basically a passing scrimmage.

“One team gets 10-15 plays, then they change over to defense,” Meek said. “We go three cycles, then change opponents. I think it eliminates the boredom a little for the kids. You can only lift so many weights and walk through the offense so many times.”

But even Meek sees some disadvantages to the league. With no running game, defenses over-play the pass and offenses sometimes send every one out on pass patterns.

This, coaches said, creates an unrealistic situation because teams are unlikely to use the same strategy in the fall.

“If someone drops seven people to pass defend against us next fall, we’ll love it,” Meek said. “We’ll run one draw play after another.

“We ask coaches to run the same things they do in the fall. But they don’t always do that. They start sending everyone out on pass patterns, which no one would ever do during the season. If they do, who’s going to block?”

Said Henigan: “You’ll get coaches who are trying to develop a winning attitude. They’ll go all out in the summer even to the point of doing things they would never do in the fall. I can see their point, but what does it matter if you go 20-0 in the summer? We usually don’t invite those people back.”

Besides the questionable offensive and defensive strategies, some coaches also are concerned about injuries. With no equipment, the players are more vulnerable.

And, even though it is touch football, contact is inevitable.

“You get two kids going for the ball and they are going to collide,” Luczaj said. “With no equipment to absorb the punishment, kids are going to get hurt.”

But there are benefits to the leagues, especially for a first-year coach.

Last year, Bruce Rollinson took over the Mater Dei program and installed a new offense over the summer. He was able to to follow the Monarchs’ progress through the summer.

“It showed me two things, one was that Danny O’Neil was a pretty good quarterback,” Rollinson said. “But it also showed me that the new system we put in was a lot harder than I thought. We slowed things down a little to let the kids pick things up at their pace.”

This summer, besides passing leagues, Rollinson has the Monarchs in some tournaments, which have become more prevalent in recent years. Mater Dei competed in the 32-team El Camino tournament, which concluded Saturday. The Monarchs also played in the 16-team Rancho Santiago tournament last weekend.

Some of the tournaments have become big enough to attract sponsors, including the 32-team Saddleback tournament that will begin next summer.

“I think these leagues and tournaments can help quarterbacks development,” said Saddleback College assistant coach Bill Cunerty, who will run the tournament in conjunction with his West Coast Passing School next summer. “It is also a great place to see all the great skill-position athletes.”

However, some coaches, even ones who have summer leagues, do not like the tournaments. “I know that we approach a summer tournament differently then we do a summer league game,” Rollinson said. “It’s not all bad. It’s a tremendous level of competition and good exposure for the kids. All the great teams are usually there, which gives your kids a chance to play against the best. But it is more serious.”

Added Meek: “I’d rather use the time for teaching. To tell you the truth, I think the only reason there is summer football at all is because everyone else is doing it.”