Youth Football Serving the Golden Valley High School Area

The Pacific Youth Football League and the Gold Coast Youth Football League are both fine local organizations that are highly important to the competitive stature of high school football teams in their areas, which essentially overlap. These are youth football leagues, known to some as Pop Warner Football. The PYFL is older than the GCYFL and traditionally had tighter links to high school football coaches and teams. The younger GCYFL differs from the PYFL in that a new system of age and weight classifications is central their rules. The GCYFL argues that their system reduces injury rates, the PYFL refutes this with insurance industry data. Frankly both do a good job of keeping injury rates low with fine technique and conditioning instruction.

The PYFL updated their age and weight limits for 2008. I'm no expert on this subject and was not at the board meetings of either of these organizations when these kinds of decisions were made. My conjecture is that the decisions are made largely by the insurance companies that serve youth football, and represent best actuarial practice in reducing injuries in both cases. The leagues would then chose from available packages.

There may be good reason to believe that the height and weight classifications for the PYFL are better aligned with the desires of high school coaches. It's worth noting that if your son is of above average size, the GCYFL weight and age categories do tend to present obstacles in the age 8 to age 12 range. The older and more experienced players tend to dominate game play in both organizations regardless of their size. The PYFL, especially under the new 2008 rules tends to be ranked primarily by age-level, allowing wider variations in size, while the GCYFL rules tend to be size oriented, allowing wider variations in age and experience, to compete together. Under the PYFL rules, the bigger players aren't as frequently limited to roles on the offensive line or bench. In the GCYFL, smaller than average but older players tend play against weaker opponents regardless of position. The "Senior" level weight/age limits are roughly the same in both leagues.

Whichever organization your son joins, I don't suggest that your son should jump from one to the other very much. It's better to stay with the same core team from year to year, and this is generally allowed. The result of this cohesiveness is a more competitive team. Usually, teams formed with mostly first-year players are less competitive than teams with a core of returning players.

The youth football teams that practice at Golden Valley High School are members of the GCYFL, and this year were renamed the Santa Clarita Grizzlies. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? They also have been known to have Saturday games at GVHS, very fine football to watch. Last year they were playing and practicing at GVHS as well, but were known as the Wildcats. There are two GCYFL "clubs" in the Santa Clarita Valley this year (Grizzlies at GVHS and Wildcats at Saugus) and three that are PYFL (Canyon Outlaws plays games at CHS and send players to Golden Valley and Canyon High Schools, Castaic (and Stevenson Ranch) players play at Castaic Jr. High School (teams graduate to West Ranch High School), and SCV Warriors at Valencia, Hart and elsewhere. All of these organizations play highly competitive football, distinguish themselves with playoff championships with above average frequency, and send a stream of exceptionally fine players to the Foothill League teams.

The feeder clubs for GVHS are the Canyon Outlaws and the SC Grizzlies. My own son was a Canyon Outlaw before becoming one of the GVHS Grizzlies. You might be able to track the football careers of young players through youth football right up to high school and college. The Outlaws had fine Senior teams in the fall of 2005, 2006, and 2007. Their echo might be expected when they are high school seniors in 2009, 2010, and 2011, though there might be an underrepresentation of the Outlaw Seniors of 2005 on today's Grizzlies teams.

Sign-ups for youth football occur very early in the year. Check back at this web site for sign-up information. See the Fun Links page for youth team websites.

2008 PYFL Age/Weight Divisions (+10 lb playoff weight gain unless otherwise noted.)

additional notes: players age as of 12/2/08, weight taken at preseason and again prior to playoffs

GCYFL Age/Weight Divisions

players age as of 12/2/08

weights shown are at preseason measurement; players may gain 1 lb. per week during the season leading up to the playoffs