Football · Bayside, Vermont · Aug 25, 2026 · Ages: Open
# Heads in the Game: Will a Switch From Tackle to Flag Save Youth Football in Vermont? On a humid August evening, around two dozen boys and two girls ages 6 to 14 assembled on a field at Bayside Park in Colchester for a preseason practice of the Colchester Catamounts coed youth football program. Vermont, he said, is now 49th in the country for youth participation in football and is rapidly losing players and programs. For safety reasons, the Northern Vermont Youth Football League no longer allows “old-school” training drills, such as “bull in the ring,” in which one player runs inside a circle of teammates, while one or more players rush in and try to tackle him or her, Cummings explained. In February 2017, the Vermont Principals’ Association, an organization that oversees school sports, issued a directive to all of its 300 member schools: Beginning in the fall of 2017, all school-sponsored fifth- and sixth-grade football programs in Vermont had to switch from tackle to so-called padded-flag football.
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