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Congratulations to All for a successful 2008 Season!


Welcome to the Home of the

Jr. Panthers
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It's A BFL World & We're Living In It!
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LET THE REVOLUTION BEGIN!
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BFL is a proud member of the Patriot League
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The Bridgewater Football League, (BFL) was created to provide a positive youth football and cheer experience to all the children of Bridgewater and the surrounding area. The league was developed to cultivate a fun and enjoyable environment for young athletes to develop the fundamental skills that are necessary and essential in preparing them for a successful athletic career.

BFL is open to boys and girls in grades Kindergarder through 8th grade. Our leagues guiding principles include teaching football & cheer in an environment conducive to learning and making it fun for the participants and their families. All our kids are given opportunity to thrive and become successful both as a team and individuals. We are empowering our youth to reach their full potential. We believe in keeping our squads small in numbers, this allows for greater child participation and a higher level of learning.

                                                    



Just let them play!

The organizers, administrators and coaches of youth sports organizations need to have a clear definition of success that is not predicated solely on winning a game or having the best stats. A winning season must not be measured by wins and losses alone.

Players and coaches alike should understand that participation, performance, effort and improvement count as much if not more than the final score of any game. The old expression "Its not whether you win or lose but how you played the game" is much preferred over the more modern Vince Lombardi adage that "Winning isn't everything. Its the only thing." Unfortunately, children today are learning that success equates to winning and failure to losing. We glorify winners with trophies, plaques and parades and ignore, even vilify losers, but when winning becomes the only objective of youth sports, other very important values and objectives are lost or compromised.
 
In youth sports, striving to win, is a fundamental element of the competitive process and in striving to win, an individual athlete should strive to perform the very best he or she possibly can. The task for the youth coach is to help young athletes develop skills and to perform those skills to the best of their individual abilities. By teaching players that good performance and maximum effort equate to success while poor performance and a lack of effort lead to failure, the players motivation can be enhanced and success is within the reach of all players and coaches. Encouragement and effective goal setting are the coach's key tools in this pursuit.

The coach must work closely with each player to set specific behavior oriented goals. These should be obtainable but challenging, individual performance goals, goals which view success in terms of surpassing ones own performance standards rather than exceeding the performance of others. In this way all players, the skilled and the less skilled continue working to improve performance and can measure their current skill level relative to their previous performance. The goals and the players progress in achieving them ultimately provide a measure of each players effort and improvement. Thus, a successful performance, which is not dependent on the score of a game, is within the reach of every player. When winning is defined in terms of effort rather than outcome, all participants in a competition will have the opportunity to be hailed as winners, not just the fortunate fifty percent who come out on the right end of the game score.