East Orange Campus and Orange football coaches express views on new rules on limited contact in practice

EAST ORANGE, NJ – High school football practices are whole lot different.

In February, the New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association announced new contact rules. Teams are now allowed 15 minutes of full-contact drills in practice per week during the season, a drastic cut of the previous allotment of 90 minutes.

Full contact is considered tackling that brings a player to the ground.

The purpose of the new practice rule is to prevent concussions,  which has been a major concern on the high school, collegiate and NFL levels.

East Orange Campus High School head coach Rae Oliver and Orange High School head coach Randy Danieil gave their thoughts about the new practice rule.

“I’m very confident that the state is aligning themselves with the country,” Oliver said. “We’re all concerned about concussions and the physical toll that it takes on these kids’ bodies, and I’ve always been concerned about it. I think what we need is to make things different. In other words, train differently; focus on more skill, instead of brute force. There is an art to tackling. Boxing can be a sport that is brutal, but it also can be a sweet science if you know what you’re doing, and that’s where we need to get to. There is no reason why people who play Australian-rules football and rugby, have less concussions than football. The NFL has adopted Australian-rules tackling styles, so those type of things have proven that we need to continue on the path of health first.”

Daniel noted that football people, back in the day, didn’t know any better, with regard to how physical contact can do severe damage to one’s brain.

“Now we know better, and we got to do better,” Daniel said. “They have to go to it, with all these concussions and all that. You got to do something to protect these kids. They are doing the right thing.”