Trick football plays are fun! Aside from all of the character- and team-building reasons we are evangelists for football, we would be foolish to ignore the fact that the number one reason kids stop playing football is because they are not having fun. A few more reasons to dig into 129 Football Trick Plays and explore adding trick plays to your playbook. Trick plays are more likely to become chunk plays – plays that gain 20-plus yards. Research shows teams that generate more plays of 20-plus yards than their opponents win more than 80 percent of the time. When three or more players touch the ball on a play, rather than one or two, the percentage of plays that go for 20-plus yards jumps from 10 to 20 percent. - While trick plays most often work because of the element of surprise, you should also expect that after you have run something once, good opponents will be prepared for it. Still, this forces opponents to spend valuable practice time – and for players to devote valuable brain space – preparing for these wrinkles. - There is no shortage of times when a trick play makes sense. After your defense forces a turnover and you are looking to land a haymaker. A two-point conversion. Coming out of halftime, a quarter break, or a timeout. Second-and-7 from the 42. First play of the game! Excerpt Many years ago our local Pop Warner team was playing its hated rival with a regular season conference title on the line, and in monsoon-like conditions the score was 0-0 late in the fourth quarter. Our coach called for a hook and ladder. It was an audacious call, and it worked, and our team pulled out a memorable 6-0 victory. Talking about the play with our coach later that fall, he told me that he liked to introduce a new trick play to his team each week. He believed it helped break the monotony of a long season, kept things fresh. Good call. Scott Tappa is a football, basketball, and baseball coach in Iola, Wis. In addition to serving as coach, he was president of Iola-Scandinavia Pee Wee Athletics and the Mid-State Youth Football & Cheerleading Conference. He is a business education teacher at Iola-Scandinavia High School. After beginning his career as a newspaper sports editor, he worked in a variety of magazine, book, and online capacities before landing at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where he worked in a marketing, communications, and events position, and founded the Great Lakes Analytics in Sports Conference. Scott is married to Jana and father of Will and Charlie.   If you enjoy 129 Trick Football Plays, you may also be interested in  First Time Coach: Youth Football, Read Option Offense for Youth Football, 114 Youth Football Plays, 105 Youth Football Drills and Create Your Own Football Playbook by Scott Tappa. All are available on Amazon.