Welcome to Tucson Youth Football and Spirit Federation!
First, a couple of definitions that may help you understand some of the following:
- Federation; Tucson Youth Football and Spirit Federation (TYFSF), the entity that oversees this football/spirit program. Responsible for creating, maintaining, and enforcing Federation rules. Some of the other responsibilities include; scheduling (see ‘scheduling note’ below), boundaries, player/team certification, and much more.
- Association; The Tucson area is broken into 15 geographic territories plus Rio Rico and each of these areas have their own local program called an Association. Each Association has their own Board of Director who make rules and decisions for the Association. Associations are responsible for determining their fees, fundraising, purchasing and maintaining equipment and uniforms, securing practice and game facilities (see ‘scheduling note’ below), registering participants, maintaining paperwork, certifying through TYFSF, abiding by TYFSF rules, and much much more!
For those who are new to our program, we want to welcome you. The registration process can be intimidating at first. Compared to other youth sports you will find more forms are required, for example you will need to furnish copies of the physical dated after January 1st of the current year, copies of the certified birth certificate and a full year report card. At registration you will fill out the registration form and a few other forms as required by the Federation. Some associations may have other forms that they require, check with the association prior to or at registration. The associations have a lot of paperwork which must be maintained and packaged properly for “certification”. Your help in providing the required documentation to the associations as quickly as possible is a great benefit to them.
Registration can begin in March and usually runs through the end of July, although Association may continue to register participants even after the practice season begins on or around August 1st. There are always several dates that are “city wide” where all Associations are available to register participants, but Associations will occasionally hold additional registrations. Please check with your local association to see where they are holding their registrations or if they have additional dates. You may call the Federation office at (520) 322-9779 if you cannot find current contact information for your local Association
We offer both Flag Football and Tackle Football in addition to Spirit (Cheerleading). Flag football is for age 5-7 and tackle is for ages 7-15 (7 year olds have the option). The age of each participant is based on their actual age on July 31st. For Tackle Football we use an age/weight matrix to determine which team a child would be placed on within their Association. There is no variance in this process and participants are required to play for the team that fits their age and weight.
Fees vary between Associations depending on needs in their area, i.e. lights and field charges, insurance, and referees, just to name a few. Some school districts, cities, or county charges apply. Fees could range from $100 to $200 dollars for the tackle and cheer program and $60 to $100 for the flag program. These can seem rather high, yet the cost to outfit a player and cheerleader can be varied expensive. We supply most of your equipment and uniform.
The Association that you will play or cheer for are set by boundaries. You can refer to the boundary map on the website to see where you will be playing. There are set rules about which Association you participate with, please refer to our rule book online, or give our federation office a call at (520) 322-9779 if you have any questions regarding these rules. You may also link to the associations in Tucson Youth Football and Spirit the website if they have a website and have registered it with TYFSF. Once again welcome aboard, we hope to see you on the field.
Scheduling
Scheduling is a very detailed and complex task which requires the cooperation of many people to complete. Before TYFSF can even begin to piece this puzzle together we MUST have the number of teams each Association will be certifying. This may sound much easier than it really is, as teams struggle to register enough kids to form a team or even enough to split a division and have two or more teams. Another major factor in scheduling is the availability of game fields. Many Associations must re-apply yearly for the use of fields which can be a lengthy process, and often fields are only available on specific dates. Even after the schedule has been completed these dates are often altered for various reasons and changes must be made to the schedule. Typically the schedule is not made available until a week prior to the first games (two weeks if all of the stars align properly), and usually it is only released one week at a time. While we fully understand that this makes it difficult on the parents who need to plan other activities outside of football, the nature of our sport, limited fields, and timing simply do not allow us to produce a schedule any quicker.
