Youth football gears up for big day

The heart of Lawrence Youth Football will move about 16 miles south next Sunday to Baldwin City.

Ten teams and hundreds of fans will meet at Liston Stadium on the campus of Baker University for a day of championship football.

Five Toy Bowl games in five different age groups will be played, the first starting at 10 a.m.

But this postseason has a different twist than many. Teams don’t reach the championship just by winning.

Bret Toelkes, Lawrence Youth Football President, said teams received 10 points for a win and five points for loss. The LYF point system has another twist designed to keep things friendly.

Any unsportsmanlike penalties were punished with negative points.

“We want them to be good sports,” Toelkes said. “Most of the time those are frustration penalties, but this system has been in place forever.”

The teams with the most points in each age division move to the playoffs, which will be played Saturday at Youth Sports, Inc.

“With our playoff system, teams that might have had bad luck at the start of the season have something to strive for,” Toelkes said.

The larger stage on which the final games of the season will be played is something to look forward to as well.

Liston Stadium has FieldTurf, while the young players are accustomed to the grassy fields of Youth Sports Inc.

Toelkes said the kids would enjoy playing on a field so different from what they were used to, and that LYF would do everything they could to give the day a “big game” feeling.

“We’ll play music and announce who made the play on the loudspeaker,” Toelkes said. “It’s a real nice venue for something like this.”

In the current standings, the Hurricanes are the top team in the D division, while the Cougars, Bulldogs and Gorillas lead the C, B and A divisions, respectively.

In the seventh-grade division, Southwest leads West by just one point.

The final match-ups will not be determined until after Saturday’s playoff games, but the game schedule will go as follows: D Division at 10 a.m., C at 11:15 a.m., B at 12:30 p.m., A at 2 p.m., and seventh-graders at 3:45 p.m.

The admission fee will be a donation of at least $2 or a new toy.