I wish I had listened.  After my son bothering me to death to play, I let him play 7th grade and 8th grade.  If you think HS coaches are bad these leagues are almost criminal.  My son in 7th because of how bad these guys ran practices he got a strained ahcilles, a fractured clavical and a mild concussion.  In 8th grade in the first practice he got a serious concussion doing almost the same drill in 7th.  That was it, he was done with football.  He quit and I couldn't get him to play again.  

The really sad part was that I think he would have played D-1 had he played.  He was tall, fast and had incredible hands. I played at Kahuku and from some of the teams I played on I've seen a lot of D-1 caliber players.  He was  right there.  He reminded me of Itula.  All gone because he learned to hate football thanks to the coaching.  

Moral of the story, make sure you have very good coaches who know what they are doing.

I was wathing one of his practices in 7th grade.  It got dark (no lights of course) and they kept running practice.  I watch this one big kid crack back on a safety probably a third of his size after the play was over.  I saw him hit.  His dad got there a few minutes later and I told him to take his kid in and get him checked for a concussion.   His dad could see I meant it and he took him to the emergeny care.  Sure enough the next day he and his son showed up to practice with his son in street cloths.  Pretty serous concussion and never did get cleared for the rest of the year to play again.  Coaches never knew what happened,none of the saw a thing but I can understand why, it was freaking dark!  

Just be careful.