Club Spotlight: Only the Elite Youth Academy

The FFF Club Spotlight series sits down with the coaches and organizers building youth flag football programs across the country. This week, we talked with Tevin Foster, co-founder of Only the Elite Youth Academy (OTE), a competitive select team based just north of Austin.

Two Dads and an I-9 League

Like a lot of flag football stories, OTE started with a parent watching their kid play and thinking: we can do better than this.

"It just started with your own kids showing a passion and a love for football," Foster said. "Putting the kids through the I-9 system, you kind of realize your kids are a little bit better than what that competition provided."

Foster met his business partners, Allan McClatcher and BJ Flowers, through that same league. Local dads who wanted to stay close to their sons' football journey. They joined forces, created a select team called OTE, and started competing in tournaments.

"The more we win, the more we travel, the more we compete, the more people want to play for us."

That was 2024. Two years later, OTE fields teams in the 7U through 10U age groups, draws athletes from as far as Dallas and Hawaii, and competes on the national circuit - including the AAU Junior Olympics and Hard Count events across Texas.

The Blueprint Is There - You Just Have to Do the Work

Ask Foster what makes OTE different, and he won't give you a flashy answer.

"The blueprint and the roadmap to develop kids is already there. We're not reinventing the wheel. Where we differentiate ourselves is we're super intentional with practice plans."

OTE practices are structured down to the minute. A 10-minute dynamic warm-up, then about an hour of targeted skill work - catching, flag pulling, starting and stopping, offensive and defensive reps. The emphasis is on measurable outcomes: how many flags pulled, how many catches, how fast they can change direction.

But the part Foster is most proud of is the football IQ side.

"You have to educate the kids on how to assess coverage, how to assess leverage. And these are seven, eight-year-old kids. Starting it now really helps translate into the tackle world or the middle school world."

He's also quick to draw a line between flag and tackle - a distinction a lot of coaches overlook.

"Flag movement and flag dynamics is not tackle. In flag football, you're avoiding people slapping your hip and pulling a flag. It requires different movements and different skill sets. We try to really treat them as separate sports."

Junior Olympics, Jumbotrons, and Playing on ESPN

OTE doesn't shy away from the big stage. Foster lit up talking about the AAU Junior Olympics in Florida, where his squad - a "small homegrown team from Texas" - earned the number one seed in pool play and made it to the semifinals.

"There is no tournament like Junior Olympics. That is the mecca of flag football. The championship game was hosted on ESPN. We were one game away from that."

He also shouted out the Star FFX tournaments in Dallas, where his players got to compete inside AT&T Stadium and the Star Facility.

"Seeing your kids on the Jumbotron, playing in the Cowboy zone - I'm not a Cowboy fan, but man, I was fanboying. These are six-year-old kids playing on college football fields. That's their goal. And just giving them that experience woke a lot of the kids up."

Coach Hard, Love Harder

Foster runs OTE as a nonprofit. Nobody's getting paid. The coaches show up because they care. That's the part he wants people to understand.

"You don't have to come from money and resources and ex-NFL players to thrive. Our core disciplines are just hard work, brotherhood, doing things the right way, paying attention to the details."

His advice for anyone looking to start a youth flag football team? Patience - and humility.

"Be coachable. Don't always be the smartest guy in the room. There's always going to be people who have deeper knowledge of how to execute this, how to scale a team, how to create a practice schematic."

And the biggest challenge? Balancing it all. Foster works full-time as a technical project manager while running OTE on the side.

"The biggest challenge is making sure you're not losing the quality of your program while still going through the day-to-day life. You're responsible for 20 other individuals who are looking at you for direction."

But the why behind it keeps the operation going.

"We coach our kids hard. We love our kids harder. We build a community around them. By the time our kids get to middle school, high school, they are going to have that mental strength and capacity to take hard lessons and look at those as opportunities to get better."

Find Only the Elite Youth Academy on Flag Football Finder

Check out OTE's profile on Flag Football Finder to learn more about their teams and upcoming events.

Follow OTE on Instagram: @o.t.e_select_flagfootball

Website: https://www.oteyouthacademy.org/

Looking for youth flag football teams near Austin? Browse the full directory to find programs in your area.

The FFF Club Spotlight series features conversations with the coaches and organizers building youth flag football programs across the country. Want your club featured? Reach out to us on Instagram.