A Lacrosse Weekend 4.11.20

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it! 

Virtual Lacrosse Summit 

The VLS is the Shark Week of lacrosse and it begins Monday 4/13!  With an incredible line up of speakers, this will be as good as it gets for online instructional lacrosse content!

Register for FREE at VirtualLacrosseSummit.com

A Grateful Quarantine

It's our fourth weekend in quarantine and while there are so many times I wish that we will all just wake up from this bad dream and it will be the weekend of March 14th, but we do have a lot to be grateful for.

Health Care Workers.  The courage and dedication of these people all over the country is amazing.  Thank you to all of you.  We need you and we love you.

Time with family.  I have three kids Colin, Emily, Lucy ages,  22, 21, and 17 respectively and they have been awesome in the face of this pandemic.  Displaying maturity and good attitudes everyday, they are hanging out together, having fun and working hard at school and lacrosse. 

My wife.  I got lucky. Period.  My wife is just so easy to be around, giving, and fun.  She really doesn't give me shit unless I really deserve it!  She is and has always been the behind the scenes engine for our family and every endeavor I've ever attempted.  And I'm grateful she always listens when I say, "Sara, I have a great idea!"

A Lacrosse Life: I am grateful to have been able to follow my passion and literally work on, think about, talk about, watch, coach LACROSSE every day, all day!  I love lacrosse and am grateful to have a family that loves lacrosse too!

Women's Lacrosse: with two daughters who are as passionate about lacrosse as anyone I know, I have had the opportunity to study, learn, and coach women's lacrosse.  I truly love the game!  I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to coach girls lacrosse at ThunderRidge HS.  I do feel for our three seniors who don't get to play for their senior year, but we haver build something special.  I'm also grateful to work with coaches Doc Srdoc, Michael Meehan, and Tom Frane.  It's been good times.

We play a brand of lacrosse that was developed through a Free Play model.  This was our first game of the season with about seven full days of practice.  In the off season we played pick up 1x per week.  Watch the film and you will see what I call Free Play Poise.

Backyard Hoops: My daughters hadn't played much basketball, but Colin and I convinced them to start playing 2v2 games with us and it has been a blast.  Lucy and I are up 19-17 in the series of first team to 20 games! It's been fun and competitive and sometimes heated!  We made a couple rule changes that I recommend if you have some non hoop players in your family to make the games more fun. 

First, we allow the girls to double dribble which has been huge to make the game better as they don't get stuck with no dribble and can fake and go to the basket to create space.   Second, Colin and I aren't allowed to defend the girls in the paint, it's a 1v1 in there for them.  Third, Colin and I can't grab a rebound off a girls shot until it hits the ground, allowing them to battle for rebounds. 

Backyard Lacrosse: Most everyday before we play hoops, my kids and I play some kind of backyard lacrosse.  The backyard has become my laboratory where i'm learning amazing new and old ways to have fun and get better.  I'm a huge believer in integrating game related decision making into every drill or game we play and I've come up with some awesome new games!  We work on some skills, but mostly we play!  My kids and my JM3 Athletes will come out of this quarantine with a great repertoire of dodges, shots and finishes, will be better at 2man game, faking, handling under pressure and will learn loads of new skills! 

D2P2 Game: My kids and I have come up with this game that is so fun and so good for your game!  I've been doing Zoom Calls with DI coaches to show them my backyard curriculum and all of them love this!  The more you watch it, the more you will like it too!  This video below explains on how D2P2 is a powerful developer of lacrosse IQ.

My JM3 Athletes: I work with an incredible group of young men and women from all over the country in my JM3 Athlete program.  Under normal circumstances, we would be doing our weekly Zoom calls watching HS and college game film, breaking down the good plays, the not so good plays, and the missed opportunities, but oh yeah, we are in quarantine. 

My focus now is to create a backyard curriculum for them where they can come out of this better players!  I send a Daily Lacrosse Email with drills, new skills, ideas and I'm making some great discoveries in my Backyard Lab.  I've also been doing private webinars with star players like USA Team Kylie Ohlmiller, PLL Redwoods, Eddie Glazener, and PLL Waterdogs Tate Boyce as well as legendary coaches like Salisbury's Jim Berkman. 

I think of my athletes as my own kids where it's  my goal to put them on a trajectory of development unlike any model in the world.  I am a coach, a friend, an advocate, an advisor, someone who will give honest unbiased feedback and a cheerleader!  I am grateful for the opportunity to work with these athletes.

JM3 Athlete Parents: one of the coolest parts of working with JM3 families is the relationships I get to make with the parents of the athletes I work with.  Relationships is what life is all about andI love learning from and getting to know these successful and interesting people.  I also love helping people and being an advisor, a sounding board, and a neutral resource for parents of kids I work with.   I am grateful for the friendships I've made with my JM3 Athlete parents!

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcasts: I'm grateful to have the opportunity to provide lacrosse conversations for folks to get their mind off reality and dive into deep lacrosse conversations with me and my guests.  I'm grateful to have hit a new milestone of 300k listens!  I have been a lax geek for my whole life and I started recording my lacrosse conversations with folks in the summer of 2018 and it has been one of the most rewarding endeavors I've ever undertaken!   I am beyond grateful to have the opportunity to talk lacrosse with many of the top coaches, players and personalities in the game.

In Season Podcast with PLL Chaos Head Coach Andy Towers.  AT and I have been good friends since college and I can honestly say, he has had as big of an impact on me as a friend and a coach as anyone ever.  Andy is so smart, fun, hysterically funny, and just a great person to be around!  I'm grateful for being able to spend so much time in my adult life with a great friend from college and do the In Season Podcast!  Last season, in our Axia Time Ivy League Flashback, AT and I talked about the time Andy scored the O.T. game winner at UMass right after some dude on the hill spit on him and talk smack about his mother.  Here was how Andy got him back!

Inside The 8 Podcast  with Colleen Magarity.  I'm actually grateful to Colleen for many more reasons than just this podcast.  She has been a great friend to me, a coach, mentor, and advocate for my daughter, as well as just a fun person to be around.  Each week Colleen and I chat with a coach or top player in women's lacrosse and we have a blast!  Colleen runs HHH Lacrosse out of Philly and I can honestly say, she's the best!

LacrosseFLIX and John Hogarth: I'm grateful for having met John in the fall of 2018.  John is a digital marketing whiz and had the idea of doing a Virtual Lacrosse Summit.  The Summit has been one of the great endeavors of my career.  I have engaged with and learned from so many coaches while building the deepest content treasure trove on the internet.  John is always ready to help, is a hard worker, and is always on board!

Virtual Lacrosse Summit is a massive endeavor that I sometimes dread, but I am truly grateful for the opportunity to host such incredible speakers and provide so much content to the world.  With the world in quarantine, this is an amazing opportunity to help get people's minds off the pandemic and enjoy some great lacrosse conversations!

JM3 Sports: I sold my shares in 3d in February 2017 which was an exciting and simultaneously nerve racking time.  I was excited for a new chapter, but I was restricted from engaging in the lacrosse business of clubs, camps, and tourneys.  Taking my knowledge, passion, experience digital was my only business option and as it turns out, something I'm incredibly grateful for.  I really had no idea how I would make a digital business work other than I knew I could create a Coaches Training Program with great content.  Fast forward three years and we are in a whole new world of remote learning, online education and Zoom calls.   There will undoubtedly be a ton of competition in this space now, but I'm grateful for that too because at least now this is recognized as a real business!  And I'm fired up to compete!

Have a great weekend!