A Lacrosse Weekend 6.8.19

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!

Summer Recruiting Sanity

Like many parents around the country this weekend, I'm at a summer recruiting tournament with my aspiring college lacrosse player!  It's early in the summer recruiting and with the heightened excitement to play travel lacrosse with friends and against new competition, staying in team hotels and fun Friday night dinners also comes stress.  Stress can hit even the best of us who are trying to keep everything in perspective and can ruin the weekend for everyone involved!  The key to enjoying the weekend is to set proper expectations.  Here are a few:

• When your son or daughter was born, you weren't thinking about college lacrosse.  You hoped they would grow up happy and healthy, to learn life lessons through successes and failures and someday go to college.  Our kids are still tracking for this!
• College lacrosse recruiting is a marathon not a sprint.  If you focus on the process of getting better, try not to worry about results, and keep the faith that things will work out as they should, you will be happier and healthier.
• Your player will only touch the ball 10-20 times per game. 
• College coaches will stay at your game for one half.  You can do the math on how many chances you will have to impress them.
• If you win face-offs / draws, everyone will feel like they played more, if you lose face-offs / draws, everyone will be pissed at how few runs they got.
• College coaches will judge players on their ability to dodge, draw slides, get their own shots.
• If your player is one of those kids who just doesn't assert themselves as much as they need to, it's probably not going miraculously change today. (Note: I have some thoughts and solutions as to how to get your child to be more confident and assertive!  Email me for more information.
• If you play really tough competition and lose, everyone will be bitter
• If you play lame competition and crush teams, everyone will be happy
• College coaches don't care if your team won or lost, but they do need to see you play against legit competition to properly evaluate you.
• More college coaches will come to your field if you play on a club (or against a club) that has a brand name and a director who is "plugged in."
• The weather will generally be either, "hot as balls or rainy."  Hope for the former!
• There will be a Long Island dad who will fight somebody in a Friday's
• There will be a loser parent who will try to stand near coaches chairs, eavesdrop, and look over their shoulder to read coach's notes. 

Getting an Edge With Video

There is no question that getting recruited boils down to whether or not you're good enough. Sure it helps to have connections and advocates, but in the end, if you're not good enough there's nothing more to talk about.  I have done Countless Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcasts with Division I lacrosse coaches and they all talk about the power of video.  Unquestionably it's the most powerful teaching tool in existence.  Most players in HS and Club lacrosse hardly scratch the surface of leveraging video.  Think about what an advantage you will have if you're leveraging video while most of the competition is not!

JM3 Video Assessments are a guranteed way for your son or daughter to improve because it will teach them THEIR GAME and THE GAME!  Here's a email I recently received the this week from a happy customer:

Literally every assessment I've ever done has a similar response!  The most common is "This is the best money we've ever spent on lacrosse!"

When was the last time you got an in depth review of your son or daughter's game?  Using Video?  Probably Never!

Here's an assessment I did for DI All-American: 

Here's an example of a girls assessment.

The KT Split Dodge

One of my lacrosse players to watch is Kayla Treanor, who uses a repertoire of dodges, fakes, shots and moves that rival anyone in the world, male or female.  In my opinion, one of the best ways to evaluate players is to see how many skills they use.  Many players use the same move over and over again and when they get to the next level, they are easily shut down.  

There is a lot to be learned from watching great players.  I studied Kayla Treanor and love the way she dodges and I named a move that I now teach after her, The KT Split.  Kayla likes to use skip and shuffle hesitations to initiate her moves from as close as possible to her defender.  Watch the video below and Notice how she uses her stick in a face dodge motion to jab step left and right.  She does this several times before she makes her break and it gets her defender off balance.  

The equivalent in men's lacrosse was first taught to me by Stephen Brundage, Offensive Coordinator and Assistant Coach at Marquette.  He uses the same type of back and forth with the stick in conjunction with his feet to provide better jab steps.  The more I watched for this technique, the more I would see it.  Check out this video of Paul Rabil utilizing the same technique.

Coaching Extra Man Offense

Check out this video on EMO.  This video will teach you all of the passes, the shots, the movements, the positions, as well as the drills to help you install them.  If you like this video, you will love the Coaches Training Program which has the deepest and richest lacrosse coaching content on the planet!  The feedback from the coaches in my program has been off the charts. 

Video

 You are asking your players to get better every day!  As a coach you need to get better every day too!  Join the Coaches Training Program ASAP!  Spend the summer getting better!

Have a great weekend!