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!

Best Fake Ever

My favorite team in the PLL is the Chaos, coached by my good friend and former teammate Andy Towers.  I love the way they play offense combining box players with traditional field players; the insane skill of one handed players combined with hyper athletic, two handed players, all making good decisions and playing unselfishly.  Attackman, Connor Fields is my favorite player in the world right now.  An unselfish X guy, who is an incredible decision maker, Fields uses deception, IQ and repertoire fakes, moves, passes and shots that are mind blowing!

Everyone has probably seen this fake by now.  I have watched it 100 times trying to identify the subtleties of the entire play.  If you listened to the interview, Fields noted that he had hurled a BTB shot at...

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...

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!

NCAA Men's Lacrosse Tournament

2019 has been the year of the attackman.  Today's quarterfinals will highlight several of the greatest college attackmen we have ever seen!

• Penn State's Grant Ament, who set the NCAA single season assist record, has phenomenal speed and vision, but who can physically post up his man even though he's not a big man.
• Loyola's Pat Spencer is a generational talent who's feeding prowess combined with his physical gifts is unparalleled.  This guy has a repertoire of moves and fakes that keeps defenders off balance while he manipulates off ball defenders and sliders.
• Maryland's Jared Bernhart, an insane slasher who can do it all.  This Terp is as fine of an athlete as you'll see at the attack position and is incredibly two handed with great vision and IQ.
• Virginia has a deadly...

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!

NCAA Men's First Round Weekend

This is my favorite weekend of lacrosse all year!  Eight games in two days, incredible quality of play, upset bids, one goal and O.T. games!  It doesn't get any better than this! Here are some quick thoughts about all the games.

Loyola vs Syracuse

The Pat Spencer show will be on full display with partner in crime Kevin Lindley , who is probably the best off ball crease guy in Division I lacrosse.  Together they create a one, two punch that puts the defense in a tough spot.  If you can't stop Spencer 1v1 you will pay the price sliding from Lindley.  And if your game plan is to slide from someone other than Lindley, Loyola will make you pay with their spacing and positioning of Lindley.  It's easier said than done.  Last week Army had success...

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!

College Lacrosse Recruiting

The topic this week is "getting looks" versus "getting better."  From my experience, most families get caught up in getting looks at the expense of getting better.  The summer is no exception to this constant improvement paradigm, in fact it is a huge opportunity.  College coaches will watch a prospect play live multiple times in order to make a decision on their ability.  If a coach notices improvement over the course of the summer it is impactful.

The best Division I Lacrosse programs employ the same model of consistent individual skill development during the season with the thought the best way to make your team better is to make your players better.  Duke, Denver, Yale are great examples programs where the players seem to add to their repertoire of moves, shots,...

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!

How To Be A Great Shooter

If you want to learn how to be a great shooter, listen to the Darris Kilgour Podcast from a few months back.  Darris is hands down one of the smartest lacrosse minds I've ever met.  A Native American who grew up on the Tuscarora Reservation just outside of Buffalo, Darris grew up playing backyard lacrosse at home and box lacrosse just over the boarder in Ontario.  

One of Darris's most brilliant concepts is the idea of learning how to be a deceptive shooter by shooting on a goalie with no ball.  Does this sound crazy?  I've tried it and found this method of teaching deceptive shooting extremely effective because scoring as your measure for a good shot is removed from the equation.  The entire goal is to score the "Air Ball" by moving the goalie or...

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!

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcast with Brodie Merrill

This was a great interview with a guy who is known as the G.O.A.T. for Long Stick Midfielders, even though he never picked up a pole until he was 16 or 17 years old.  Six years in a row he was MLL Defensive Player of the year while also garnering Defensive Player of the year, Transition Player of the year, and Rookie of the year awards in the NLL.  The '05 Georgetown graduate grew up playing box lacrosse in Orangeville, Ontario and has worn the "C" with most teams he's ever played on.  Brodie is one of the most down to earth, humble people you will ever meet.  We discuss the creation of The Hill Academy, a prep school in Ontario which has become a lacrosse powerhouse, founded by Merrill, his brother, and his parents in 20.  Brodie...

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!

Spring Break San Diego

I write to you from beautiful San Diego where ThunderRidge HS, the girls team I'm helping out with, held spring break training.  It was my first trip to SD for spring break and it was awesome!  The weather, the beaches, the training, the activities were all a great experience!  We got better at lacrosse, got closer as a team, and are primed for the rest of the season!  The girls worked hard for 3 hours per day at practice and then had the rest of the day for activities.  Since we didn't have any games, we were able to work hard and get a lot in!  A barometer I like to use to measure quality practice time is how much shooting do you have time for?  We hammered out 30 minutes per day!  Keeping it fresh made the practices more fun as we introduced and...

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

Virtual Lacrosse Summit

The week of April 15th we will conduct the second of four Virtual Lacrosse Summits we will hold this year.  Stay tuned on more details, but you can sign up here:

www.lacrossevirtualsummit.com

Here are a few of the speakers:

• Joe Spallina, Stony Brook Women's Lacrosse
• Brodie Merrill, NLL/MLL/PLL Defender, arguably top 2-3 all time defensemen, founder Hill Academy
• Greg Gurenlian, The G.O.A.T in the world of face-offs!
• Sean Allen, Philadelphia Wings on teaching box lacrosse
• Spencer Ford, Atlanta Blaze, MLL Assist record holder, "Hang up offense"
• Rick Beardsley, HOF defenseman, "Making Defenders Great Again"

Stay tuned for more info!  This is going to be awesome!  Feel free to email me if you have ideas on topics you'd like to hear about!

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcast with Matt Hasselbeck

I...

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

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcast

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Danielle Spencer, Head Coach Dartmouth Women's Lacrosse.  Danielle played and coached at Northwestern, won three National Championships as a player, was an All-American as well as US Team member.  We talk about her playing and coaching journey, her mentors like Northwestern Head Coach Kelly Amonte-Hiller, USC Head Coach Lindsey Munday and Colorado Head Coach Ann Elliott, her philosophy on player development, building the culture at Dartmouth and what it's like to be a first year head coach.  

Click Here! It's a great listen!

College Lacrosse Recruiting

One of the topics Danielle Spencer and I covered was recruiting.  She has gotten away from only looking for the biggest, fastest athletes and is looking to fill specific needs...