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!

Memorial Day Weekend might be my favorite weekend of the year!  Graduation parties, barbecues, family and of course, Championship Weekend!  I hope you are enjoying it as much as I am!

Summer Recruiting

As spring high school lacrosse transitions to summer recruiting, please remember this: If you are not good enough, there is nothing to talk about!  Ask yourself, "How is my son or daughter going to get better this summer?"  If your answer is, "he/she is playing a ton of tourneys," you are hitting the nail right on the side!   

I encourage all parents to actually count how many touches your kid gets in a game.  How many dodges, how many shots, how many times was he/she dodged against.  You will be shocked, dismayed, and depressed over how few touches players actually get in...

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!

Virtual Lacrosse Summit - FREE REPLAYS!

We are opening up the flood gates on Q1 and Q2 Summit presentations!  60 hours of incredible educational lacrosse content will be available for free until midnight 4/26!  The list of speakers, the quality of presentations, and the willingness of some of the greatest players and coaches in the lacrosse world to provide instructional content was amazing!

Click Here to see complete list of speakers and get access to content!

College Lacrosse Recruiting

Thanks goodness the NCAA exempted men's and women's lacrosse from the new legislation that would have allowed recruiting contact to be made on June 15th after sophomore year instead of September 1st of Junior year.  My daughter is a 2021 and I'm looking forward to a fun summer of playing lacrosse, getting better and doing what...

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

In two weeks from Monday LacrosseFLIX and JM3 will be presenting the Q2 Virtual Lacrosse Summit.  It's like "Shark Week" but it's all lacrosse!  24 webinars in four days and it's FREE!  You can tune in live, or you can binge watch on the replay day which will be Friday 4/19 where you will have 24 hours of free lacrosse!  Our speakers include: Jim Berkman, Marie Mccool, Dom Starsia, Andy Towers, Spencer Ford, Greg Gurenlian and many more!

Click here to see the INCREDIBLE list of speakers!

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcast with US Lacrosse's Steve Stenersen

This past week I had a fascinating conversation with President and CEO of US Lacrosse, Steve Stenersen.  As I do with most guests, I asked him about his "Lacrosse journey" which started at St. Paul's in Baltimore 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...

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!

I'm excited for another great weekend of lacrosse practices, games, activities, coaches meetings aka having beers and talking about lacrosse! It's a chilly day in Denver, but it looks like the snow is going to hold off just long enough for us to get a practice in today with the ThunderRidge HS girls team I'm coaching. We are installing the Joe Spallina Stony Brook Zone Defense today. Fired up!

The Ultimate Player 

 I remember in the spring of 1989, my senior year at Brown, there was this freshman named Chris Sciani, who was the sickest guitar player. His band played at our fraternity every weekend and he could jam like the Allman Brothers and Guns & Roses! One time I was hanging out with Chris and he had a little cassette tape he carried around in his shirt pocket.  He pulled it out and said, "You...