Practice Plan: Ball Control & Escapes

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Zombie Tag
5 Player Line Drills – Ground Balls
Shoot 2 Score Relay Game
Sharks and Minnows Game

Phase 1: Explore & Discover – Focus Points being cradling, body control, and escaping from pressure

Week 1 Practice / 60 Minute Session

Please Note:The practice is designed to bring value across multiple age levels. You can use this as a foundation to build and develop your own practice. With that being said, we highly encourage you to adjust the drills based on your team’s age and skill levels. Lacrosse Drive should always be used as a starting point — you can make drills easier or harder by changing the constraints.

To make a drill easier, you might Increase the playing area, reduce the number of defenders or rules, add time or space to make decisions

To make a drill harder, you might: Shrink the field or add boundaries, add defenders or touch restrictions (e.g., “one-pass before shooting”), or Limit time or space to force faster decisions

Small adjustments to field size, player numbers, and rules can significantly change the challenge level while maintaining the same core learning goal.

Theme Description & Objected: Ball Control and Escape work

Zombie Tag

Set Up

Create a small area using cones or lines on the field for boundaries. Every player will have a ball and there will be a coach(s) inside the play area as the zombies. On the whistle, the players will start running with their ball in the play are and coaches will walk around like zombies. if a player gets tagged by a coach or runs outside the playing area, they will freeze in place. Their teammates can unfreeze them, but rolling a ball through their legs, and scooping a ground ball. Continue for 5-10 minutes, and the kids will have a great run!

Coaching Points and Principles

Ball Control and Awareness – Keep your head up, stay away from zombies, and don’t run out of bounds!
Communicate – Help unfreeze your teammates

Progressions

Make field smaller so its more challenging or larges for less experienced players

5 Player Line Drills – Ground Balls

Set Up

Put players in groups of 5 (or 4 or 6 depending on your team size) on the sideline area. This drill is for ALL players so you can have 4-5 groups on the sideline spread out. Put a cone about 10 yards away, and another cone 10 yards away. Use a coach about 5 yards away, have them stand with a stick straight out with ball underneath. Player must run UNDER the stick, get a ground ball, carry around cone 10 yards out, and carry back to their line

Coaching Points and Principles

Ground Balls – Get low and Accelerate through the ball
Handle ball as you carry around cone and back to line
Work on both hands

Progressions

Add a stick over ball

Shoot 2 Score Relay Game

Set Up

Put players into 2 teams on the wings. Put balls in the middle of the field between the 2 teams, and then add a cone about 8 yards from the goal. The first player in line, must go scoop a ground ball, get to the 8 yard cone, and shoot. Once they shoot, their next teammate can go, like a relay race. The team with the most goals after a 1 minute session, wins

Coaching Points and Principles

Get clean ground balls, for speed and efficiency
Take good shots, us a proper to make it harder to score like a net
Hustle! need to work hard to win

Progressions

Make scoring area smaller and more difficult
Players must spring back to line before teammate can go

Sharks and Minnows Game

A fun game to work on cradling and ball control!

Set Up

Put the players on one sideline, and creating a small playing area. Coaches are inside the playing area as sharks! Players must cradle and run with a ball to the other sideline, without dropping to losing the ball. Coaches should try to force players outside the playing area or check sticks. Keep repeating end to end, until you have 1 clear winner!

Coaching Points & Principles

Cradling – Players should cradle to secure the ball
Escapes – Maneuver around coaches protecting their sticks
Spacing – Find and attack the open space!

Progressions

Turn the minnows into Sharks!

Ball Control & Cradling Beginner Dodging & Escapes Game - Live Play Men’s Lacrosse Small Area Games Small Area Games U10 U8

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