Practice Plan: Finding Space

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Scan the Field Warm Up With Progressions
Early Dodging Line Drill – Attack the Butt End
Tight 1v1
Musical Groundballs 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

Scan the Field Warm Up With Progressions

Set Up

Set up a designated area on the field using cones or lines. In this case, we are using the center circle, which is a good space for the size of this group. Every player will have a ball and will run/cradle through the area. They need to keep their HEAD UP while they are running so they dont run into a teammate. You can see in the video, players are naturally also getting some escape work in when they need to change direction to not hit a teammate!

Progression 1 – After they have been running for 15-20 seconds, coach will blow a whistle and every player will stop, bounce away a little bit, and get their hands up like they want to make a pass. Have them hold position for a few seconds
Progression 2 – Once coach blows the whistle, they must find a teammate and exchange balls with, by rolling it out for a ground ball (Communicate!)

Coaching Points and Principles

Run and cradle with your stick protected, close to your shoulders
HEAD UP! Dont look down, keep your eyes up so you are running into space that doesn’t have another player
Look for natural escapes like Jabs, splits, etc.. and reinforce great job to the kids
Communicate – When you get to the ground ball progression, communicate with teammate so you both expect the same thing

Progressions

Instead of a ground ball, pass to a teammate to make it more challenging
Make the space smaller and more challenging, or larger for less experienced players

Tags

Anticipation & Recognition Attack Ball Control & Cradling Beginner Block - On Air (no opponent)Defense Men’s Lacrosse Midfield Small Area Games Small Area Games U10 U8

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Early Dodging Line Drill – Attack the Butt End

Summary

A foundational drill to dodging, as It’s important we start building IQ at the younger levels, and keeping it more simple than complex. Here we are emphasizing on an easy way to attack a defender, which is simply dodging past their butt end.

Tags

Anticipation & Recognition Attack Ball Control & Cradling Beginner Defense Dodging & Escapes Guided - Token Opponent Men’s Lacrosse Midfield U10 U8

Set Up

Put players in groups of 5 on the sideline with a coach about 5-8 yards away. Coach will stand square to them, with their stick on their hips. We want the players to pick up a ball dodge past the butt end, and carry the ball back in line. Coach should be changing hands for every player, so they have to be a DECISION MAKER.

Coaching Points and Principles

No specific dodge, but we want the player to change speed and ACCELERATE past coach
Recognize the butt end, and let players naturally feel/see that
Force them to think about what kind of movement they need to do two protect stick, while dodging

Progressions

Play tougher defense so they don’t hang stick, light checks
Make them pass back to their teammate in line

Tags

Anticipation & Recognition Attack Ball Control & Cradling Beginner Defense Dodging & Escapes Guided - Token Opponent Men’s Lacrosse Midfield U10 U8

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Tight 1v1

Set Up

Put an offense and defense player in play. They start with the offense shielding stick with body, leaning into the defender. The defense leans back with hands/stick on hip on opponent. On whistle, the offense player attacks the goal, and does so by feeling the weight/positon of the defender, and attacking the opposite.

Coaching Points & Principles

Stick Protection!
Use Body to feel the pressure angle from defender.. roll dodges and top side drives will work but find the natural escape
Defense work on recovery angles
Do this drill from all areas of the field

Progressions

Have players start with small separation, so the defense must approach.

Tags

Attack Ball Control & Cradling Beginner Defense Dodging & Escapes Intermediate Men’s Lacrosse Midfield Small Area Games Small Area Games U10 U8

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Musical Groundballs Game

This is a fun game to get the kids warmed up and competing!

SET UP

Create a small field using cones and put all the players shoulder to shoulder about 8 yards away from the game area. Coach will place as many balls -1 in the game area, than there are players. You have 8 players, use 7 balls. On the whistle, each player must go get a ball, and bring it back to the start line. The 8th player who doesn’t win a ball, can play defense and try to steal until everyone has returned back to the start point. Continue this progression until its 2v1 and you can declare a winner!

PRINCIPLES AND COACHING POINTS

Ground Balls, Competing, Hustle, hav fun!

PROGRESSIONS

Use less balls to make game go faster (8 players 6 balls, then 6 players 4 Balls…

Attack Beginner Foundational Skills Ground Ball Battles Ground Balls Intermediate Midfield Small Area Games U10 U12 U14 U8 Women’s Lacrosse

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