After hearing Coach Cerino from Limestone describe this lacrosse drill on our recent podcast (you can hear him describe this drill in his own words in the free sample), I just fell in love with the concept. As you know, our criteria for great lacrosse drills is fast-paced, involving many players, and must emulate lacrosse game situations. In this exercise we met all the criteria in all areas. But most of us in a midfield set seem to violate the last of these key criteria for drills.
Oftentimes when we’re doing our lacrosse drills and we’re working on offense, if they lose possession, we just give it back to the offense to start playing again. Or if they don’t have a backed up shot, we still give the ball to the offense. Or maybe progressive coaches could even now turn this into a punt-and-drive scenario, but despite most of us going back and handing the ball to the offense. In other words, there really is no offensive turnover penalty for offensive players, except for riding. Maryland Coach Cottle also reinforces this unique responsibility of the offense to take good care of the ball in drills.
This is a midfield drill, although it could be run simultaneously on both halves of the field during practice if you have the coaches for it, but then you will need three or four coaches. We put players in lines or groups with whom they are likely to play in the next game to help build familiarity. So let’s play 6V6 with some unique details. The offense gets a chance to keep the ball for two minutes, it actually has to keep possession for a full two minutes without stopping. But this is not an exercise to hold the ball or stop it in any way. If the offense scores three times in two minutes, they get the ball back each time, if they miss the cage but have the shot backed up, they get the ball back. If they lose possession or drop or turn it over, but go ahead and win the ball back before the defense clears midfield, they keep the ball for a total of two minutes.
The defense plays much more aggressively than usual, pressing the ball and covering with a tight defense all the way to the restraining line and the ‘infield’ everywhere. This creates a unique pressure situation, good for offense and defense. And, of course, on a change of possession or a ground ball that they recover, they immediately find themselves in a compensation situation. The key to the drill is the responsibility factor. If the offense loses possession at any time during the two minutes and the defense goes over the midfield line, they (all six offensive players) must leave the field or go to the other end and sprint for two minutes. while offensive and defensive units are fresh. Take your place and immediately start playing under the same set of rules for two minutes. After running their sprints they now return to the field to attack, and so on.
Coach Cerino maintains that after running sprints for two minutes and then immediately back on offense, they are more careful to make sure they take care of the ball. Imagine that… By running two groups of 6v6 or twelve players in each set, we keep 24 active players every two minutes. Defensive players rest between sets to encourage them to push harder with aggressive defense. The key here is to limit each set to two minutes to keep kids engaged, and the exercise is quick and limited to 12-15 minutes.
coach mike
