Turning Childhood Video games into Elite Coaching Instruments – USA Lacrosse

© 2025 USA Lacrosse. All Rights Reserved.
Because the solar set over Tierney Subject at USA Lacrosse headquarters Sept. 24-25, carloads of stick-wielding college students entered the gates ready for the chance of their goals.
On consecutive nights upfront of the Atlas Cup, the U.S. Sixes Nationwide Groups and Gait Lacrosse placed on high-intensity clinics for knowledgeable center faculty and highschool boys’ and ladies’ lacrosse gamers trying to degree up their video games.
Every two-hour clinic included on-field instruction from nationwide staff gamers, superior drills targeted on game-ready methods, official Atlas Cup merchandise and tickets to the 12-game occasion that includes Canada, the Haudenosaunee Nation, Puerto Rico and the US.
Athletes flocked from throughout the Mid-Atlantic — and some from so far as Australia — to work one-on-one with a number of the most proficient lacrosse gamers on the planet.
After getting their repair of X’s and O’s, clinic attendees broke into an action-packed sixes scrimmage. Gamers ran end-to-end with their idols watching. USA goalie Blaze Riorden refereed. Hilarity ensued. Core reminiscences unlocked.
Feeling FOMO? Don’t fear, we acquired you. Try movies on our YouTube channel (@USA_Lacrosse) and put into follow the drills and methods detailed on these pages.
The Kirst brothers play lacrosse with childlike enthusiasm and pleasure. It’s infectious. Depart it as much as goalie Colin Kirst, then, to correlate elite stopping potential with a kids’s recreation.
Step 1: Get in a circle
Collect anyplace from 5-8 totally different goalies to permit for extra variance.
Step 2: Begin with two balls
The initiator will start by throwing the primary ball to a goalie within the circle at random, who then catches the ball and sends it off to the following goalie.
Step 3: Decide up the tempo
Let the primary ball make its rounds slowly earlier than incorporating the second ball and dashing up the supply. It will take a look at a goalie’s response time, hand-eye coordination and processing of the motion in entrance of them.
Step 4: Get down
If a goalie drops the ball, she or he should do a pushup earlier than rejoining the circle.
Ally Kennedy had fairly the 2024-25 competitors 12 months. It began with incomes MVP honors on the inaugural World Lacrosse Ladies’s Field Championship and ended with an undefeated run through the Atlas Cup. In between, she performed for U.S. groups that captured titles on the Pan-American Ladies’s Lacrosse Championship and The World Video games 2025. 
Right here, Kennedy takes one other kids’s train and makes it lacrosse worthy.
Step 1
Place a cone between two gamers going through one another, standing about an arm’s size from each other.
Step 2
Place a ball on high of the cone.
Step 3
Now it’s time to check your listening. Coaches will shout some mixture of “head,” “shoulders,” and “knees” and gamers will contact that physique half. Make it unpredictable.
Step 4
Subsequent, we take a look at the response time. After a collection of physique elements, coaches will shout “go.” At the moment, the 2 gamers attain for the ball on the cone, and whichever participant grabs the ball first wins.
Step 5
Youngsters are good. They may begin to choose up on patterns. Attempt variations like including burpees, push-ups or leaping jacks to maintain gamers on their toes.
Step 6
For those who want extra concepts to maintain gamers engaged, strive having them compete with their eyes closed or one leg.
Matt Hamilton is the Content material Advertising Supervisor at USA Lacrosse, having served as a employees author for 4 years. He's a Baltimore native who loves the Orioles and Ravens, even when they let him down within the final 12 months. He likes rooster tenders and Shirley Temples and sick views. He additionally loves writing about lacrosse.
© 2025 USA Lacrosse. All Rights Reserved.
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