Special Lacrosse Drills for Poles
From Coach Pietramala, Johns Hopkins
I just finished up another great podcast with Coach Pietramala from Johns Hopkins Men’s Lacrosse and my head is still spinning. The full podcast is loaded with lacrosse drills but towards the end of the dialog he addressed a question we often get every month from your emails.

Most of us are spending even more time with skeleton offense in our lacrosse practices. And if you combine 15 minutes of skeleton offense (even if we put our poles in our shooting drills for a little time each day, or twice a week,) and another 10-15 minutes with shooting drills all of a sudden will need to provide meaningful drills for our poles that are also fun and build fundamental lacrosse skills.

In the dialog in the podcast Coach Pietramala gave us three awesome ideas for lacrosse drills with our poles…just log in to read the entiore article for all Free Members, [private]

3V2 w Tennis Balls

I loved this concept! We are seeing more and more college lacrosse coaches utilizing tennis balls in practice with great results. Please consider adding two bucket of tennis balls to use in your practices.

At Hopkins, they split the poles (or it might also be D Mids) into two groups. In this case Blue and White, and they play 3V2 with a goalie … but with some unique twists…

First they move the cages back to the women’s lacrosse crease and goal line. If you do not have these markings, no worries, just define it with cones. Next, the offensive players need to stay in the “Girl’s Arc.” So the playing area is “crunched down” to encourage quick passes. And even thought the goalie will see a ton of quick shots in this lacrosse drill, they will not get shelled or injured, because of the soft tennis balls.

They begin with three players (actually poles) entering or carrying in from up top or the top sides of the “Arc”. The two defending players enter the drill from GLE, and we play…but with tennis balls – which are far more difficult top catch and pass with a pole, requiring soft hands. We also begin with a full bucket of tennis balls, (or a half bucket depending on time,) and one team continues on offense until the bucket is depleted. If they throw it away, or drop outside the “Arc” a new ball, new group (but with the same color on offense) is in play. If they score a new ball is in play…

But… where is gets really fun is how they keep score. If we begin with “White” on offense, they continue on offense until the bucket of tennis balls is depleted getting a point for each goal. Then we refill the bucket and switch to Blue on offense and play through the second bucket keeping score. At Hopkins, often the score might but tied and thus now an “Overtime” period of three balls each. Fun eh?

Hungry Hippos

Actually we ran a similar drill when I was in High School, but never though about it in this context. We start with 10-20 balls in an area defined by cones. If you have more players, outline two areas. One at a time each player need to spring into the area, pick up the ground ball, and sprint out, repeating until they have all ten balls. If you can find a way to keep time it is even more fun and competitive!

Chaos Ground Balls

You are going to love this! In a tight defined area, three or four players enter the lacrosse drill, but each has his own ball or just feel out how many players at a time are chaotic for the space. Each player needs to roll out the GB, and pick it up. The roll it again, (maybe a five yard roll the ball rule) and pick it up again. All active players are in this tight defined area at the same time.

Thus there are a lot of bodies and it is not as easy as it sounds. A player may need to pick up the ground ball and dodge around another player before rolling, or “goose” or shovel pass away from another player before picking up the ball and rolling it out again. The players are in the defined area for one minute per group and they need to keep track of how many ground balls they pick up. Then quickly a new group enters, each with a ball and the ground ball exercise begins again for one minute.

Both of these ground ball drills run very quickly. Coach suggested that in any one drill a player may pick up 50 or 60 ground balls, and it can tire players out, thus it is fun and has a real conditioning element as well.

I thought these were great ideas for poles while we are working with the offensive shorties, although clearly they might be run in or at the end of practice with all players as well.

Coach Pietramala explains this far better than I …just click here then “Preview” and all Free Members can listen to him go through these ideas.

Please share your thoughts below… or email me, mike@laxcoachmike.com [/private]

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