For youth lacrosse players, your priorities should be:

• Character development and making lacrosse enjoyable
•  Athletic development and skill-work
•  Defensive and offensive concepts

Once you know what your priorities will be and what you should work on the first thing you should do is develop a long-term plan (two to five years) and season plan.

First, what would I like them to develop and learn before they reach high school:

• Athleticism
• Ball Handling
• Passing
• Footwork
• Catching
• Shooting
• Basic Offensive Concepts
• Basic Defensive Concepts

Second, what should I focus on this year?

• Athletic development and offensive skills- 30 minutes
• Defense- 15 minutes
• Offense- 15 minutes
• Scrimmage- 30 minutes

You could also look at it like this:

• 1/3 skills and athletic development
• 1/3 offense and defense (small-sided games)
• 1/3 scrimmaging

Each year it is a good idea to have a primary focus and secondary focus for each section of practice. One of the biggest reasons to focus on one or two things is the coaches and kids will see clear improvement by the end of the year. This motivates the players and makes it fun!! If you try to do everything equally, you might improve skills (ball handling 20 minutes to every practice and emphasize the concepts in games, you will certainly see improvement from day 1 to the last game. You can see it on film, show it to players and parents, and everyone feels good about the improvement that was made.

• I will work on the primary focus every practice. I will work on the secondary focus every 2 to 4 practices. If you do this for 3 or 4 years with your focus shifting and progressing, that’s when you develop lacrosse players!

Third, create a practice plan template and drills to use.

• This might take you and extra 2 to 3 hours at the beginning of the year, but it will save you many more hours during the season and beyond if you decide to coach for multiple seasons.

• Create a practice plan for 2 to 4 practices. It will include your primary skills and secondary skills. You are not worried about specific drills here, just the categories of skills and concepts you want to work on. For example:

Practice 1 Template:

• Athleticism- 6 minutes
• Ball Handling- 10 minutes
• Footwork- 6 minutes
• Form Shooting- 4 minutes
• Clearing the ball- 4 minutes
• 1 v 1 defense- 5 minutes
• Defense Positioning- 54 minutes
• Cutting and Getting Open- 5 minutes
• Small-sided game- 5 minutes
• Special Situation- inbound plays- 5 minutes
• Create a Drills Binder

After you create a template, you can find your favorite drills and games for each section, print them out and put them in a binder. That way you can look at your template before each practice and plan out your appropriate drills.

Keep the game at its simplest form and play as fast as you can.

Athletic Development

• Speed
• Quickness
• Strength
• Flexibility
• Endurance

Skill Development

• Passing
• Catching
• Feeding
• Scooping
• Shooting
• Dodging

Lacrosse IQ Development

Player Focused

• Each player plays at a certain, individual level.
• Help them develop the skills to get out of their comfort zone and to the next level.

Management

• By position: Attack, midfield, defense, goalies, faceoff guys
• By groups: Offense, defense, man-up unit, man-down unit, faceoff team
• Game management: 30 seconds to go, we have no more timeouts, you’re a defenseman running over the midfield line, you probably don’t need to turn around and run back

Advice from a College Coach: Penn State’s Jeff Tambroni uslacrosse.org April 15, 2015

1. Fundamentals

“Develop your players fundamentals first, second and third in the priority of your on-field game plan. A distant fourth would be schemes and patterns of slides and offensive formations.”

2. Discipline

“Emphasize and take a disciplined approach to off-field weight training, nutrition and flexibility to avoid unnecessary injuries and to keep up with the growing pace and athleticism of our sport.”

3. Culture

“Develop a leadership and culture plan the same way you develop your practice plan. Spend time developing your plan—and more importantly, your players—every day by communicating your vision and establishing a collaborative work environment to achieve your common goal.”