Your Edge // coaches
HOW TO BUILD A TEAM OFFENSE
W season:
Who are my players? What skills do they possess? You need to know if you have the chicken to make the salad. Once you have determined who your players are and what skills they bring to the fi eld, it’s time to plan your strategy. This is what great coaches do. At the college level, certain coaches can recruit players with certain skill sets that fi t the mold of the program. Most are not so lucky enough. They do the best they can with what they have.
Here are fi ve skills you may
observe in your players, and how you can use them within your greater team strategy.
1. SPEED
POSITION: Midfi eld STRATEGY: Play fast in transition and try to capitalize on odd- number situations.
2. FEEDING
POSITION: Attack STRATEGY: Use off-ball movement to create scoring opportunities with passes into high-percentage shooting areas.
56 LACROSSE MAGAZINE » September/October 2016 — TJ Buchanan
US Lacrosse coaching education content manager
A Publication of US Lacrosse
Find the right mix by matching skills to position and strategy
hat do you do fi rst? Plan your strategy and try to make it work, or evaluate
your players and determine what your strategy should be? There’s an old saying something along the lines of, “You can’t make chicken salad without chicken.” Consider the following questions as you begin to plan for your next
3. DODGING/ CHANGE OF DIRECTION
POSITION: Midfi eld
or attack STRATEGY: Use dodging and change
of
direction to create defensive rotations and move the ball to open players for high-percentage scoring opportunities.
4. OUTSIDE SHOOTING
POSITION: Midfi eld STRATEGY: Use offensive strategies such as fades and pops away from the defensive rotations to get the ball into the sticks of your outside shooters.
5. FIELD AWARENESS
POSITION: Midfi eld or attack STRATEGY: Use this player as a distributor. Put players into a position where they can read the defense and the ball movement accordingly.
By carefully evaluating your players, you can begin to build groups of players that complement each other and put them into systems that will work for them. Ideally, all your players would have all the noted skills, but as we know, that’s not always possible. Having a mixture of these skills, organized into a system, will give your team the best chances for success on the offensive side of the fi eld.
Blind Man’s Bluff
How do you prepare players for unsettled situations? Try Blind Man’s Bluff, a drill from the US Lacrosse Coaching Education Program archive.
OBJECTIVE
To improve communication and fi eld awareness during unsettled situations. DESCRIPTION
Choose a random number of offensive and defense players to simulate transition/unsettled situation (4v3, 3v3, 4v2, 3v5, etc.). Instruct players to walk with their eyes closed until you yell, “Stop!” While the players remain standing with their eyes closed, roll the ball out and yell, “Ball down!” Then the players open their eyes and play out the unsettled situation.
SKILLS PRACTICED
Communication Field awareness Defensive formations
Moving without the ball on offense Quick decision making Adapting on the fl y
VARIATIONS
Walk the players around with their eyes closed to ensure that they are randomly dispersed. Also, additional players can be sent in on the fl y once play has started.
©JOHN STROHSACKER; ©
SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
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