Lacrosse Coaching
My Philosophy
Fun first
My coaching philosophy is first and foremost to have fun! Standing around is not fun. In my lacrosse practices I always aim to keep kids moving by breaking kids up into smaller groups for more touches per drill and designing drills in a way that encourage more kids to participate. In lacrosse and skiing, I try to encourage learning by doing and keep drill explanations to a minimum. I also like to encourage lots of free play and exploration so that kids develop an intuitive sense of what works and what doesn’t.
Team-driven feedback
Every season I work with my kids to set goals that matter to them and we always debrief at halftime and after games to find out what they think is working well and what they think is not working well.
Be comfortable being uncomfortable
“The first step towards being good at something is being really bad at something.” In my lessons, failure is always an option because trying new things always requires a little bit of failure. I reward the effort just as much as I reward the outcome because hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. Shown on the left is a reward sticker my assistant coach Jess Goucher developed to incentivize time spent practicing with their sticks.
We chose the pig because we had these squeaky plastic pig that we handed out to the players of the week.
Lift each other up
Like any good coach, I always want my players to do their best and I’ve found that the best way to motivate players is not to compare them to others, but ask them to individually give their best effort. I try to lead with example, by calling out athletes that I see giving it their all, or making really smart decisions so that teammates are encouraged to look to each other for examples of excellence instead of critiquing each other.