Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!

NCAA Men's First Round Weekend

This is my favorite weekend of lacrosse all year!  Eight games in two days, incredible quality of play, upset bids, one goal and O.T. games!  It doesn't get any better than this! Here are some quick thoughts about all the games.

Loyola vs Syracuse

The Pat Spencer show will be on full display with partner in crime Kevin Lindley , who is probably the best off ball crease guy in Division I lacrosse.  Together they create a one, two punch that puts the defense in a tough spot.  If you can't stop Spencer 1v1 you will pay the price sliding from Lindley.  And if your game plan is to slide from someone other than Lindley, Loyola will make you pay with their spacing and positioning of Lindley.  It's easier said than done.  Last week Army had success...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!

College Lacrosse Recruiting

The topic this week is "getting looks" versus "getting better."  From my experience, most families get caught up in getting looks at the expense of getting better.  The summer is no exception to this constant improvement paradigm, in fact it is a huge opportunity.  College coaches will watch a prospect play live multiple times in order to make a decision on their ability.  If a coach notices improvement over the course of the summer it is impactful.

The best Division I Lacrosse programs employ the same model of consistent individual skill development during the season with the thought the best way to make your team better is to make your players better.  Duke, Denver, Yale are great examples programs where the players seem to add to their repertoire of moves, shots,...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!

How To Be A Great Shooter

If you want to learn how to be a great shooter, listen to the Darris Kilgour Podcast from a few months back.  Darris is hands down one of the smartest lacrosse minds I've ever met.  A Native American who grew up on the Tuscarora Reservation just outside of Buffalo, Darris grew up playing backyard lacrosse at home and box lacrosse just over the boarder in Ontario.  

One of Darris's most brilliant concepts is the idea of learning how to be a deceptive shooter by shooting on a goalie with no ball.  Does this sound crazy?  I've tried it and found this method of teaching deceptive shooting extremely effective because scoring as your measure for a good shot is removed from the equation.  The entire goal is to score the "Air Ball" by moving the goalie or...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!

Virtual Lacrosse Summit - FREE REPLAYS!

We are opening up the flood gates on Q1 and Q2 Summit presentations!  60 hours of incredible educational lacrosse content will be available for free until midnight 4/26!  The list of speakers, the quality of presentations, and the willingness of some of the greatest players and coaches in the lacrosse world to provide instructional content was amazing!

Click Here to see complete list of speakers and get access to content!

College Lacrosse Recruiting

Thanks goodness the NCAA exempted men's and women's lacrosse from the new legislation that would have allowed recruiting contact to be made on June 15th after sophomore year instead of September 1st of Junior year.  My daughter is a 2021 and I'm looking forward to a fun summer of playing lacrosse, getting better and doing what...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!

Virtual Lacrosse Summit

It's coming Monday!  20+ hours of FREE educational lacrosse content!  The schedule will be coming out shortly, but check out the speakers, it's going to be an awesome week!  Click here for more info on the Virtual Lacrosse Summit.

• Tom Schreiber - How Box Helps Field and How Field Helps Box
• Darris Kilgour - NLL Game Breakdown Bandits/Swarm
• Deemer Class - Duke / Notre Dame Game Breakdown
• Joe Spallina - The Backer Zone Defense
• Jim Berkman - Seagull Drills
• Casey Cittadino - "Mentalytics"
• Marty O'Neil - Box Lacrosse Goaltending
• Marie McCool - Dodging and Shooting
• Spencer Ford - The Art of the Hangup
• Kaillie Briscoe - A New Era in WLax
• Bill Olin - Women's Lacrosse Goaltending
• Drew Wardlow - Redefining Success: Winning on and off the Field
• Greg "Beast" Gurenlian - Dominating the 50/50 Face-off, a...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you enjoy it!

Spring Break San Diego

I write to you from beautiful San Diego where ThunderRidge HS, the girls team I'm helping out with, held spring break training.  It was my first trip to SD for spring break and it was awesome!  The weather, the beaches, the training, the activities were all a great experience!  We got better at lacrosse, got closer as a team, and are primed for the rest of the season!  The girls worked hard for 3 hours per day at practice and then had the rest of the day for activities.  Since we didn't have any games, we were able to work hard and get a lot in!  A barometer I like to use to measure quality practice time is how much shooting do you have time for?  We hammered out 30 minutes per day!  Keeping it fresh made the practices more fun as we introduced and...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you find it enjoyable.

Virtual Lacrosse Summit

The week of April 15th we will conduct the second of four Virtual Lacrosse Summits we will hold this year.  Stay tuned on more details, but you can sign up here:

www.lacrossevirtualsummit.com

Here are a few of the speakers:

• Joe Spallina, Stony Brook Women's Lacrosse
• Brodie Merrill, NLL/MLL/PLL Defender, arguably top 2-3 all time defensemen, founder Hill Academy
• Greg Gurenlian, The G.O.A.T in the world of face-offs!
• Sean Allen, Philadelphia Wings on teaching box lacrosse
• Spencer Ford, Atlanta Blaze, MLL Assist record holder, "Hang up offense"
• Rick Beardsley, HOF defenseman, "Making Defenders Great Again"

Stay tuned for more info!  This is going to be awesome!  Feel free to email me if you have ideas on topics you'd like to hear about!

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcast with Matt Hasselbeck

I...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths, about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you find it enjoyable.

Phi-Lacrosse-ophy Podcast

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing Danielle Spencer, Head Coach Dartmouth Women's Lacrosse.  Danielle played and coached at Northwestern, won three National Championships as a player, was an All-American as well as US Team member.  We talk about her playing and coaching journey, her mentors like Northwestern Head Coach Kelly Amonte-Hiller, USC Head Coach Lindsey Munday and Colorado Head Coach Ann Elliott, her philosophy on player development, building the culture at Dartmouth and what it's like to be a first year head coach.  

Click Here! It's a great listen!

College Lacrosse Recruiting

One of the topics Danielle Spencer and I covered was recruiting.  She has gotten away from only looking for the biggest, fastest athletes and is looking to fill specific needs...

Welcome to "A Lacrosse Weekend" my weekly compilation of thoughts, ideas, stories, myths, truths about the great game of lacrosse. I hope you find it enjoyable!

I'm excited for another great weekend of lacrosse practices, games, activities, coaches meetings aka having beers and talking about lacrosse! It's a chilly day in Denver, but it looks like the snow is going to hold off just long enough for us to get a practice in today with the ThunderRidge HS girls team I'm coaching. We are installing the Joe Spallina Stony Brook Zone Defense today. Fired up!

The Ultimate Player 

 I remember in the spring of 1989, my senior year at Brown, there was this freshman named Chris Sciani, who was the sickest guitar player. His band played at our fraternity every weekend and he could jam like the Allman Brothers and Guns & Roses! One time I was hanging out with Chris and he had a little cassette tape he carried around in his shirt pocket.  He pulled it out and said, "You...