Watching College Lacrosse Like a Pro

Many of you probably know how important it is to study your own game footage to improve your performance, but have you ever considered the value of watching college games to learn more about the game itself?

Watching College Lacrosse like a pro

Watching college lacrosse is not only entertaining, but it can also be an incredibly valuable learning experience. By observing how the best players and teams operate, you can develop a better understanding of the game and learn new strategies to incorporate into your own.

Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your viewing experience:

Focus on the Details

Rather than only watching the game for entertainment (which is completely okay if that's what you enjoy), you can try to focus on the details. Watch for defensive breakdowns and offensive strategies that create scoring opportunities. Pay attention to how teams transition from defense to offense and how they approach 6v6 situations.

Analyze Every Goal

Every goal in lacrosse is the result of a series of actions that lead up to it. Try to identify where the defensive breakdown occurred and how the offense was able to capitalize on it. First, can you notice if it was an unsettled goal where the offensive capitalized on a transition, or, was it a settled goal? Was it a bad approach on the ball? Was somebody ball watching off the ball? Where was the ball fed from if it was an assisted goal? Was it a tough ground ball scrum or a rebound? Was it just a great offensive play?

Take notice of where on the field goals come from and the type of shots players are generating. Additionally, notice the possessions where players do not get a good shot off and see if you can start to tell the differences in these possessions. This will really help build your game IQ. 

Some things you may notice are:

• Shots from the middle of the field tend to be higher quality
• Assisted goals from X are high percentage plays
• As offenses get the ball moving, defenses struggle to have consistent and great approaches 
• As defenders slide and approach well with sticks in gloves they may force some errant passes
• Winning the transition game, ground balls, and clearing are critical to a team's success
• A lot of initiation off of big little picks to challenge defenses to communicate and make decisions

Take Notes and Implement

While watching the game, take notes on what you observe. This will help you retain the information and review it later. Additionally, by analyzing your notes, you can identify patterns in gameplay and develop a deeper understanding of the game.

If you have film of your own games or your opponents you can take the same approach. Work backwards from the shot or the stop to understand why and how the play ended up like it did. Compare yourself to some of these college games you are watching to see what you can steal and implement into your own game. 

By watching college lacrosse games with a critical eye, you can gain valuable insights and improve your own performance. You might be surprised at how much you can learn! If you want more film breakdowns, we just uploaded our Preseason Defensive Film Breakdown Webinar Series to our platform on FCL Online. We go into detail on film breakdown covering all concepts defense. 

- Coach Dunn

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