Free Play Academy Newsletter #32

Topics that will be covered:

1. Technique in Sport is misunderstood. (Continued..)

2. A characteristic of a great teacher.

3. Adjustment to times moving forward & clip from Free Play Session.


Technique in Sport is misunderstood. (Continued..)

What if our misunderstanding of what technique actually is, underpins the work we do with our players?

What if the technical training that has become a main pillar in the way we develop our young lacrosse players, only really acts as a placebo for learning and improvement?

What if consistently drilling players in movement patterns builds coordination and confidence, but not a lot else?

We’re going to break down what technique is and how we should go about developing it.

For the next few weeks we’ll be touching on the many facets of what comprises technique, today we will touch on Ball Manipulation.

The first thing to understand is what ball manipulation actually is. Manipulating the ball, is to move the ball in a variety of ways to keep it away from opposition players, or to move through, over and around opposition players into new spaces in coordination with teammates.

Players passing the ball in different ways with their stick in numerous times in different patterns is the flavor of style that each player can bring.

So how should we go about improving individuals’ ball manipulation technique within context?

The idea is not more touches, but better touches. Quality over quantity. More of the wrong thing will not help your players improve.

If you want your players to be masters of the ball, have drills that place emphasis on this, such as something as 4v3 keep away in a confined space!

This should create more variable and realistic situations for your players to solve. “But if they don’t quite has effective stick skills, how will they be able to handle keep away?” The answer is that they might not and that’s okay.

More importantly they may pass and move in a way you’d never imagined possible before. This is the magic. And that’s the key, allowing them space to be creative, you can’t force creativity into players – they must be given room to express themselves functionally.

Encourage the players to look for emerging gaps and spaces and ask them to move the ball through, around and over into them, and then to move into new emerging spaces and gaps themselves.

The skill of the coach is shown through what he encourages his players to imagine and possible move towards.

This type of drill, keeping it simple with ‘keep away’, should be to develop the player’s knowledge in the game, and not for the coach to be providing all the knowledge, but suggestions and encouragement.

If you want your players to notice opportunities to act within the performance environment, this type of drill is an incredibly simple way of doing, and in fact at Michigan we regularly played it to start practice!

As coaches, we can be far more skilled in our design of the environment and task, the “drill”.

Rather than force the action, let’s look to design the opportunity to act, allow the players to experience and explore these opportunities.


A characteristic of a great teacher.

All gifted and great teachers NEVER have to resort to artificial means of imposing discipline.

They don’t need punishments or bribes, because the great teacher is a person who makes the work of learning an activity so completely fascinating that the student is fully capsulated by it.

It lies in the fact that learning an activity is not a matter of forcing oneself.

However, no progress in the activity can be achieved without practice, but if practice is strained there is a great possibility of resentment that can be built up in the student.

How often have we seen and felt this ourselves?

The key to the prior and avoidance of the later is to create fascination of the activity in the student.

If done effectively the student will begin to learn to love the activity and have a natural urge to apply themselves, intrinsically, to practicing the activity.

This takes great care and specialized attention by the teacher.

This is the art of the teacher.

If the student does not learn to love the activity, they will never be any good at what the teacher is teaching. 


Adjustment to times moving forward & clip from Free Play Session.

Please be aware, moving forward with the decreasing of sunlight we have opted to begin our Sunday morning Free Play Sessions at 8:00am.

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Very simple clip below, 1v1 starting on GLE at the hash marks.

The offensive player does a great job of probing the defender with an array of movements in and around the area of that field and instantaneously analyzing how he responses to these movements.

I call this focusing on the 1st layer of defense from the offensive player’s perspective, the 1st layer being the direct defender match up on us. The 2nd being the off-ball defenders and the 3rd being the goalie. More on this later..


The Free Game

The part of lacrosse that is played with the mind.

What will be covered are the 8 Principles of Performance.

Any lacrosse player can own the 1st ever sport psychology methodology specific to the game of Lacrosse.

This purchase will include a FREE consultation with Coach McDonnell via in-person or Zoom.

Here is a preview.

The cost is $24.99

You can purchase The Free Game here.


Lean in, do the work, stay focused and become uncommon.

Have a great week.


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Free Play Academy Newsletter #33

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Free Play Academy Newsletter #31