Freshman Daughter Trying Out For The Varsity. Any Advice?

Question:

Jonathan,

My daughter is a freshman in high school she will be trying out for the Varsity in the spring. Can you help me with some drills to sharpen her skills? My son plays middie and shoots on her, but anything that you have would be great.

Thanks,


Answer:

Thanks for the email and congrats to your daughter for taking up the best position in the game.

Two major things that will help her:

One: Build her confidence. With a brother shooting on her the potential for her to get stung by a few balls is very high. This can lead to fear of the ball which will destroy a lot of her learning curve. Make sure he shoots from far enough away but is accurate with his shots. He's going to want to come in and fake and shoot, but I'd rather see him back up and pick the corners. It's great for him to work on his accuracy and it's awesome for her.

Two: Make sure she knows where the ball is going before he shoots it. This is imperative for the learning goalie. If you've read some of my posts at AllExperts.com and my blog www.lacrossegoaltending.blogspot.com I'm sure you've heard me explain this. If not I'll explain again: For the new goalie there is a ton of things going through her mind. First: Where is the ball going? How am I going to move to the ball to make the save? Is it going to hurt? By letting her know where the ball is going, and by making sure the shooter is a safe distance she can focus on moving properly to the ball. What we are trying to do is wire her like we would wire a computer. Ball-goes-high-stick-side-enter. Goalie responds with the program to save that ball. What can happen with a new goalie is if there is too much input the system will not respond properly. If we can limit the amount of input the chances for the output to be correct goes up. Does that make sense?

The question is always: But in a game she won't know where the ball is going until the shot is taken and the shooters don't tell her where the ball is going to go? That is completely true. But our goal here is to give her he best chance to save that ball in the game and by doing that we are trying to wire her body to make the right response in the game. In the game her eyes will see where the ball is going and her body will do the thing it has been programmed to do in practice. It is an amazing thing to see when a young goalie gets it.

Three: I think this is three, I made a bunch of points in that last one. Ok, here it is...get her in a weight room with a strength and conditioning coach and possibly one who can teach her the Olympic lifts. If you remember high school physics at all you may remember the Force equation? Force equals mass multiplied by velocity. So in this case the mass she needs to move is the stick. Velocity is actually distance divided by time. So the more force she can apply to the stick, and to her body the faster that stick will move over a certain distance? Make sense? The stronger she is physically the faster she will be able to move.

Most young goalies can see the ball coming at them. And they know how they need to move, they just don't always move fast enough. The stronger she is the faster she will move. The faster she moves the more balls she saves. The more balls she saves the more her confidence goes up. The more confidence she has the more relaxed she is in the cage. And the more relaxed she is the more she can focus on the ball and make even more saves. It's a pretty cool process and an empowering one for all goalies. (And especially with the girls.)

I'm not sure where you are in the country but if you let me know where you are I may be able to put you in touch with someone, or at least give you some guidelines.

Building her strength also has a ton of benefits off the field as well. Stronger body. Stronger mind. Empowered athlete. Empowered person. It's pretty cool.

As far as specific drills go my biggest recommendation is to spend time moving to the ball properly. You do this by first having her make saves without a ball. Just have her move to a space. I don't have enough space here to go over how to move to every save. You may already have an understanding of that, if you don't just email me back. I'm working on an ebook and I'll send you that chapter as soon as I get it completed.

By having her visualize a ball coming at her, and then her moving properly she can train her body to move without the stress of getting hit with the ball or the ball going by her. The goal here is to have her perfect moving properly and then her body knows what to do when she finally gets in front of the ball. If she spends a couple minutes a day doing that she will be miles ahead of all the other goalies who never do it.

My other suggestion for drills is to pick one shot and work on that shot for ten minutes. Don't try to hit everything in the same session. Maybe its a shooter sweeping around the front of the cage from right to left and then shooting at her feet. Have her focus on taking small steps to follow the shooter and then exploding down to the ball and making the save. Hands out in front. Head and chest over the ball. Then in another session you can work on something else. Maybe a shot in close. It's endless what you can do really.

Ken I hope this gives you some ideas to start with. Any drill will help her as long as you follow the principles I've given you. On the other hand every drill if done impoperly will destroy her confidence and stifle her progress and potentially lead her to quit. I don't ever want to see that happen.

Please feel free to email me with more questions. I'd love to know how things go and how your daughter is improving. It's great to get the feedback. If you have anything else just let me know.

Have a very Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year.

All the best,

Jonathan Edwards - Olympian
www.LacrosseGoaltending.blogspot.com