Goalie Gets Smoked for 10 Goals. By One Girl! Goalie Is Now In A Funk. Help!

Question: Jonathan,

Since you’ve been a good source of knowledge so far, I’d thought I’d send along another message.

Ok so here’s a quick update:

The short of it is, she’s played a few ok games, and then today (or should I say yesterday since the game was Wednesday) she got shell shocked. Tomorrow or I should today (since the game is Thursday), we have an easy game against a weak team. Yes I can confidently say that. My goalie will let in a few goals in this coming game, but I’m more worried about her confidence. We let one player score 10 goals on us, 6 of which were in the last 2:17 in our game on Wednesday. In addition, the shots were well placed in the near post upper corner.

My goalie complains that she is having trouble seeing the ball. We’ve worked on having her face a wall and I shoot over the top of her and she makes the save. However, right now I think its mostly a confidence issue. She’s a good goalie when she’s on, but when she’s off, she’s definitely way off. I guess I’m writing to see if you have any suggestions on getting her confidence level back up before tomorrow’s game. She’s a hard work, a good kid, and man can she play ball, but she’s definitely struggling right now, and I don’t have answers for her. I’ve never been in the situation she’s in. We’re headed into post season play next week and I need to get her back on her A-game. She’s getting better about “lighting up the shooter” so thanks for that tip it’s really helped! Also she’s doing a much better job of trying to get her body to the space to save the ball. She wants to perform well all the time, she understands she’ll have her bad games, but she’s still in a funk.


Any suggestions?


Thanks,

(Name held to protect the innocent)


Answer: Thanks for writing again. I always love to hear how things are going so I don't mind it at all.

First thing...what the heck is your team doing letting one girl score ten times? That's a coaching error. If this girl is running uncontested down the field and scoring once every 15 seconds that's a defense problem primarily. It has very little to do with the capability of your goalie.

From a confidence perspective you need to tell your goalie that the team let her down. Map out on a sheet of paper where all those goals came from. If they are coming from high percentage areas your goalie is only expected to save ones from a range that she is capable. If that's ten yards then anything inside ten yards is unreasonable for her to save at this point. I would always tell my teams, "Listen, this is a team sport. We have defenders and we have goalies. The defenders job is to give up shots from low percentage areas so that our goalie can save the ball."

Notice that I didn't say that a defenders job is to not give up any shots. That's impossible. What is possible is for the defense to usher the offensive player to a spot on the field where his or her shot is harmless. Or, the shot is from an angle that has a low percentage of going in. Too many times we expect the goalie to save everything from everywhere, and for the defense not to give up shots. That's an unrealistic expectation. What we need to be able to find is that range where your goalies save percentage is really high and get the shots from there.

If your goalie is "on" and then "off" that is a confidence issue. You are correct about that. You need to have her do the following: This is the most important thing that anyone can ever do in anything let a lone being a lacrosse goalie. Here it is: When she gets scored on I want you to have her forget about the goal that just went in and have her focus on the same shot in her mind. But this time she needs to see herself saving the ball. What we are doing is replacing a negative with a positive. We are wiping out the negative image that will ruin confidence and have her focus on seeing herself saving the same shot.

I used to do this, and I still do. It was taught to me while I was training for the Olympics in a completely different sport. The goal of the drill is to not let the mind focus on the negative. Right now she is basically reliving that bad goal over and over as the ref picks the ball out of the cage and walks it to midfield. Here's how it should work:

After ANY goal have your goalie say in her mind or out loud, "Reset" Just like the reset button on the back of a modem. She can use other words like, "Cancel" or "Power". Something that signals her brain to wipe out what she just saw and to replace it. Now she's going to visualize the same shot and she's going to move to it just as she would have but this time she saves it. It is THE most powerful thing she can do right now. Your job as the coach is to watch her immediately after the goal to see what she does. If she drops her stick and sulks a bit you need to get her attention and have her do the drill. Pretty soon, she will immediately go into the reset drill after the ball goes in. I got to the point where I didn't even bother picking the ball out of the cage. I had better things to work on. No where in any of my articles will you see me talk about the goalies technique for fishing the ball out of the cage! That's a worthless drill in my mind.

Ok, your over the shoulder drill is a fun drill but it's not going to solve her vision issue. You need to ask her a couple of question: Can she see your shots when you warm her up? Does she lose site of the ball among other players? Is it dodging and cradling where she loses it?

I'm going to guess it's the last one. If that's the case get another coach, or a back up goalie involved in the warm up. You want to shoot around that player similar to the shots she's seeing in games. Warm her up first, then do a bunch of those shots at the end of the warm up. You really need her to articulate what she means when she says she can't see the ball. Once you find out why you can work on that in practice.

Lastly, let's just touch on the confidence issue again. Now the guy in me tends to analyze the heck out of this and girls are well...a bit...different shall we say. (Think Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus Different) My thoughts would be to first, get her to realize that this is a team sport and she's not alone. If you can get the D involved by saying things like, "Ladies, we really left our goalie out to dry last week." They need to understand that it's a team thing as well. I'm always amazed at how well some girls really bond as a team. They are an emotional crew and can really stick up for each other if you have a good group.

Secondly, talk to her. Get her to share what she's feeling. If you can get her to articulate it she will just plain feel better about the whole thing. You may not be her confidant but if you can get her to open up you can start to uncover what she needs. She may feel like she's letting you down because you work so much with her every day. She may be bummed about school, or boys, or other things NOT involving lacrosse. She may be having her period. In the end she may not be in a funk about lacrosse at all.

Finally, break it all down to the basics. When in doubt, break it down to the basics. You may be getting to a point where she is becoming a good practice goalie but her game isn't quite there yet. That's ok, that's just a phase to work through. Tell her that too. "Hey, you're doing great on these drills! It's all going to start coming together in one of these games. Just be patient." If you've ever golfed there is a saying that you need to be able to take your swing on the range out to the actual course. There are a lot of great ball strikers on the range. But when you get out onto the course it's a different deal.

By the way...if that girl smoked you guys for 10 goals she must be pretty good, right? As a goalie I always tried to do my best against the best players. If that girl was a stud (studette) tell her so! Reinforce things like,"Hey you're kicking butt against these other girls but this girl was one of the best in the league! You're time will come! It's all about progression. Sure we'd like you to stop all those shots but we don't expect that of you right now. Maybe in a couple of years. As long as you're improving you're going to be better than her someday and probably sooner than you think!"

On my blog there is an article on progression. Read that over and it should give you some more ideas.

Peter thanks for the update. I hope this helps. Keep firing off the questions and I'll be happy to help. Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Jonathan-