Lacrosse Tip

Presented by Brian Lalley, Camp Director
St. Olaf College - Boys Lacrosse Overnight & Day Camp

Set Plays vs. Motion

Change of direction drill.

Xcelerate Nike Lacrosse National Program Director, Brian Lalley, discusses, Set Plays vs. Motion:

Every offensive coach in the country has a different philosophy of how they approach organizing their offense. One of the biggest debates about 6 v 6 offense is between set plays vs. motion.

Simple Motion
Learning from past experiences, I’ve tried to consistently learn from the successes and shortfalls I’ve had as an offensive coach. What I’ve realized is that the longer I coach, the simpler I go. As a former assistant coach at Canisius College, I took note scouting Cornell Lacrosse during the Rob Pannell years. Film after film, their offense continued to be two rotating triangles. Very simple and predictable, but they made a living on demanding doubles and elite ball movement to get the ball to their open player before we could rotate. It didn't matter what you did, they had the skills and IQ to take advantage of our 1 v 1 and team defense.

Simple is freeing. When athletes of any age in any sport have to think too much, they tend to slow down and tighten up. Any good offense has movement and balance. If you keep that simple and focus on your athletes being lacrosse players and build the skills/IQ to be a better player, there’s no need to get fancy.

Set Plays
With that said, I definitely believe there is a place for set plays. When executed correctly, they tend to be set to get a high percentage opportunity for one of your better players. The key questions are how many of them do you have, what tools do you equip your players with to run them and what do you do next if they don't work?

There are so many different kinds of tools out there to draw up plays or to share a video example of a play you want to run with your players. I have also recorded videos of myself explaining a play on a dry erase board and sharing it with my team so they can study the various spots in the set.

Conclusion
Every coach has his/her own opinion here, but I wholeheartedly believe that before you can focus on set plays, your players need to have a solid understanding of how to play continuous, motion offense. Once that foundation is set, adding layers to your offense with some set plays can add to the solid collective fundamental skills and concepts you’re operating within.

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