Lacrosse Tip

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

Add Speed and Reps to Your 6 v 6

Albion player in action.

Xcelerate Nike Lacrosse National Program Director, Brian Lalley, discusses, Alternating your 6 v 6:

As a coach, I tell my players and other coaches all the time that I have a burning desire to be productive. I absolutely hate wasting time and I try to minimize wasted time through being organized and communicating the practice plan.

As a player and as a coach, I have always felt like there was something missing when it came to 6 v 6. I understand it’s important and involves slowing things down and really understanding our X’s and O’s. However, it has always involved so much standing and waiting by players not involved at that point or not in the game plan at all.

The other common issue I have with 6 v 6 is it’s so natural to focus on the X’s and O’s and do things like give the ball right back to the offense after they’ve thrown it away. How does that teach our players to value the ball?

ALTERNATING YOUR 6 v 6

Setup
This drill starts with four separate 2 v 1’s and goes right into a 6 v 6. In the bottom two corners of the field, one side has two attackmen and one close defender. On the other side are two defenders and onw attackman. Up at the 45-yard line and the sideline are two lines of offensive midfielders and one lsm/d-mid. On the other sideline, two defensive mids and one offensive mid.

The Drill
We will focus on one offensive set at a time so we can work on refining that set. Randomly, the coach will roll a ground ball out to one of the 2 v 1 lines. If the offense gets the ball, they have to move it twice before attacking. You could take this rule out if you’d really like your defense to focus on getting in the hole. This rule promotes the 6 v 6 settled set.

The offense must get everyone a touch and communicate our set and dodger. If the defense gets the ball, they have to first get the ball to their goalie and then clear to the midfield line. You could change this as well to promote quickly getting out of your zone, but the rule works to get a lot of settled clearing and riding reps. If either team turns the ball over out-of-bounds, the play is over and the next group is up (VALUE THE BALL!!).

Advantages
I’m not saying to scrap your skeleton 6 v 6 or not do it the way you’ve done to really teach players the X’s and O’s. You have to walk before you run. As I gain more experience as a coach, I continue to find that executing the simple things better and quicker is much better than getting complex with players of any age. This drill works on contested ground balls, speed of play, stick work, communication, reaction to mistakes, our ride and our clear.

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