Office Hours: Episode One

Coaching Resources, Redshirts, and Attacking a Zone Defense.

Welcome to the first edition of Office Hours, a new initiative here at LacroCity where I tackle lacrosse-related questions so you don’t have to use your Google machine. All of these questions were submitted to the LacroCity email account, which is LacroCity@gmail.com. Have a question? Why wait? Send it in now.

Dear Kyle,

I’m a youth coach who was asked to help coach the high school program for the first time this spring. What are your top five resources that you would direct new high school coaches to? I’m trying to tie together Xs and Os, offense and defense as well as leading teams and culture building.

Okay, so the short answer to this is that you need to go to the Coaches Insider website and click on the lacrosse tab. I have taken so many lessons and so many drills from this page that it’s honestly bordering on larceny. It’s a one-stop shop for almost every coaching need to the point where I don’t think I have to recommend anything else. They have videos, full on presentations and diagrams all over the place for nearly every level of play.

Option 2 is more expensive, but it delivers on all levels and gives you a baseline of old school knowledge that I think every coach needs to acquire at some point. It’s called Championship Productions and they sell DVDs of older presentations given by lacrosse coaching legends. Does the storefront look like it’s going to steal your credit card info? A little. Are there entirely too many boathouse jackets? Absolutely. However, the videos in this library really helped me early on during my coaching career. I was lucky enough to watch the Backer Zone defense video and then speak with the creator of the defense, NYIT’s Jack Kaley, before he passed and it was a life-changing experience. He taught me that defense is not about stopping the other team from scoring every time - it’s about making it as difficult as possible for them to score from the places that they want to score from.

And the third option - especially if you’re a current player - is to watch Mark Millon’s Offensive Wizardry on repeat until your off hand becomes more than just an accessory appendage to Snapchat with.

Hi Kyle,

What are the rules for redshirting in D-1 lacrosse?

Well, I think there is a lot of miscommunication about what redshirt we are talking about. A traditional redshirt means that a player can participate in every activity with the team except play in games. A medical redshirt means that a player has been granted another year of eligibility due to a serious injury that occurred in the first half of the season and/or prior to the season taking place.

The first instance is increasingly rare in lacrosse because players have a lot of other options open to them in the current system. They can reclass or even take a post graduate year prior to attending the program they have committed to.

On the rare occasion that a “regular” redshirt is used, it’s usually because that particular player’s position is so front loaded that they would not be able to see the field even if two or more players were injured.

It’s important to note that a redshirt still starts the athletes 10 semester eligibility clock. Every college athlete - D-1, D-2 or D-3 - has ten semesters to complete four seasons of eligibility in their chosen sport. Taking a regular redshirt starts that clock for everyone unless there is a military or religious exemption.

The medical redshirt is in such a gray area it might as well be invisible to math. The NCAA granting everyone a COVID year that was enrolled in college during the 2020 season threw everything into upheaval. The one stipulation that I found to be grating is that the injury, again, has to occur in the first half of the season. It also has to be deemed “season ending” and the player can’t have played in more than 30% of the games.

Regular redshirting is made for football. Football kills lacrosse at the college level. Yes, it’s because of Title IX. No, I’m not against Title IX, but facts are facts and I tend to state them regardless of how uncomfortable they make people.

Kyle,

What is the best way to attack a zone and why?

Wow, okay, so I ran a backer zone for the majority of my college coaching career and the way I figured out how to beat it was how teams beat us - the overload.

But let’s first look at the universal shared concept of how to beat a zone: ball movement. Now, everyone loves ball movement - if I had a dime for every time I screamed, “Move the ball!” I would actually be able to afford physical therapy for my knee. But the key is patience and persistence. In high school, defenses don’t have a shot clock to help them. It’s your discipline versus theirs in almost every single case.

If a team plays a 3-3 zone against you, I think the first thing everyone wants to do is try to draw a player on the top half of the defense out of position so you can reverse the ball and attack that spot for a shot from a 45 degree angle or better. Personally, I think it’s better to move a bottom level player so you can cause the entire defense to move and then keep cycling the ball until a shot presents itself.

A zone typically rotates instead of one or two sliding like a man-to-man D does. If you spin the ball enough on one side (to draw the defense out) and then bang it to X and that X attackman drives - someone from the defense has to meet him at Goal Line Extended. It’s typically the low corner defenseman, and his ability to get to that spot and play the pass is what you have to prey upon.

A lot of teams will use a zone defense because they have slower poles and put their best guys on the top corners. If that’s the case, then just pulling one side out stacked with three guys and an active crease man will eventually lure them into checking distance.

Let’s say you have a ton of righty shooters. That’s the side you want to stack, but not right away. You want to start in a 2-3-1 (count from the top, this isn’t Australia) and move the ball around the perimeter. What does the defense do? Are they aggressive? Do they keep their sticks up? Are they baiting the skip? Once around will get you the answers you need to form your attack.

Righties want to be on the left side. Once you get the defense comfortable, swing your pass to X and have that player drive to his right. Your left wing righty shooter should then sink low to the corner. Then have the X man reverse the ball as fast and as accurate as he can to that low block. If that attackman can drift into shooting position - great. If not, have him swing the back to the high man on his side to see if the defense will rotate to him. If they don’t he can step in to a big shot or cycle it to the other high man, who should have a lane to get through or move on to the wing. If the ball cycles back down to X, have your crease man (who hopefully is also a righty) pop to the space between the low corner and the high man to set up for a shot.

That’s sort of an overcomplicated explanation for the kind of offense I teach and use against a zone, but the bottom line is that you need to move the ball to move the defense, and then attack the rotation. Someone is open on every “ROTATE” call. The pass might not be there and it might not be who you want to be open, but there is a guy open. Zones are built to be dismantled by smart offensive players. Just move the ball with constant purpose and then reverse it at the right time - you’re halfway to scoring.

Have a question that you want to send in? Email LacroCity@gmail.com with any lacrosse-related questions and they will be addressed in the next office hours post.