Office Hours: Episode Two

How to Teach Beginner Offense and Sliding on Defense

We are back for the second installment of Office Hours here on LacroCity. In our last installment, I answered questions about Coaching Resources, Redshirting, and the best way to attack a Zone Defense. This week we are drilling down into two topics close to my heart - how to run an offense with less-than-stellar ball handlers and how to teach young players how to slide on defense.

Let’s go.

Kyle the new format is really cool and I’m enjoying it.
Any suggestions on teaching sliding to kids?
I’m coaching a team of mostly 6th graders this year and would love to get that nailed down.

First off, oh my gosh, oh my goodness, thank you. I should have started doing this much sooner. But I have some bad news.

This is not an easy fix.

Sliding is difficult to teach at any level. I’ve seen coaches try to set up the field like a grid, and almost do a soft zone go call. That works with smart players but the battle for players of all levels is the reinforcement of the TWO slide. But, we’ll get to that in a second.

The way I teach sliding is to, first, teach sliding from the crease.

Sidenote: Look, you can put in adjacents if you want, but any player who knows how to pass under pressure - even good youth players - will tear it apart because adjacents rely more on timing and panic to work than a solid crease setup. In my opinion.

I put a chair in the middle of the field, about 1/3 of the way to the restraining line. Then I put in a ghost offense of players in a 2-3-1 just moving the ball around the perimeter. I have defenders take turns calling out where the ball is who should be the 1 slide and who should be the 2 slide if the ball carrier beats his man. Then, once that tedium is finished, I put the rest of the defense in and have the offense move the ball around at half-speed.

Then I have someone else blow the whistle (I don’t coach with a whistle, my lungs are more than adequate to make a point - see also: #CoachVoice) and the player covering the ball will drop to a knee. His man will drive - half speed - to the cage. It’s slow enough to where you can literally ask the question “Who is the one/fire/hot slide?” in real-time. Once every defender gets a turn as the crease slider, then I put in the two slide.

Where does the two slide come from? The farthest point away from the ball on a linear line. I know, it’s old school, it’s tougher to learn than just the adjacent man coming to block a passing lane, but for me, it’s the only way to do it until you get to much higher levels of play. (If you’re curious about what the adjustments for that are, Bill Tierney has an amazing system that uses GLE and a grid to determine sliding and positioning that is complicated but awesome if you can find/execute it.)

So, if I’m sliding from the crease to a dodge from the top or upper diagonal, the two slide is behind me covering the crease. Is it easy? No. Is it correct? Yes. Drill it every day at practice. Make your defenders talk. Make your goalie talk. You’ll see a difference. And if they ever need a real reminder of how to do it - bring out the chair and have everyone take a turn being the captain of the ship.

Hi Kyle,

Do you have any recommendations for what to do on offense when you have 2 kids or so who are not highly skilled, yet the other 4 can play?

Thanks!

I have more experience with this question than I care to answer, and it’s not from coaching at the high school level. A few of my college teams were significantly challenged by their inability to move the ball in a timely manner. Which is a nice way of saying there are a lot of black holes masquerading as attackmen at the lower levels of Division Three. But if black holes couldn't catch things, which is antithetical to the comparison, but applicable nonetheless.

My solution here is to put together a 1-4-1 offense. Specifically, a “get out of the way, but always move on the crease” 1-4-1. You put your four best ball handlers on the outside of the 1-4-1 - Top, wings, and X. You put the other two players on the crease and those two players - even if they have hands of stone - are there to occupy the defense inside. So they have to pick for each other and make cuts to the cage the entire time. They also have to know where the ball is so they can make space for dodgers.

For example: My best dodger is getting a big head of steam up top and heading to his strong hand. The two stone hands on the crease should stack on the opposite side of his driving hand. Some people will have them super low, and that’s fine, but it can just position the defense’s slide if they’re not low enough or one of the guys is out to lunch for that play. So stacking opposite the dodge works better because it avoids any confusion. Does it take away an easy drive and dump sometimes? Yes, but remember you’re the one who said those two inside kids couldn’t catch, much less catch under pressure and shoot - so do you really want to give them the ball on the crease?

As a reminder, please send your questions to LacroCity@gmail.com or shoot them to me on Twitter, Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn - whatever platform you want. (Except Facebook. I haven’t had Facebook for 4 years. Vile little thing.)

Thanks again for reading and subscribing. I appreciate you.