Eat a well-balanced diet with a wide variety of healthy choices. Avoid energy drinks and soda especially on game day!
On practice days and game days, drink plenty of water to maintain endurance and enhance muscle development.
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Shoot overhand on the net varying the release point from high, middle, low, to bounce.
The hardest thing for a goalie to do is play the vertical release.
Save the side-arm and submarine shots for when you go D1.
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Work on your wheels. Do squats to increase leg muscles. Do backyard sprints (with crosse and ball). Remember to work your lateral movement with the shuffle.
Develop your endurance and speed. The team that tires first make the desperate plays, unforced errors, and unnecessary penalties that keep them playing uphill.
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Spend some quality time in front of a mirror.
Stand sideways to a mirror and solo cradle with the far hand in a position where you cannot see the crosse. When an opponent is alongside you, this is the trick to protecting your stick.
Remember to work both sides!
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These guys are the pinnacle of field play. Learn from them.
Shoot 100 shots per day every day. Whether it is a brick wall, backyard net, or into your mom's flowerbed (just kidding on that last one) – repetition embeds muscle memory for your best game-day performance.
Advanced: Once you've got the net area dialed in, begin to aim for goalie weakness areas (corners and 5-hole) and vary your shot angle vertically.
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When developing your handling skills, learn to keep you head up and avoid looking at your crosse.
Playing "heads up" drastically reduces the time you need to find the open man, crank off a shot, and the likelihood that some opponent will decleat you.
Better your head on a swivel than your head on a platter.
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Cradle, pass, and shoot with your weak hand. A player who develops competency with their off-hand is twice as deadly.
Players who don't develop competency in their weak hand are one-dimensional, easier to defend against, and easier to defeat.
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Gaining possession of loose ground balls is critical to dominating the scoring opportunities.
On the run, starting, stopping, bouncing grounders ... keep the crosse low and level. Scrape those knuckles.
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There are Varsity and JV players who have volunteered to take some time with younger players who ask for some extra guidance and practice.
Take your game to the next level by asking for a Varsity/JV mentor.
Ask your coach for details.
Consistently work on your cradling skills. Two-hand left, two-hand right, solo left, and solo right.
A cradle drill a day … keeps the other team from stealing your cookies... (not everything needs to rhyme you know)
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Face-dodge, split-dodge, speed-dodge, bull-dodge, roll-dodge, swim-dodge.
Work them over and over again so when you're bearing down on some opponent, you can evaluate in an instant which to use based on your position on the field, the orientation of their crosse, the offensive opportunity, etc and leave that dude in the dust wondering what happened.
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Do 30 yards of lunges, 60 seconds of butterfly, 30 seconds of kneeling lunges per leg, 30 seconds of thread-the-needle per leg.
Tight hip flexers cause you to run without using optimal muscle-group alignment. That means you tire out faster and are more prone to an injury.
Improving your hip-flexor flexibility will nearly double the time you can maintain top speed.
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Watching players at higher levels improves your understanding of the game, its strategies and tactics, and ways to emulate and duplicate more advanced play.
Come to the varsity home games and bring some new techniques and moves to your game!