(Sorry for the horrific title; I’m not creative enough to come up with anything better. Also, I intended to include a bunch of pictures, but forgot to provide my amateur photographer with a proper camera. Hopefully next week).
As I mentioned yesterday, last night was my first time playing lacrosse, in a men’s rec league at All-American in Pontiac. Since there’s little else to talk about in the summer, I’m going to recap my trials and (rare) tribulations in the fastest game on two feet.
Men's Rec League Ad Photo
First things first: I signed up to play middie because I assumed, as a men’s league, that there would be plenty of out-of-shape old men (the picture at right, used in the advertisement, certainly dissuade me from that notion). Instead, at 25, I’m guessing I was one of the 2-3 oldest players there.
Another reason the picture at right is unrealistic: it depicts a goalie. That’s right, a couple of trash cans stacked on top of each other played between the pipes instead of a living, breathing human being. I’m not complaining, as it probably helped my goal total a lot – though the “goalie” made a few saves on me.
With 10 players, we played on half a field, with 1 player required to stay on both attack and defense. Despite the shortened field, I was still absolutely gassed at the end of the 1-hour session.
A few thoughts on my abilities (or, more accurately, lack thereof) on my first outing:
- Shooting on a net when you’re on a field by yourself is a completely different animal than being forced to shoot on the move most of the time, with defenders shoving a pole into your hands.
- Similarly, catching the ball is a lot tougher when you’re wearing a helmet. I learned the hard way that your peripheral vision plays a huge role in catching the ball. Definitely need to adjust there.
- I admit it was just a recreational setting, but I was a lot better carrying the ball than I thought I’d be (again, never tried dodging against a real life defender until last night). My face dodges were pretty successful – going either way, to my surprise – but I was terrified to try anything that would require taking one of my hands off the stick. Maybe next week.
- Finishing on the crease is harder than it looks. Or I’m just terrible (or both!). A number of should-be-easy finishes went just wide, which is pretty embarrassing, given that there was no goalie to stop me. New respect for crease attackmen, fa sho (not that I didn’t respect them before, just taking it to a new level).
- There are few things more frustrating than having no backup, and needing to sprint back on defense to prevent a fast break. Defense in general was not my strong suit, either. Maybe I’ll borrow a pole for next week.
In all, I scored 4 goals and has a couple assists (each team probably scored upwards of 20 goals, so it’s not as impressive as it sounds). Looking forward to improving on the imaginary scoresheet next week, but more importantly working on my skills.
Now that you broke it down, the best advice on shoot is to try to mimic the top hand as if your throwing a baseball almost. Bottom hand pulls, top hand pushes. Kind of hard to describe unless I was there, but if you go out and do it, you and become more accurate if you think about it, then just let it come to you. First start shooting overhand and don’t try advanced shots until you have the overhand shot down and make sure to follow through. If your in close and your starting out like you, once you get the ball, point the bottom of your stick where you want to shoot and follow through, if that makes sense? Make sure the head doesn’t tilt off to the side, rather it stays UP. Once you get better, you will get the feel for shooting and you won’t have to worry about it. I really need to make a video! It will all come in time. Use your elbow and arm to fight off the pole, but not enough to draw a penalty. You can watch how players like me and others in NCAA will cradle with one hand or even in crease and use our body or arm to keep distance between the pole and ball. This will also come in time. Catching, hit the WALL!!! Wall ball will help with this tremendously. If you needs some drills to do, let me know. You did great!