0:11 – Kids know the basic rules, but do they know the ones that they can take advantage of?

0:52 – Restarts are a great way to help your team and get an easy clear.

2:49 – Knowing how the refs are trying to control the game is useful for a lacrosse goalie.

3:20 – Which rules do you know? Learning them all will bring your game to a new level.

4:04 – Coach Edwards shares an example of a possession rule goalies can use to their advantage.

Introduction

CoachEdwards here with LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com. I wanted to talk about knowing the rules.

The Basics

When I played back in high school and college age, and when I played club ball in Connecticut and went to Australia to play, one of the things that really helped me as a goalie was understanding the rules. A lot of kids think they know the rules, and yeah, they probably do, like don’t slash, don’t trip, don’t hit from behind, ball goes out of bounds it’s your ball, that sort of stuff, but as a goalie, you’re really in a position to dictate a lot of plays and understanding the flow of the game and what the refs are looking for, especially on restarts.

Restarts

Restarts are a way to really help your team. One of the things that I used to do was I recognized that if I had possession of the ball and let’s say I ran the ball out of bounds. I picked up the ball out of bounds or picked one of those spares that are always on the endline or grabbed one from the ballboy, if I stepped on the field and I had the ball in my stick, the ref would blow the whistle. Once I looked ready, the ref would blow the whistle.

A Little Trick

But if my team wasn’t ready, like we were making a change or if guys were just in the wrong position and our clear wasn’t set up yet, basically if our clear wasn’t set up yet and I stepped on the field with possession and there was an attackman in my face and the ref blew the whistle, I was in trouble because I had nobody to pass to. So a little trick that I did was, I would toss the ball onto the field of play but I wouldn’t pick it up.

An Easy Way to Clear

So let’s say I grabbed the loose ball at the endline, I came to the field and I would basically toss the ball, just underhanded, onto the field. And while I did that I would now look upfield, and the ref would rarely tell you to pick the ball up. What it allowed me to do was it allowed me to survey the field and know where my first pass was going to be. What could happen sometimes was I could have a player on my team who was in position, like let’s say I had a middy at the midfield stripe away from the benches, and he wasn’t covered. What I would do then is I would pick up the ball real fast and I’d say “Ref, whistle, whistle, whistle,” and he’d give me the whistle because I was ready and I would make the pass and we’d have an easy clear.

Understanding the Refs

I see a lot of goalies, they’ll just step on the field with the ball and they’ll have an attackman in their face, or maybe two if they’re really not smart, and the ref blows the whistle and they get jumped, lose the ball, and it’s an easy goal for the other team. So this is just one example of just knowing the rules and knowing what the flow of the game is like, knowing what the refs were trying to do, how they’re trying to control the game.

Learn all the Rules

I really encourage you to learn all the rules. Learn the rules around the crease. If you’re out of the crease and you’ve got the ball and you’re getting ridden pretty hard by another player, can you throw that ball back in the crease. Do you know that? Can you do that? Go find that out and let me know what you’ve found out, just as an exercise for you. Know the rules,