Coach Jonathan Edwards uses his latest podcast as an opportunity to explain to why using tennis balls in practice is a great idea for the whole team. Lacrosse goalies can regain lost confidence and avoid needless injuries, while attackmen can work on staying sensitive to the ball. Coach Edwards gives tips on how to implement tennis balls in practice and bring your team’s performance to the next level.

0:13 – Using tennis balls in practice can help lacrosse goalies increase confidence and focus on the ball.

0:34 – A Maryland Division 1 goalie in the ’90s lost his confidence during playoffs. Coaches were smart and helped him recover it using tennis balls.

1:12 – Coach Edwards explains how tennis balls are great for the whole team and how to incorporate them.

2:00 – Teams should be trying to preserve their goalies’ pain threshold and avoid painful shots that ruin confidence.

2:55 – Tennis balls aren’t perfect for every shot. They are lightweight and affected more by the air.

4:48 – All ages of goalies can benefit from using tennis balls, and coaches will love the results.

Introduction

Coach Edwards here with LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com, and today we’re going to talk about using tennis balls in practice.

Using Tennis Balls

Using tennis balls in practice is a really good tip, if I do say so myself. This is not new. This is something that goes back generations. It’s a way to help goalies increase their confidence and be able to focus on the ball and not getting hurt.

Getting Your Confidence Back

Back in the ’90s there was a goalie from Maryland, Division 1 school, and he developed a fear of the ball going into the playoffs. The smart coaches didn’t man up and say, “Oh, we’re just going to use lacrosse balls.” They broke out the tennis balls so this goalie could get his confidence back. It’s amazing. You can lose your confidence at any level of the game. You can lose it from peewee all the way to major league lacrosse, so using tennis balls is a really cool tactic. It’s something that I use pretty much all the time.

How to Incorporate Tennis Balls in Practice

The place to use them is in 1-on-1 drills or 1-on-0 drills. Like when you’re dodging from behind with your team, if you’re an athlete looking at this or reading this, you might want to pass this on to your coach, or if you’re a coach listening to this, do this. We want our attackmen to have soft hands and we want them to have really sensitive hands so they can feel the ball. The best way to do that is to put a tennis ball in their hand. What that does then is it gets them to focus on that lightness of the ball in their stick. How many times have you seen your attackman drive to the cage, lose the ball, and not know that they lost the ball? It’s like, really?

Preserving the Goalie

From a goalie’s perspective though, we want to basically preserve our goalies. We want to preserve our pain threshold. It’s one thing to take a shot in a game when the adrenaline is flowing and that pain has a purpose. In practice though, when you get hit with the ball and it’s really not worth it right? And all it does is ruin your confidence a little bit.

Tennis Balls are Great for the Whole Team

By putting a tennis ball in the hands of the attackman, then they can work on their dodging and you can focus on proper positioning and moving to the ball correctly and getting your hands on the ball without worrying about getting hurt. You can have guys or girls shoot on you from far out with a tennis ball. It works better with women than with men because of the lip in the stick.

The Cons of Using Tennis Balls

But getting shot on with time and room shots, shots outside, it doesn’t always work that well.