Coach Jonathan Edwards answers a question he receives frequently. Should lacrosse goalies leave the cage? He cites some examples of times it is beneficial to leave the cage and gives tips on how to make ventures away from the cage successful. While the rule of thumb is that it is generally unwise, Coach Edwards encourages coaches to empower their goalies rather than fearing the times when a goalie leaves the cage.

0:18 – Coach Edwards explains how lacrosse goalies can recognize goal line extended.

0:54 – Young goalies can get away with leaving the cage, but it doesn’t work as well as players advance.

1:29 – If there’s a loose ball, a goalie can leave the cage if they can control the loose ball.

2:20 – Don’t just take off when the defensemen gets there to help with the ball or you lose your advantage.

3:29 – Sometimes a goalie can leave the cage to double the ball or if you’ve called a slide.

5:34 – It’s usually best not to leave the cage, but coaches shouldn’t be afraid if their goalies do. Empower them instead.

Introduction

Coach Edwards here at LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com, and I want to talk about a question I get fairly frequently. If you’re in the cage and your defensemen have missed a guy and the guy’s running up the goal, should you run out of the cage to stop that player?

Goal Line Extended

There are two scenarios. One is if the player is in front of goal line extended. Goal line extended is if you took a line from post to post and you extended that line to the sideline on either side, that’s called goal line extended. If the player is above goal line extended and they’re coming straight down on you, you want to stay in the cage. Pretty much for both scenarios, you want to stay in the cage. I’m going to share with you a couple of things.

Leaving the Cage Doesn’t Stay Easy

The number one rule of thumb is that you really want to stay in the cage. Here’s what happens. At a young age, if you’re in junior high school and elementary school, if you’re a coach or parent listening to this, your little goalie can probably get away with running out of the cage and surprising the guy and defensively doing a good job. But that’s a habit that’s not going to work as they get with better players. I remember this when I was in high school and junior high school and elementary school. There are times I could get away with it, but as you get towards better and better players, it doesn’t work as easy.

Controlling the Loose Ball

Here’s the rule of thumb though. Let’s say there’s a loose ball and an offensive player is going to get it and none of your teammates are around, but you can get at it, get it at the same time that that player can, then I would recommend going. As long as you can control the loose ball. What I would do is I would run out of the cage if there was a loose ball and that attackman was getting the ball. I would fight for that loose ball until my defensemen got there. But here’s the thing. When my defensemen got there I didn’t just turn around and run to the cage, I kept fighting for the ball.

Fight for the Ball

When you do loose ball, ground ball drills with the team, what’s usually the call? Man, ball. One guy takes the man, the other guy takes the ball. In the women’s game I know you can’t do that. If you’ve got two teammates going to a ball, and there’s one player from the opposing team, one of your teammates doesn’t just all of a sudden take off. Both of you fight for the ball.

Don’t Leave and Lose the Advantage

This is the mistake a lot of goalies make. They go off, they fight for the ball and then their defensemen shows up and they leave. But now there’s no advantage,