Stepping To The Ball

Hey, it’s Coach Edwards here from LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUniversity.com. I want to welcome you to this week’s blog post. I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’ve been asked a lot this year about the question of stepping to the ball, stepping, should you step toward the ball, should you step sideways, and the title of this post is “Why stepping to the ball is wrong.” I want to set you straight.

What I’ve done is, I’ve taken a clip from my Stepping To The Ball DVDs, or my Moving To The Ball DVDs, whichever, I keep waffling back and forth between what I’m calling it, but this year I created a 2 DVD set called Stepping to the Ball. The first part of the DVD talks about why stepping to the ball is wrong. Let’s cut to that, and I’m going to show you exactly why stepping to the ball is wrong. Here we go.

Stepping To The Ball DVD Footage

Here the lines show you how far I need to move to make a save. If I step to the ball, if my initial move is to the ball, I may never get to that line to make the save. You’ve heard my Three Keys to Making Any Save. You’ve got to see the ball, you’ve got to know where it’s going, and then you’ve got to move to the ball.

Well, if I pick up a shot from out there and I move to the ball, and that ball is aiming here, I may never get far enough in the time that it takes for that ball to meet me here, I may never get far enough to actually make the save.

Reach

Now, I’ve got a stick in my hand, right? That’s going to give me more reach. I understand that. But still, the bottom line is this. There’s an amount of time between when the ball leaves the shooter’s stick to when it’s going to meet the goal line. This is the goal line. And I have to get in front of that before it gets there. So in this case, when I step to the ball, I’m trying to meet it somewhere out here.

Don’t Just Step Forward

This is a big step. This is a big step – it’s a full lunge for me. As we’ll get into later, we’re going to talk about the adjustment step. But the bottom line is this. If I step to the ball, I may never get far enough where I’m actually going to cut that ball off here. And also, by stepping forward, I am shortening the amount of time I have to get in front of that ball. That makes sense? One, I may not get far enough. Two, I’m actually attacking the ball, which we’ll talk about that later, but I’m attacking that ball which is shortening my time that I have to get there.

Using A T-Square

What I want to show you to prove this to you, I brought a drywall T-square. You can get these at Home Depot. What this does is I’m going to line this up. This is perpendicular. This is a square. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line. So I’m here and I set up my T-square, and this stripe is the middle of the cage. If I’m in this stance, my goal is going to be in position to receive the ball when it comes to me so that I give up less rebounds. I want to have the most time to do that. I’m not going to step backwards. That’s not the goal. The shortest distance between me and the line where the ball can go, the shortest distance is a straight line, and that is relatively straight.

Why Lateral Steps Are Best

So for me to get in front of that ball in the fastest amount of time is to move with this T-square. Move with this straight line that the T-square creates. Because of that, you can see here by using the T-square, that my step is not forward. We used to teach, “Hey, take a 45 degree step at the ball. I used to do line drills, and I’ve got those in Lacrosse Goalie University, I’ve got Walking The Line drills.

What happens is,