Before I get into my observations I want to give a hearty congratulations to all of our players, parents, and coaches! We had a wonderful start Tuesday evening to the first of many practices for the spring season. The players shook off some rust from the offseason, and the coaches taught their players well. I am very pleased with how the first day of practice went for our U11 and U13 age divisions. As I told the coaches, I will be ...
Continue Reading →Posted by: Gordon
My favorite book of all time is Dune, by Frank Herbert. This makes me a definite science fiction nerd, and I am not ashamed to admit that one bit. I don’t remember when I first read Dune but the story captivated me and I had to keep rereading it. I have probably read the entire Dune series, roughly 15 books, about for or five times, and every time I learn something new about the Dune universe. ...
Continue Reading →Posted by: Gordon
“Planned obsolescence is a business strategy in which the obsolescence (the process of becoming obsolete—that is, unfashionable or no longer usable) of a product is planned and built into it from its conception. This is done so that in future the consumer feels a need to purchase new products and services that the manufacturer brings out as replacements for the old ones” (http://www.economist.com/node/13354332).”
Have you planned obsolescence into your lacrosse game? Are you practicing ...
Continue Reading →Posted by: Gordon
Because I said so.
Well, not exactly. I could say we do not schedule team practices during Fall Ball because Coach Lou says no practices. Yet, that is still short of the mark.
I could say there are no set practices because that is how we always do things during the fall at AYL. Still, repeating the mantra of tradition for tradition’s sake is a painfully weak argument.
I need a good theory that I can back up and will address player and ...
Continue Reading →Posted by: Gordon
Many youth players act like Ben Stiller’s character Derek Zoolander when they first start out because they absolutely cannot go left. They are afraid that they will drop the ball, miss a catch, or take a bad shot with their off-hand. This fear eventually turns into a phobia, and they do not even bother rolling left when it is the best option available to them. Once a player starts habitually going to their strong-hand over and over again, they become ...
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Well, the regular season is over. Time to shove the helmet, shoulder pads, arm pads, gloves, cup, cleats, and stick into the bag and leave it for pool parties, summer camps, and sweet tea. However, if you dream of playing beyond high school you better pull that stick and those gloves out of your bag and set them in a prominent place in your room. If you don’t, your skills will fall prey to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
The Second Law ...
Posted by: Gordon
The trouble with youth sports is every kid grows at a different rate in both size and skill. This creates a very wide disparity between teams on the lacrosse field. I officiated a middle school team where I swear every kid must have been fed Muscle Milk since birth. Compared to the other team, these kids were giants. Not only were they big, they were also very skilled overall, and by the end of the first ...
Continue Reading →Posted by: Gordon
One player drops a pass. Then a second, and a third. Suddenly, every player cannot pick up a ground ball and every shot is wide of the cage. What is going wrong?
The answer – your team fell victim to the snowball effect. This effect is “descriptive of an entity or situation where something once small and relatively insignificant grows exponentially at a swift pace, engulfing everything in its path” (urbandictionary.com). The problem with the snowball ...
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