Club Try-outs

Many parents ask about getting their daughter's skills to the next level. A club team can definitely provide the professional coaching and focus on individual - and team - skills that you may want.

Most club teams are quite competitive and require a try-out for new players. Try-outs happen in the late summer and fall.

Following is a quick list of some of the girls' club teams in the Boston area, their website URL, contact information, and try-out dates. Some teams, like MassElite, hold their try-outs in August (so they're set for the year), but there are other clubs that are still in try-out season.

Girls Lacrosse Clubs in Boston Area

Evolution Lacrosse, http://teamevolutionlax.com/ 

Contact:  rebecca@athletic-evolution.com

Try-outs:

Saturday, September 10th at Windsor HS.
Youth Tryout: 2:00pm-3:15pm
High School: 3:30pm-5:00pm 

MassElite, www.masselite.com/ 

Contact: Paula Evans, pevans@masselite.com

Try-outs: August 20 & 28, 2011

NESLL, www.nesll.org

Contact: Ken Allis, kallis@nesll.org

Try-outs: Sat, Sept 10–Marlboro-Forekicks-4:30 –6:00 PM

Sun, Sept 11-Woburn High School –12:00 –1:30 PM

Sunday, Sept 18-Thayer South Athletic Fields -9:00 –11:00 AM

 

Revolution Lacrosse*, www.revolutionlacrosse.com

Contact: Lukas Cash or Cuddy Millard

TeamREV@RevolutionLacrosse.com

Try-outs: weekends in September

* full disclosure: my daughter and several other Belmont girls play on the REVs - I'm happy to tell you more if you're interested.

Summer Lacrosse Camps

As summer quickly nears, we receive many questions about summer camps for players.

Summer camps are a terrific way to get improve skills and receive different coaching than you might get at a home-town youth league run by volunteers that just has practice a couple times a week for an hour or so. The camps my daughter attended tried to make it fun, taught the girls various stick tricks, fancy moves, and practice drills. I believe the camps helped solidify her love of the game. She was, however, a girl who definitely needed her friends with her. Most girls go with a group of friends and if your daughter is there on her own, I suspect it could be pretty lonely.

There seem to be two primary reasons for girls to attend a lacrosse camp:
1. To improve their skills
2. To be seen by college coaches

For youth players, obviously the first reason is more critical.

Many local private schools have lacrosse camps during the summer. Belmont Hill School has a girls lacrosse camp from July 18-22 this summer - several girls who came up through the Belmont Youth Program coach there and I've heard good things about it. BBN School also has a week-long camp, though it looks like it's run by a male coach. The boys and girls games are so very different, I urge girls to seek out female coaches who played the game themselves.

MBGLL posts a listing of various camps and clinics at http://www.mbgll.org/more-lacrosse/lax-clinics-camps.
There are also many camps run by local lacrosse leagues. Google "girls lacrosse camps MA" and many lists appear, such as:
http://www.laxjournal.com/newsinfo/camps.php
http://www.mysummercamps.com/camps/massachusetts-lacrosse-camps.html

Many colleges with strong teams also run summer camps and clinics. As your daughter gets older and starts thinking about playing in college, attending a college camp is a great way to be seen by the coaches and for your daughter to get a feel for what the coach and team is like. If your daughter is a strong player, this is a particularly good way to be seen and I strongly recommend that summers during the high school years you look to college camps. There are also specialty camps, for goalies, for example.

My daughter attended lax day camps at Wellesley College for two summers (6th and 7th grades) with several friends. In 8th grade, she went with three other friends to a sleepover camp at Bowdoin College, which she loved!

We did not, however, understand the value of college camps as a way to be seen by the college coaches - which may have been a disadvantage! (Though the past two years she worked as a lifeguard and also played on a club team, so I'm not sure when she would have found the time!)

The bottom line: If you're daughter is enjoying the game, you're looking to keep her occupied this summer, and she wants to improve her skills, consider one of the many lacrosse camps available in the area!

Rain, rain, go away

I don't remember a season so rainy. We've had to cancel both practices this week and the games last Sunday were also canceled because the fields were so drenched. We only have a few weeks left and to miss so much playing time now is not helpful to building skills! Hopefully by this Sunday we'll get back out there again.

This season has been a good one. The MBGLLs decision to have 3 levels of teams, Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced, has worked out well for us. This year has been much more balanced. I was a bit worried at the beginning of the season because we had so many new players, but in fact, all but one of our games has been very competitive - and we've won a few and lost a few, but they've all been good games!

The girls skills are improving and we're working on more complex skills, which has been fun to watch. Now we just need to get out to practice them!

Thinking about things differently

At our practice last Thursday a couple of the Revolution Lacrosse Club coaches took over practice for us and help a clinic for the U15 girls. It was a great opportunity for our players (and us!) to get a different perspective on the game and how to execute some basics than Coach Bolte and I tend to teach it. As everyone learns differently, having a new teacher describe the components of a pass as pushing with the top hand and then pulling with the bottom, could be extremely helpful for some players.

The REVs is a pretty hard-core club team--they demand a lot from their players and many of the girls excel (on the field and in school and in getting into the college of their choice!). [Full disclosure: My daughter and 2 other Belmont girls are on the REVs--but the team does clinics with any town... it's great marketing for them.] At our clinic they promoted a few of the standards that they expect from their players: Sticks do not rest on the ground when the coach is talking--hold them up and remain alert; teamwork and supporting your teammates is everything--and be loud about it; always keep your eye protection on and be ready to jump into the game when needed.

After some basic throwing and catching the REVs coaches split the girls into groups of 6 and did a team-building exercise with them that was fun to watch. After group huddled together, each girl had to hold 2 other girls hands - but not girls standing right next to them. They then had to untangle themselves into a big circle. It was fun watching the girls figure it out. Once each group had accomplished the task, they had to do it again with no talking. In a final round, just one girl could speak. While only one group got through all 3 assignments, I think that the teambuilding that was accomplished--and fun that was had, besides--had real value... even if they weren't actually working on lacrosse skills!

Untie the pretzel

Oooops, dropped a mouth guard! (But the team is there to help)

which way to turn?

almost untangled

The REVs coaches, Brooke and Cuddy, were terrific. They had an amazing way with the girls that was both focused and encouraging and somehow they engaged even our most distracted players without raising their voices as Candy and I find ourselves doing almost every practice! Skills to be admired!

I'll be writing more about club teams later in the season given my direct experiences with 3 of them and working with the coach of a forth.

One game down...

The game yesterday was great fun! Despite having many new girls and having to "volunteer" someone to play goal (which she very sweetly agreed to without any fuss), I think that for a first game of the season it was a terrific showing!  It was very rewarding to see the girls come together, pass well, work strategically and cohesively. There are things we need to work on, of course, but even in 4 short practices, everyone has learned a lot, and is putting that learning into action on the field. Way to go, girls!

This year MBGLL asked teams to select whether they consider themselves beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

In previous years there was no such self-ranking and each year we played several teams that were definitely in the "beginner" category. Each game, as the point spread grew I'd have the girls play just with their left or less dominant hand on top and have to make 5 passes before scoring. It's good practice, but no one feels good when you walk over another team. So I've been a big supporter of the league change. With the rankings this year, the games will be much more competitive. I just hope that the other towns we're playing also have new girls playing and that we're not the one's being wiped each Sunday afternoon!


By the way, the new MBGLL president, Ted Kelly, is also blogging on the MBGLL site at http://www.mbgll.org/ (scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the blog).

First Game Tomorrow

Despite the April Fool's snowstorm yesterday, tomorrow is our "opening day," with our first games of the season scheduled.

It feels like we're less prepared than in previous years - we had less time inside in the gym (just 2 weeks as opposed to 3 or 4 previously), and only 2 practices outside. Not only that, we have many more new players than anticipated (16!) and 22 returning players for our two U15 teams, so the girls still have a long way to go before becoming comfortable with their sticks and the game.


Because so many girls are new, we needed to scrimmage on Thursday so new players would get a general idea of the game. It was a miserable practice! We began by handing out uniforms in a cold drizzle (and oops, not enough large uniforms this year. Last year we had 2 U13 teams and one U15 team. This year, 2 U15 teams; all those younger players are growing up and growing bigger. So on Sunday, girls who didn't get there early will be wearing very tight small jerseys! --more are on order, ladies!). The rain started coming down harder as we worked on a few passing drills, but too many girls were standing around, freezing during those activities, so we decided to plunge into a scrimmage. Despite the rain turning to sleet, several of the new girls said that they at least now had a clue of what the game was all about!


On Sunday we play Arlington, the next town over. Belmont has a bit of a rivalry with Arlington - at least in the youth league (I'm not sure we play in the same high school sports league) - and this year one of the Arlington coaches is doing the scheduling for MBGLL, so he has us playing our first games against each other. (I admit, I wish we were playing them a bit later in the season, but that's the rivalry talking!)


Having so many new girls is a bit of a challenge, but we have learned the hard way to mix the girls on the field up a bit - if you start with all your strong players on the field, when it's time to sub, you're left with mostly beginners, and (unless one is playing a much weaker team) you don't want that!


The biggest challenge in tomorrow's game, however, will be who plays goalie. I have no volunteers or girls who want to play the position, which means I have to assign someone to the position and no one will be happy about that! I can't pick a new player, so it has to be one of my returning 11 players. Whoever is picked will not be pleased--though hopefully someone will take to the position and actually enjoy it. I do think that being in goal helps players see the game in a different way; she can see who's not marking her opponent or passing in front of the goal. But for tomorrow, one girl will be unhappy! The dilemmas of being a coach.

Coaching

The girls' season started last week when we began indoor practices. It's always a bit crazy (and headache inducing) having all the girls in a small gym. We always start out with the new girls coming first and learning the basics—cradling, throwing and catching, and ground balls. The returning players arrived after the first hour and it's always a challenge to find drills that don't involve too much opportunity for balls to go flying and hitting other girls (which certainly happens!). It's essentially a way to give our players an opportunity to pick up a stick again and get their heads back into the sport—it's it's never easy to coach inside!

I played soccer, tennis, and lacrosse competitively. In England we played lacrosse in the fall and tennis in the spring. Moving back to the U.S. in 10^th grade, I found that both sports are spring games; one can’t play both lacrosse and tennis. So I picked up soccer as my fall sport and ultimately chose to play tennis in high school (I considered myself a better tennis player than lacrosse). When I got to college I decided to switch back to lacrosse, thinking I’d be able to play tennis for the rest of my life, but this was my last chance to play lax. (At times I’ve regretted that decision—or at least the rationale for the decision as I have certainly not played as much tennis over the years as I would have liked!)

Fast forward 15 years to when our son entered Kindergarten and, like all the other kids in town, began playing soccer, I thought I’d coach as I’d played the game. I quickly learned that having played the game was certainly not a prerequisite to coaching, but being a guy was pretty important. There was exactly one other mom coaching that first year. The next year there were 3 of us. Our son quickly determined he did not like the game, but our daughter definitely took to it—so I kept on coaching. But even in 5^th grade, when the youth league split into boys’ and girls’ teams, the coaches were almost all male. It was frustrating, at times, to want to be a role model for the girls as a coach, but to find such a boys club of dads. I felt that it was and is really important for girls to have female role models—women who they know, not just the Mia Hamm or Christine Lilly superstars—helping them understand that they can be just as strong and determined and athletic as the boys.

All that is to say that when I was invited by another woman to coach the girls youth lacrosse, I was thrilled. The girls and boys version of the sport really are quite different and, while the game is becoming more like the boys, learning the basics is critical. Just as Picasso had to learn to paint in a classic, formal way before he could strip it down to the bare elements of Cubism, I believe it’s important that girls to learn correct cradling and the basics of picking up ground balls before they start slipping their top hand way down the stick or cradling and picking up the ball one-handed. After all, there are plenty of times when those basic skills are needed. If you can’t master those basics you don’t have anything to fall back on when the play gets tough.

More on coaching next time…

The Evolving Game of Lacrosse

Girls’ lacrosse has changed a lot since I learned to play (at age 11 in England). Even learning to play in England and then playing here in the U.S., the style of play was significantly different. I played for 3 years at Denison University, before deciding to relax a little my senior year. After college I don’t think I threw a lacrosse ball for more than 20 years!

My reentry to the game occurred when my daughter was 10. One of her good friends encouraged her to come to an informal clinic being held weeknights in the summer. The coach was a neighbor and had an extra stick. I picked it up, started throwing and catching, charging after ground balls, and she quickly suggested that I help coach the youth league the next spring.

Today things are pretty different. The positions on the field have changed, the style of play has changed, the equipment has changed, and the rules have changed. Pretty much everything—except that you still have to work to keep a ball in your stick and the objective is to shoot more goals than your opponent!

Positions on the field

Back in my day we had a Center and 4 girls around the circle—the midfielders. That aspect remains unchanged. On attack and defense, the girls were lined up in a vertical row from the goal to the midfield—1^st Home closest to the goal, 2^nd Home and 3^rd Home on attack with corresponding defenders: Point, Coverpoint, and Third Man. In today’s game, these 3 attack and defender positions all line-up at the “restraining line,” six girls in a horizontal row. Each player defends another, playing one-on-one during the game—unless the defense moves into a “zone D” around the goal, in which case they abandon the girl they’re marking and get into the zone position (no zone D back in my day!).

Stickwork

When I learned to play in England almost 40 years ago, we had to practice and pass certain levels or milestones of stickwork before progressing onto the next level or being able to play in a game or scrimmage. Frankly, it did not come easily to me! The coach (mean Miss McNamara—we all hated her!) would fling the ball away from us and we’d have to sprint after it and scoop it up, gracefully (this was a girls boarding school, after all) while it was still moving. If we did not retrieve it before the ball had stopped moving, we did not pass that level. Not being fleet of foot, I distinctly remember being the very last girl to learn how to pick up a ground ball rolling away! While everyone else quickly progressed to playing real games, I had to keep practicing and practicing until I was deemed competent. It took a while!

Today, our youth league gets girls playing in scrimmages as soon as possible. The style of stickwork is less important than the drive to get the feel and understanding of the game. Sticks skills will come in time—and that’s one of our goals as coaches, obviously—but it’s important to get out there and just play, too. And besides, which, scrimmages are just much more fun!

Style of play

The style of play has also changed dramatically. Back in the day, the stick remained in both hands, left hand at the bottom, right hand at the top and did not move from those positions unless you had to reach to snag the ball.

Today, players are expected to be as adroit with their left hand as their right. Using one hand to pick up balls and charge down the field is commonplace (though hopefully only if it’s to one’s advantage!).

On defense, you can now touch the girl you’re defending, keeping your arms in a locked position—you can’t actively shove, but you can literally be “on” her.

All of this is to say that the game has evolved and changed and will continue to do so!

Monday is our first practice of the season - we'll be launching a new batch of girls to the great sport of lacrosse!

A week of meetings

Lacrosse season must be right around the corner, because this was the week of planning meetings!

First up was the Belmont Youth Lacrosse parents' meeting on Tuesday. We hold this every year and it's essentially an opportunity to review the goals of the program (primarily that the girls have fun while learning the game), how the league works ( it's a developmental league, no score keeping, balanced teams, etc.), and our expectations as coaches (most important, for me, is that girls and parents let us know when their daughter won't be at a game or practice. There's nothing worse than showing up at a game and not being able to field a full team!).It's an attempt to inform while continuing to create positive feelings about the program.

We begin practice in the Burbank gym on March 14 (U15 girls on Mondays and U13 girls on Thursdays@ 6:45. We'll be inside for 3 weeks then we move outside - and hopefully the fields will be clear of snow by then and dried out enough for us to play on. The first game is Sunday April 4.

Next meeting: Friends of Belmont Lacrosse on Thursday night. This is the parents' group that supports high school level lax, both boys and girls. About 10 folks came to the meeting, including the high school coaches; they bring a good perspective and help ground the discussions. We reviewed the budget, had an extensive discussion about fundraising and whether to produce a book of advertising the way football and hockey do (feeling was that those sports probably saturate the market and they're a of lot of work! But we'll move ahead with t-shirts and coupon books as we did last year), and other details like arranging clinics for the teams and finding new parents to join the board(any takers, please let me know!).

I left the FBLAX meeting early to head out to Littleton for the MBGLL scheduling meeting. All the reps from all the towns in the MetroNorth Division of the MBGLL got together to haggle over scheduling - who had too few home games, who had black-out dates (as Belmont does on June 4, which is graduation day, so our fields are closed), who has conflicts with other games scheduled on their fields (as we do with the boys teams on a few weekends).

Last year this was a very contentious meeting with a few folks being quite unpleasant about it all. Tonight went well and there was none of that. Folks were all very civil (though the difficult people were not there and their town was not represented this evening).

Anyway, details are being finalized... the season's almost here!

Why a blog about girl's lacrosse?

It’s almost lacrosse season again (despite the fresh-fallen snow on the ground)! I’ve launched this blog because, as a youth coach, I get a lot of questions for parents on everything from available clubs and clinics to the rules of the game. 

I’ve coached with the Belmont, MA, girls youth lacrosse town league since 2005. I watched (and coached) my daughter play youth lacrosse for 3 years and then move up to the Belmont high school team, where not only did she learn a lot, but I did, too!

Belmont Youth Lacrosse is a member of the Mass Bay Girls Lacrosse League (MBGLL) a 10-year old league that was created to manage the growing sport of lacrosse in Massachusetts.

Lacrosse has been a major sport in many parts of the country for years and years—Maryland and eastern seaboard states in particular come to mind. Here in New England it was primarily private schools that played the game. When I played in college in Ohio, we had a team that did very well in the Ohio college league. For two of my years there we were state Division III champions and would head off to Maryland for the national D-III championship tournament—and then get crushed every game. Those Maryland girls were serious! (Denison’s team… not so much!)

Anyway, in eastern Massachusetts in 2011, the MBGLL is the primary girls’ youth league (though 2 years ago a few towns split off to form their own, more competitive league. This year more towns have joined them, saying that they wanted to play with other teams in their MIAA high school league). I also sit on the MBGLL board.

There are also many club teams that provide more competitive and focused practice—for a price. If your daughter loves the sport and wants to take her game up to a higher level, clubs provide that option.

In Belmont, our youth season begins this Tuesday, March 1, with a parents' meeting at the Burbank School. In this blog, I will share what's going on with the girls' youth teams in Belmont, what I’ve learned about the game, town youth leagues, high school play, as well as clubs and camps.