I recently heard about a new stick developed by the Gait brothers called the Gait Air.
As per the website:
The most interesting piece that I picked up was where they want the player to carry the ball. As you can see in their Instagram post, they are expecting the ball to be carried in a high sweet spot, above the point where the sidewall breaks up.
They even marketed it in US Lacrosse mag as a draw stick, removing the lower shooting string.
Very interesting.
We are now into the pre-season for lacrosse. This is the time when players should start working on their conditioning. Most programs have a conditioning schedule for their team and if you are a serious player, you need to keep up.
The one area where some conditioning may come up short is on your own stick strength. There are an assortment of things that you can do. Among them is Wall Ball, and I will add links to videos so you can become comfortable with them.
There is also strengthening your forearms for carrying and controlling your stick.
The key here is to remember that your bottom hand is your controlling hand on your stick. We have a full section on this in our write up on YOUR STICK. It should always be tight on the bottom of your shaft, so that you are always ready to make the adjustment you need in tight situations.
Below are some links to Taylor Cummings videos. I have spent the time to look over a lot of videos and she does a fantastic job explaining WHY you need to work on these conditioning skills. Do not ever take someone’s word that it is good for you, but challenge it and find out why. She helps with that.
Wrist Strengthening
Keep practicing with this. I have worked this with players and after they start to understand it, they have fun creating their own trick one-handed rotations based on these drills. It makes the drills more fun.
Key, for the game, is to have FUN!
REMEMBER: Anything you do with one hand, you must do with the other.
You cannot grow your game if you do not try to work both hands.
Wall Ball
There are two thoughts I would add:
* Do not stand in one place as you throw and catch. Move your feet a little left, a little right, a little forward and a little back. When you are on the field in practice or in a game, you should never be just planting roots in the turf. You should always be moving. So, do it now.
* Once you have done a repetition at whatever distance you do it, move closer to the wall and do it again. The ball will come back a little quicker forcing you to react more quickly. Then, when that is done, move farther away and try it again. This will strengthen your distance passing skills for the game.
Do NOT just settle for standing in front of a wall and throwing a ball at it. That is not fun nor is it creative. Have Fun! Be Creative!
Taylor Cummings
Lauren Lea
I really like this for the explanations on why. She moves toward the wall.
Add one more item to your routine:
If you are even a little comfortable throwing sidearm, then add sidearm throws to the wall looking to catch them at or below your shoulder level. The idea here is to get used to throwing sidearm (both left and right), but also to get used to catching passes at that elevation. It will increase your sidearm accuracy when you then bring it to your game, as you will get more comfortable hitting your spot on the wall.
One more drill that I really like: One handed work. Please note that she is always moving!
Found a fantastic way to strengthen the bottom hand on the stick. At the beginning, players can do it with their stronger hand, usually the upper hand. As they get comfortable learning the motions, they should switch to the bottom hand to do the work.
If it is difficult to keep ball in the stick down close to the ground, then lower the head until comfortable that the ball will stay in the stick while cradling and then try it at lower levels.
This will also highlight if the player’s stick is properly strung so the ball will sit in the sweet spot on the stick. It should rest just under the bottom shooting string and the cradle will keep the ball tight within that area.
I received some questions from Katie B the other day.
” Hi, my sister, Elizabeth, plays lacrosse for the Xavier club team and thinks that Stu is a really good coach and had really useful drills and just got the best out of the team. So I was wondering if you have any good drills for a girls high school lacrosse players I would love to learn some new ones for our team since we are often standing around at practice. Also, I would love to hear your thoughts on a stick with mesh over a regular head because I am thinking about getting a new stick head and I want to get my best playing ability out of it. Please just let me know your thoughts. Thank you!”
Katie. Thank you for the questions.
Second question first: depending on your skill level and price point pain, there are so very many options for sticks in the market. I, personally, have settled on a relatively inexpensive stick that I can customize. Earlier in this blogspot, I have a piece on mesh where I suggest that the ECD runner added to almost any stick is a very solid contender for best pocket. It is soft, flexible and receiving. The ball sits nicely in the sweet spot and trims down to stay above the sidewalls as it gets closer to the bottom of the pocket. I do like the StringKing stick, but I worry that it is too light to handle hard play. Still, I have no basis for comparing as I have not put it out regularly yet. The other issue I have with the StringKing is that we can only use their shaft, which ups the cost. I am still not a fan of the partial mesh pocket because I have not yet been able to retool it for the ball to sit in the sweet spot without rolling. Maybe I can figure that out.
The key to any mesh is how the ball sits in the lower part of the stick. If the mesh is just a standard mesh that one would see in the boys’ game, it will take some work to keep the ball from sagging under the sidewalls in the tighter bottom portion of the stick. It can be done, but not every player has a coach or stringer or strings their own sticks to make it work.
So, if you want a mesh, I suggest you find how you can purchase it with the ECD runner or find someone who can install it properly.
As you settle in with your new head, please review my information on stringing, so that you can understand how it works and keep your stick in top form for your games.
As an added note to this, I want to bring up another item that pops up regularly: tightening the pocket. When an official tells a player to tighten the pocket, the first thing a player will do is pull the runner. I have learned that this is the LAST thing we should do. Pulling the runner makes your pocket more shallow and takes out your sweet spot. Think about tightening the leathers first. The leathers will raise up the central pocket and the runner without making your pocket more shallow and compromising your sweet spot.
As for the first question. The biggest problem I see in practices is planted feet. Players throw and catch when they are standing still, planting roots. Whenever you and your team run throwing and catching drills, always try to be moving BOTH when you throw and when you are catching. One of the ways I try this is, instead of a standard single pass warm-up drill, we have a long-short passing drill. The players start wider apart and they make a long throw, then receive it back and throw it when they are approaching their teammate. With this there is less of a probability that they will be doing it standing.
One drill to increase your skill is a box drill. Four players line up in a square, each facing the left shoulder of their teammate about 5 yards apart. The key to this game is that the players cannot rotate their upper torso to allow her better access to making the pass. One player will have the ball and throw it to her teammate to her LEFT. The key is keeping the body still, using the arms in front of the body and being sure the ball arrives at your teammate’s stick. Keep the upper hand elbow higher than normal and pull down with the bottom hand. This teaches the player to use her arms and not her shoulders to make passes. After doing this for a while, turn it around and do it left handed.
The key to any player’s success is their ownership of their stick and their ability to use it. I always encourage players to experiment. Every player must try to work on their non-dominant hand. Every player must learn how to throw from other release points, how to catch tricky passes in close to the body and just out of reach and just how to keep ownership of the ball when she has it.
Katie, thank you for the questions. I hope I answered your questions well enough.
I was out watching one of the players I am coaching where she was playing indoor league. She is a sophomore goalie and I was there to get video for our next session. It was quite enjoyable to see all of the young players working on their game and enjoying their time with their teammates and sticks.
While there, I was asked to work on a few sticks. I reviewed what the players were seeking and reached into my pocket for my trusty pliers. I have big hands, so going after those small knots is a little problematic. So, I tightened up some shooting strings and leathers, all the time reminding the players and parents on the need to keep certain strings/laces tight.
While there, a father approached me to ask if I knew anywhere his daughter could get her stick restrung or fixed up. I offered that, since my wife has come to the point of calling it my sewing, I can help. He did not have the specific stick, but he did bring me a stick his older daughter had and we talked about the runner and the lacing on the stick and how to keep the sweet spot high with the wide plastic runner. This plastic is not my favorite runner. I cannot keep the ball in the sweet spot. I will pick up the stick next week.
Then another parent approached me about his daughter’s stick. I had loaned his daughters one of mine to try (Crux300 with ECD runner), and he noticed that I did not have the ball seated way down in the pocket so that the ball was just barely peaking over the top of the sidewalls. He told me that he and his daughter (she is an excellent player) had been used to having a very deep pocket. They believed that this gave them more protection from checks and could offer a better launch. Four years ago, I would have agreed with him. Today, not so much. Though I like a deep pocket, I am less concerned about the depth as I am in giving the ball a high sweet spot that has relatively tight leathers to keep the ball seated snugly between them. If we can limit the ball’s ability to move in the head, we are far more successful making accurate shots and passes. It also helps with checking, as the ball has a far smaller sideways area to go before meeting resistance within the leathers. Nothing can be done about a check from above the face.
What I have noticed with the balls seated in a loose pocket is that there are a number of issues that reduce the player’s ability to repeat a tight pattern of throws and shots. First: to do this properly, one has to loosen the leathers. This allows for more side-to-side roll of the ball in the pocket. Second: the loose stringing creates a larger release area down into the center of the stick. The lower release area increases the time it would take to get the ball out of the stick toward the target. Remember that this is a game of nano-seconds. Third: because the ball is, in essence, rolling around the middle of the pocket, the player has reduced their ability to accurately hit their target. They will get shots off, but the spray pattern is far wider than if the ball was sitting tighter in a high sweet spot and ready for the pass/shot.
Having said that, I do like to have the ball sitting more than half way down into the pocket, but I am not worried whether the top of the ball sits just above the sidewall. With a high sweet spot, we have pretty much done that with the angle at the top of the stick.
These were good conversations and I enjoyed listening to their needs and thoughts and comparing them to what I have learned.
This post is from 2019 and there have been a number of new players in the game. I will update on the new span of mesh pockets (including Brine) in the future. Until them, this is what I know.
Mesh Runners
I have strung a lot of sticks with the East Coast Dye runner. I really like it! When properly installed, it gives the player an extremely tight sweet spot right under the shooting strings. With this mesh runner, the player has a very soft sweet spot with wide weaving that snuggles the ball where it should stay for cradles and shots. At the bottom, there is tighter controlled weaving to keep the ball above the sidewalls.
One thing I will add. If the stick’s runner holes at the top are far apart, stretching the ECD runner top, it can be strung with a very high sweet spot, up into the crown of the stick. When the stick has runner holes that are not very wide, it is harder to set the sweet spot high in the stick, as the mesh stays longer at the top of the stick.
Mesh between the leathers
The issue I had with setting up the sweet spot is that the actual mesh down in the lower pocket of the stick has the same structure as the upper pocket and thus creates a natural low point that is a problem for keeping the ball above the sidewalls. I reworked this area by making the laces connect deeper inside the mesh. Still, I found it hard to set the sweet spot under the shooting strings.
Full Mesh
There are some amazing mesh pockets out now. The key detail that one needs to see is if the mesh has different diamond shapes within the pocket that gives us more control of where the ball sits in the sweet spot. The old full mesh were just mesh used in the men’s game. It did not allow for the ball to sit quietly in the sweet spot It did not stay between the “leathers” area. The newer mesh give us more control. It keeps the ball out of the base of the head and reduces the left/right movement of the ball in the pocket.
There are so many more coming out and it will be exciting how they work.
Yesterday, I was working at my favorite school wall for wall ball, making sure my recent stringing jobs were properly set for play (one is a Christmas present). There was a goal nearby where two girls with four balls were chatting, sharing and shooting. Being a coach with passion, I approached and told them about my passion and asked if I could join them for a few minutes. I found that they are both sophomores at a school with a very solid program.
Because I believe that the stick is the most critical tool in playing, I asked to see their sticks. I traded them with the sticks I had been working on, so that they could keep shooting. As I expected, both sticks had very loose pockets and the shooting strings were too soft, so the ball, when thrown, would have no regular path out of the stick. To one of the girls I suggested she and her father could tighten her strings and I instructed her how. The other had some very creative person rework the shooting strings. So I started at the beginning and set her strings.
All during this I shared with them on new shooting ideas they had not yet tried. They worked on sidearm and 3/4 shots. They practiced while I strung and appeared to pick it up quickly and enjoy the newfound skills. I had the opportunity to use their practice to teach them about how the lower hand and upper hand both have to work together to produce more shot opportunities, how to use them both to “target” their passes and shots. After some questioning, I am confident they will be adding some more skills to their games and have more fun with a game I love.
It was a great time for a coach.
Queen City Girls Lacrosse - from the coach's perspective 