3 Most Essential Skills Every Lacrosse Player Needs to Know

At GameBreaker Lacrosse Camps, our directors make sure to spend time developing the mental and physical side of each player to help them reach the next level the following season and beyond. This is accomplished by bringing in people within the sport who play for national teams, top college programs, and other highly rated educational institutions. What’s really helpful is that they don’t just see themselves as coaches – they are role models representing the game they love, and they want to pass that love and passion down to the generations behind them.

Whether you’re participating in one of our GameBreaker Lacrosse Camps or you’re planning to arrive at one of our many other locations across the country, there are certain aspects of the game our coaches work on with campers. Being a new lacrosse player can be super exciting because it’s something new to learn, but it can also be overwhelming for all of those same reasons.

Becoming a good lacrosse player takes a lot of practice and dedication, and with feeling overwhelmed, it may be difficult to know exactly where to start. If you are a beginner in the sport, here are three foundational skills that are important to master before moving on to other skills and drills.

3 Basic Lacrosse Skills

Catching

When we watch experienced lacrosse players catching passes from their teammates, it looks rather effortless, and maybe even a little easy. That’s only because they’ve put in so many hours of work in order for it to actually look that way. In reality, successfully catching a lacrosse ball with your stick takes a ton of concentration.

To accomplish this particular skill, you should have one hand at the base of the stick with the other near the throat of the stick. Once the ball makes its way closer to you, position the stick head in such a way that it’s in the ball’s path, and it ends up getting dropped into the pocket.

Cradling

This particular skill is what you need to successfully run down the field with the lacrosse ball nestled safely in the net of your stick. To maintain possession of the ball, lax players must have strong wrists that can twist back and forth so the ball remains in the pocket. Committing this to muscle memory is incredibly easy because it can be done while you’re running or standing still.

Scooping

There will be plenty of loose balls over the course of a lax game and season, so it’s vital that players know how to pick up those loose balls off the ground. That’s where the skill of scooping comes into play, which is the act of picking a ball up off the ground. It’s actually the most commonly used technique to recover balls.

Keep your knees bent while running toward the ball before dropping the head of your stick to the ground with the stick handle only a few inches higher. Making a quick motion forward with the head of your stick toward the ball will scoop it into the pocket of the head, and then you’ll be on your way.

2 Tips for High School Lacrosse Players

Once you’ve started building those foundational skills, it’s time to think about the bigger picture of what it takes to keep improving as a player.

This includes getting a greater understanding of team play and learning the concepts to help make their team better overall. Of course, this also helps build up a player’s leadership skills. That’s good because nobody is actually a “natural born leader” – those qualities come with time and effort. Some players may have the type of personality that would make a great leader, but those abilities need to be nurtured into actually becoming a great leader both on and off the field.

Like most things in sports, it takes a lot of purposeful practice in order to see real improvement from the physical aspect of the game. If you’re a high school player with aspirations of continuing to play lacrosse in college, you know that the process of improving and getting to a point where coaches are interested in recruiting you takes a lot of time and effort. It’s easy to remember and pay attention to this during the offseason when you’re trying to prepare for the upcoming season, but in the middle of a lax season – which can be quite the grind – it’s easy to lose sight of it momentarily. That’s why we’re here to remind you about some!

Here are two simple tips that can help anyone – whether you’re a beginner trying to simply get more playing time or you’re getting recruited by colleges – take their lax game to the next level.

Set the Standard for Your Work Ethic

There are certain players who are just naturally gifted and can do a lot of wonderful things on the lacrosse field and with the stick in their hands. However, once you get to a particular level of play (which is typically in high school), that natural ability can only take you so far – if you want to reach the next level in your game, you need to put in the effort to do so.

Once you’ve decided you’re going to put in the effort to improve, seek out a coach or mentor who can give you an objective evaluation on your strengths and weaknesses, along with helping you make a set plan on how to turn those weaknesses into strengths.

Don’t Lose Focus on Conditioning

No matter how good you are as a lacrosse player, there will likely always be someone else out there that’s a little better than you. While this is a source of motivation to keep honing your craft, it’s also out of your control because you can’t keep tabs on what other people are doing 100% of the time. What you can keep control of, though, is your own conditioning and physical fitness. That doesn’t take any extra talent.

Set up a plan with an educated person – like a coach or personal trainer – when it comes to a fitness routine you’d like to keep. Being mindful of this will allow you to strengthen your muscles and endurance so you don’t get tired as easily and can run circles around the competition when everyone else is tired at the end of games!

Ready to take your lax game to the next level this summer? Find a GameBreaker Lacrosse Camp near you and register today!