👋 Welcome to The Coaches Box! We’re building this community to connect coaches who want to keep learning, share ideas, grow their lacrosse IQ, and help each other become better leaders and teachers of the game. Start by introducing yourself below! Tell us a little about: - Where you’re from - What program/team you coach with - What age group or level you coach - Your coaching and/or playing background - What side of the ball or area you specialize in - One thing you feel really confident coaching - One area you want to improve - What you’re hoping to learn or get out of The Coaches Box - Anything else the community should know about you Then, once you’ve introduced yourself, jump into the community: ✅ Check out the Classroom — Catch up on past Coaches Box calls, presentations, and coaching content. ✅ Explore the Drill Bank & Practice Planning resources — Find something you can use with your team, then post one of your favorite drills so other coaches can steal it too. ✅ Join the conversation — Comment on another coach’s introduction, ask a question, or share an idea that has worked for your program. ✅ Bring us your problems — Have a practice-planning question? Struggling with a scheme? Dealing with a culture or communication issue? Post it. Chances are another coach has been through something similar. ✅ Share what you know — This community gets better when coaches contribute. If you have a drill, concept, template, video, resource, or coaching idea you believe can help someone else, put it in the Box. Our goal is simple: connect good coaches, share great ideas, and help each other get better. Drop your introduction below and let’s get to know who’s in The Coaches Box! 🥍

Just had a great call with @Alex Kelly and @Ted S about Film and Analytics. It was awesome learning from Coach Kelly tonight on how he approaches film with the Spuds and how he's starting to think about analytics and implement them into his strategy. This call has been added in the classroom under Film Study. I also shared on our podcast Down the Alley and Youtube to continue to spread awareness of this community. Continue to give us feedback and ideas as we build out the classroom content!

Taking Ted’s ‘Shot Scaling’ post as inspiration and a jumping off point here is version 1.0 for ‘Slide Scaling’.

Something I have been exploring with my team is the concept of shot scaling. I first heard this concept from SAVI Basketball Instead of calling shots "good" or "bad" (which we as coaches love to do) - we define a scale for all shot types. This allows us to have a meaningful discussion with our players in film about the shots we take. The idea is we can get on the same page about what we as an offense are trying to accomplish and what shots we are looking for. If we can turn a few of the 5s we take into 7s, or 7s into 9s, we can increase our chance to win - especially close games as even turning 1 or 2 possessions into a goal vs being empty is a huge swing for us. I asked AI to take a powerpoint I made and make it graphical - this isn't perfect but it's enough to get the idea across.

I bookmarked this basketball stat because I really would love to figure this out for lacrosse. We have a thread going below about "strategy at X" and how "flipping the field" is one of the most important ways an offense can disrupt a defense. In basketball, they do not have the luxury of playing behind the goal, but, they use the term "ball reversals" (for flipping the court) and "paint touches" (getting to the middle) A site called Breakthrough Basketball published this article: https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/coaching/math-better-offense Inside was this nugget I took to heart Analytics show 2 conclusive facts: 1. More ball reversals = higher points per possession (ppp) 2. Paint touches = higher points per possession (ppp) In fact a recent study shows: - No ball reversal or paint touch = .706 ppp - 1+ ball reversals = .935 ppp And look what happens if you get a ball reversal AND a paint touch on the possession... - 1+ ball reversal AND a paint touch = 1.189 ppp To me, these are just tactics that lead to our favorite phrase "shot selection" but when I listen to a lot of coaches all they say is "best shot, not first shot" but never really define what "best shot" means nor do they provide a framework for HOW to get the best shot.