Club Lacrosse Tryout Prep: The 4-Week Plan

Club coaches have seen a good strong hand a hundred times. This plan spends most of its reps on the things they have not seen enough of.

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Duration: 20 min · Equipment: Stick, ball, wall or bounce-back, helmet or goggles per your game

Ten feet from the wall. One hundred with the weak hand, fifty with the strong hand, then fifty alternating catch-with-one, throw-with-the-other. Top hand by the ear, elbow up, throw from the elbow snapping through. Give with the catch so the ball lands soft. If the weak hand is dropping more than one in ten, move closer and throw softer until it is clean, then step back. Track the drops.

Partner rolls a ball out and jogs in a half step behind you. Get your hips between the ball and the partner, back knee toward the grass, bottom hand low, push the head under the ball and run through it. Stick to the ear, turn away, burst two steps. No checking, no contact; the partner is pressure, not a defender. Ten each side, alternating top hand. Alone, roll it, sprint it, scoop, burst.

Cones in a line five yards apart. Cradle in at three-quarter speed, plant your outside foot at the cone, switch hands as you change direction, and accelerate for three steps. The acceleration is the dodge; the hand switch just protects the ball. Feel your weight sink into the plant foot before you push. Down and back six times, then add a roll dodge at every other cone: plant, turn your back to the cone, come out the other side with the stick protected.

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Six feet from the wall: fifty quick sticks each hand, no cradle, feet moving. Then run laterally along the wall, throwing and catching every two steps, twenty passes each direction with each hand. This is catching in traffic without the traffic. Your eyes are on the ball until it is in the stick, then up. If you are behind a bounce-back, do the same drill moving across its face.

Start twelve yards out on the wing. Jog in on an angle, hands away from your body, and shoot overhand while moving, aiming at the far pipe or a taped target. Twenty each hand. Then ten each hand where a partner feeds you the ball two steps before the shot so you are catching and shooting in one motion. Miss low and to the far side; a shot that misses high is a possession gone.

Scoop a ground ball, take three steps, and throw a thirty-yard pass to a partner who is jogging away from you. Ten each hand. Defenders and midfielders do this every possession at the club level and a bad clearing pass is the fastest way off a coach’s list. Lead the partner; the ball should arrive where they are going, not where they were.

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Shuttle run between the cones four times, then straight to the wall for forty catches with the weak hand. Rest ninety seconds. Five rounds. Your hands go when your legs go; the club scrimmage is forty minutes of exactly this. Count drops per round and try to keep the last round as clean as the first.

Partner starts with the ball twenty yards away and jogs toward the far end. You sprint to get to their stick side, staying in front of them, forcing them to the sideline without any contact. When they stop, you reset and go again. Ten reps. In the girls’ game this is exactly the marking coaches want to see; in the boys’ game it is the ride, and it is the most visible hustle play on the field.

Partner feeds you at the top of the arc and then plays soft defense, no contact. You have three choices: shoot if they are more than a stick length away, dodge if they are square and close, pass back if they are between. Say the choice out loud as you make it. Ten reps each hand. Club coaches want the right choice fast, not the fancy one.

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Three shuttle rounds only, full rest, best times of the month. Then stop. The conditioning is in the bank.

Fifty catches with each hand with no drops. If you drop one, the count starts over. Then twenty shots on the run at the target and end the session on a make. Every day this week.

The two days before tryouts, walk through the line drills at half speed in the yard and say the defensive words out loud: "ball", "I got ball", "help left", "here". Then sleep. Nothing at tryouts should be new.

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Run the plan, then after the tryout session, tell us how the weak hand held up in the scrimmage and which position the coaches had you at most. That is where the next plan starts.