Strategies for Lacrosse Excellence: Insider Insights from Coach Mike Bonelli

Mike Bonelli, a CoachThem Teammate and someone who brings over 25 years of program building and planning experience in the worlds of hockey and lacrosse, is considered an expert in programming, development, retention, and communication. Today, we’re excited to share his insights and strategies as he dives into lacrosse training drills and practice plans, with a focus on leveraging our online coaching platform:

Coming mostly from a youth lacrosse community and coaching players with a large gap in talent, I try to develop drills that will allow us to get the most challenging repetitions within a high-performance environment. CoachThem, allows me to build a great database of lacrosse training drills that I can integrate into a practice plan quickly. A bonus of using CoachThem is the ability to share these drills and plans with parents, players, and the other coaches, enhancing our coaching management software to help us use time with players as efficiently as possible. I'm also able to pivot and edit drills in real-time if I find I have more or fewer players participating in practice on any given day.

Hungry Hippo Challenge

 

One of my favorite games with my younger 12 and 10U players is the Hungry Hippo Challenge. The drill covers lots of must-haves in lacrosse, and we use this drill to work on ground ball skills, cradling, boxing out, ball protection, and competition. It’s a fun drill if we add in other constraints and even put in a timing element with more skilled players.

Scoop and Pass

 

A basic fundamental skill for youth players is the ability to get their stick on the ground and scoop up ground balls. This Scoop and Pass drill gives us a chance to work on the skills of scooping, cradling, and passing, all in a confined area and in a more controllable environment. I like putting players with similar skills together in this drill, and you can also add speed and quicker reaction time by adding players into the grouping and creating a shuttle drill out.

Elevate11 Dodge and Shoot

 

With our advanced and skilled players, we start to introduce more complex activities and try to put the players in more game-like scenarios so we can focus on specific skills and techniques for game success. I love adding in the Elevate11 dummies to our practices because it allows us to set up activities to put players into specific positions to get positive repetitions. Our E11 Dodge and Shoot drill are a favourite because it adds in some pressure, the visual experience of looking for space, and lanes, to get a shot off, and understand stick position and the concept of the “ball has eyes”.

Utilizing CoachThem enhances your ability to provide effective lacrosse training drills and youth lacrosse drills, facilitating lacrosse skills development while optimizing coaching management software for a streamlined and efficient coaching process.

 

Blog written by Kelsey Dold in collaboration with Mike Bonelli 

February 8, 2024

 

 

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