FIRE LACROSSE

Fire Lacrosse welcomes the opportunity to get to know new players and families! If you are interested in joining a group that shows up to practice and where every player attends every tournament; where parents genuinely like each other and are there to support their players; where long-term development is valued over instant success, and where winning is the result of good teaching, not the primary aim, then we would love to hear from you! We do not hold tryouts, so feel free to e-mail us at randy@firelacrosse.org.

PHILOSOPHY – We love winning games! But that is not what it is about. Yes, we win our fair share, and we are always looking to go on the field to play our best possible game. But sometimes a great game ends in a loss. And that is OK. Our goal is to help the players become the Best Version Of Themselves through the sport of lacrosse. Why? Because that has enduring value. If the only thing we do is to teach our players how to master lacrosse skills, then everything we teach them will be useless once they put down their sticks. So our focus is on helping our players develop CONFIDENCE, which allows them to become the Best Version Of Themselves, on and off the field. Building confidence starts with teaching lacrosse skills in a no-nonsense, but encouraging and motivating training environment that pushes players to try new things and to fail. It continues through deliberate situational coaching that helps players with things such as exploring their limits and overcoming obstacles they thought insurmountable in game situations. CONFIDENCE is huge for female athletes and it is a primary building block for life, which is why we make it a core principal of our program. We know this approach works because at the end of each season we receive e-mails from parents telling us how their player’s confidence has increased.

PROGRAMMING – Each season we try to improve our methods and programming. This summer we will be offering:

• Tournaments 
• Team practices
• Technical development sessions
• Movement training & injury prevention
• Support for recruiting and the college process

Tournaments – First a few words on the design of the season. We plan on offering two tournaments (see below for details on tournament specifics). One of them is an East Coast event that requires a lot of travel. We will be coupling the tournament with a series of college visits to maximize the opportunity. Given the timing of the East Coast event, the amount of practice time required to prepare, as well as the overall cost, we have decided to keep the season at two tournaments. This will make for the best possible experience. It also gives families most of their summer to pursue other activities, travel, or to play on teams like Under Armor or to attend showcases and college camps.

It is also important to point out that part of what has made this team work so well is the 100% participation we have at practices and tournaments. Barring injuries, illness or mandatory school events, everyone comes to everything. The longer we make the season, the more difficult it becomes to maintain that standard and the more difficult it is to offer the best possible experience. 

Team Practices – This summer we will split the team practice portion and the skills development portion into separate sessions. That doesn’t mean we will only do one or the other at the respective sessions, but it allows us to be more deliberate when developing the team concepts and individual skills. Our run of 3 practices leading up to Sand Storm was very productive and we took a similar approach, so we are expanding on that model. Team practices will primarily focus on:

• IQ – Continued development of formations and plays (offense & defense – incl. clears and rides), as well as offensive & defensive vision and communication
• Game situations – Handling pressure, decision-making, etc. 

Technical Development Sessions – The better we execute on the fundamentals, the better we will do at running plays and actually playing the game. The last two seasons we saw that our fundamentals are not as solid as they need to be. Technical development sessions will focus on the following, but also include anything else we feel necessary to add to the list:

• Dodging 
• Ground balls
• Shooting form and shot placement
• 8m shooting and 8m D
• Passing and catching on the run
• Meeting a player in the open field
• Defense on the run
• Stick protection
• Goalie work, including clearing passes

Movement Training & Injury Prevention – We suffered a rash of injuries this season and we would like to do more to support our athletes by introducing a testing, training and injury prevention program with Elevate Physical Therapy in Santa Monica. The owner of Elevate, Meredith Soelberg, is the parent of a former player in the Dragons program who is now a senior midfielder on the Yale lacrosse team. Meredith and I have spoken about a program like this several times in the past but the logistics were difficult to pull off. It seem like the timing is perfect now. Sessions would take place at the Elevate facility in Santa Monica prior to a team practice, or at the field, prior to a session. A specific schedule will be announced during the spring. Some of what will be covered by the program includes:

• Pre-program Movement & Strength Testing, and screening for injury risk of both upper and lower quarter injuries, including ACL tear risk
• Customized, lacrosse-specific movement, strength, conditioning, speed & agility training program
• Post-program re-testing

Below are a few facts about the context behind a program like the one we are putting together.

1. According to recent research in the Journal of Pediatrics, ACL injury rates are low in young children and increase sharply during puberty.  70% of ACL injuries are non-contact injuries and occur during actions such as running, cutting, twisting, and landing from a jump.  
2. On average, female athletes are estimated to be 2 to 10 times more likely to sustain an ACL injury compared to male athletes participating in the same sports.
3. Given the higher risk for female athletes, injury prevention programs focusing on neuromuscular training, strength, and proprioception have been developed and are shown to be effective in reducing the risk of ACL injuries in both males and females.  

This program is optional at a cost of $175 per player and it will require a minimum of 12 sign ups. If you are interested in this, please sign up ASAP so we can see if we have the required 12 people. If we do not get to 12, we will refund the $175.

Support for Recruiting & College Process – Some of our players are in the recruiting process and we will continue to support those efforts. Most of you have already signed up for the program that gives you access to SportsRecruits and our online Player Resource Hub. Both our tournaments will have recruiters in attendance, and New England Cup specifically is a recruiting tournament. We will continue to help our players throughout the spring in their recruiting efforts and make sure everyone that is interested is prepared for the summer recruiting season with letter templates, reels, etc.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE

As you can see we have presently only scheduled two tournaments. This has to do with several things:

• The lacrosse season gets started full throttle in June, but players are still in school. We want to be respectful of school schedules, finals, etc. and don’t want to book tournaments June 1 & 2 nor June 8 & 9. 
• We will be going to the East Coast for the first time with this group and that is a major commitment both in terms of time and money. So we want to be mindful of the burden we are placing on families.
• As part of the East Coast trip we are adding college visits to help players get a feel for what it is like to go to school and play lacrosse on the East Coast. This is an additional time commitment and financial burden that we want to be mindful of.
• We want to make sure we have FULL participation for the duration of the season. That is difficult when the season stretches from May to the end of July. Keeping the season compact lays the foundation for a much better overall experience.

1. America’s Finest Rivalry – June 15 & 16, Temecula, CA – This is a very high level tournament with college recruiters in attendance. It is of special interest if you are looking to play in college in California or the Southwest. This is a championship style tournament with 3 games on Saturday and 2 on Sunday.
2. New England Cup – June 28 – 30, Amherst, MA – This is a high-level recruiting tournament with a focus on schools on the Atlantic seaboard. We will play 4 games and it could be one on Friday, 2 on Saturday and 1 on Sunday, or it could be more compact. At recruiting events the organizers like to stretch out the game schedule to make it possible for coaches to view more games. 

COLLEGE TOURS

Part of why New England Cup is well-suited to our needs is that it offers an efficient way to visit a lot of different colleges. This helps our athletes figure out what style of school and what type of geographic and social environment suits them best, whether you plan on playing in college or not. Schools we tentatively plan on visiting are listed below. We selected them based on several factors, including but not limited to: suitability for our players, geographic efficiency, useful in terms of expanding a player’s mind, etc. If you have specific interests, please let us know. As much as possible, we will try to get in touch with coaches to see if we can get locker room tours etc., but in the absence of any type of special arrangement, we will sit in the info session and take the normal college tour. Below is a provisional plan.

Tournament Weekend – as/when time allows:

• Amherst College
• UMass Amherst 
• Williams College
• Mt. Holyoke College

Monday, July 1 – Connecticut

• Wesleyan University
• Yale University

Tuesday, July 2 – Connecticut/Boston

• Coast Guard Academy 
• Boston College
• Emerson College

Wednesday, July 3 – Boston

• Boston University
• Tufts University
• Boston is full of additional schools, including Harvard & MIT, all of which could be included

The idea with this college list is not to cover every possible school, but to give players an overview of the different choices that exist.