Gait goalie head. Best Lacrosse Goalie Heads: Top Picks and Buying Guide for 2024

What factors should you consider when choosing a lacrosse goalie head. How does weight affect performance. Which goalie heads offer the best stiffness and durability. What are the top-rated lacrosse goalie heads for 2024.

Key Factors in Selecting the Ideal Lacrosse Goalie Head

Choosing the right lacrosse goalie head can significantly impact your performance on the field. Several crucial factors come into play when making this decision:

Weight Considerations

The weight of a goalie head is a critical factor that directly affects maneuverability and reaction time. Lighter heads allow for quicker movements, potentially making the difference between a save and a goal. However, it’s essential to strike a balance, as ultralight heads may wear down faster and become too flexible over time.

Stiffness and Durability

A stiffer head reduces the chances of unwanted deflections, ensuring more reliable saves. However, excessive rigidity can make ground ball scoops and low shot blocks more challenging. The ideal stiffness depends on your playing style and preferences.

Throat Design and Comfort

The throat design affects hand placement and overall comfort. A well-designed throat allows for natural and comfortable grip, enabling you to focus on the game rather than adjusting your hands constantly.

Stringing Hole Options

More stringing holes provide greater customization options, allowing you to tailor your stick to your specific playing style. This flexibility can significantly enhance ball handling and outlet passes.

User Reviews and Recommendations

Before making a purchase, it’s wise to research what other players and goalies say about a particular head. User reviews can provide valuable insights into real-world performance and durability.

Top Lacrosse Goalie Heads for 2024

Based on the latest market trends and player feedback, here are some of the best lacrosse goalie heads available in 2024:

1. Gait Sentinel
2. StringKing Mark 2G
3. STX Eclipse 2
4. Warrior Nemesis 3
5. Maverik Tank 2

Each of these heads offers unique features and benefits, catering to different playing styles and preferences.

The Gait Sentinel: A Closer Look

The Gait Sentinel has gained popularity among box lacrosse goalies for its robust design and performance. Here are some key features of the Gait Sentinel:

• Durable construction suitable for the intense play of box lacrosse
• Wide face shape for improved shot stopping
• Stiff frame to reduce unwanted flexing
• Multiple stringing holes for customization

When paired with a 40″ shaft, the Gait Sentinel provides an excellent combination of reach and control, making it a favorite among many box lacrosse goalies.

Importance of Proper Stringing for Goalie Heads

The way a goalie head is strung can significantly affect its performance. Proper stringing can enhance ball control, improve outlet passes, and even affect the head’s overall stiffness.

Mesh Selection

Choosing the right mesh is crucial for optimal performance. Products like the StringKing Grizzly 2 Goalie Lacrosse Mesh Kit and ECD Goalie Hero Mesh 12D are popular choices among goalies for their lightweight properties and durability.

Stringing Techniques

Different stringing patterns can affect how the pocket holds the ball and how easily you can make outlet passes. Experimenting with various techniques can help you find the perfect setup for your playing style.

Additional Gear to Complement Your Goalie Head

While the goalie head is a crucial piece of equipment, other gear can enhance your overall performance and comfort in the goal:

Protective Gear

Products like the Warrior Goalie Nutt Hutt Tool Box provide essential protection without sacrificing mobility. The Brine Ventilator Goalie Pant offers additional padding for the hips and thighs, allowing you to focus on making saves without worrying about injuries.

Shin Guards

STX Valor Lacrosse Goalie Shin Guards can protect your legs from bruises and impacts, a common concern for goalies facing high-velocity shots.

Adapting to New Equipment

Trying out new equipment can be daunting, but it’s often necessary to improve your game. Here are some tips for adapting to a new goalie head:

• Allow time for adjustment during practice sessions
• Pay attention to how the new head affects your reaction time and save technique
• Be open to modifying your playing style to maximize the benefits of the new equipment
• Seek feedback from coaches and teammates

Maintenance and Care for Your Lacrosse Goalie Head

Proper maintenance can extend the life of your goalie head and ensure consistent performance. Consider these care tips:

• Clean your head regularly to remove dirt and debris
• Check for signs of wear and tear, especially in high-stress areas
• Store your stick in a cool, dry place when not in use
• Avoid leaving your stick in extreme temperatures, which can affect the head’s shape and flexibility

By following these maintenance practices, you can keep your goalie head in top condition for longer, ensuring reliable performance game after game.

The Evolution of Lacrosse Goalie Head Design

Lacrosse goalie head design has come a long way over the years. Understanding this evolution can provide valuable insights into the features of modern heads:

Early Designs

Early goalie heads were often heavier and less specialized, focusing primarily on durability rather than performance-enhancing features.

Modern Innovations

Today’s goalie heads incorporate advanced materials and design techniques to optimize weight, stiffness, and ball control. Features like reinforced scoops, strategically placed stringing holes, and aerodynamic shapes have become standard in high-performance heads.

Future Trends

As technology continues to advance, we can expect to see further innovations in goalie head design. Potential developments might include:

• Integration of smart materials that adapt to playing conditions
• Enhanced customization options through 3D printing technology
• Improved impact resistance without sacrificing weight

Staying informed about these developments can help you make better equipment choices as your career progresses.

The Role of Goalie Head Selection in Team Strategy

The choice of goalie head can have broader implications for team strategy and play style:

Defensive Coordination

A goalie’s equipment choice can influence defensive positioning and strategies. For example, a goalie using a head known for quick outlet passes might encourage a more aggressive transition game.

Offensive Opportunities

In modern lacrosse, goalies are increasingly involved in offensive plays. A head that offers better ball control and passing accuracy can create more opportunities for quick counterattacks.

Adapting to Different Opponents

Some goalies might choose to switch between different heads based on the opposing team’s playing style or specific game conditions. This adaptability can provide a strategic advantage in various situations.

Understanding how your equipment choice fits into the broader team strategy can help you make more informed decisions and contribute more effectively to your team’s success.

6 Best Lacrosse Goalie Heads of 2021

How to Choose a Goalie Head for Lacrosse

It can be hard to decide which goalie head is the best with so many available. Here are some of the most important things to consider when deciding:

1) Weight

Every ounce counts when you’re in the cage. Being able to move your head quickly can mean the difference between a goal and a save.

On the other end, ultralight heads can wear down and become too flexible much faster than the bulkier alternatives.

2) Stiffness

Nothing’s worse than thinking you’ve made a save only to realize the ball bent your head back and deflected into the goal.

If you notice you’re giving up too many deflections in practice, you might want to consider a stiffer head.

Keep in mind that a more rigid head will be harder to scoop up ground balls and press into the ground for low shots.

3) Throat Design

When you’re waiting for your opponent to wind up for a shot, you don’t want to worry about your hand placement on the stick.

Choose a head that’s comfortable and fits your preferred hand placement.

4) Stringing Holes

Lacrosse is unique in that players get to customize their equipment to their style of play. Advancements in stringing technology have allowed goalies to handle the ball like midfielders and make precise outlets.

You shouldn’t have to adapt your technique to the limits of your equipment. The more stringing holes you have, the more you can customize your stick to meet the needs of your game.

5) Customer Reviews

Before you buy a head, check out what other people are saying about it. Better yet, try it out!

Do your research and make sure you know what to expect before stringing it up. Some heads just aren’t a good match for your playing style.

Note: Don’t be afraid to try something new

It’s tempting to feel loyal to a certain brand or specific head. The original Eclipse was the only head I wanted to use in high school. However, goalie gear has come a long way over the years.

Don’t be afraid to branch out and try something new. There’s plenty of good options for any kind of player. You might be surprised to find something better.

Products to Consider Alongside Your Goalie Head

Here are some products you may want to consider alongside your new goalie head to help take your game to the next level.

• StringKing Grizzly 2 Goalie Lacrosse Mesh Kit: Need to string up your new unstrung head? This mesh kit features some of the lightest goalie mesh available.
• ECD Goalie Hero Mesh 12D: Just need a piece of mesh? ECD offers some of the most popular goalie mesh available.
• Warrior Goalie Nutt Hutt Tool Box: Want to protect your gems but find a traditional cup uncomfortable? Then the Warrior Nutt Hutt is just what you need. It’s more comfortable and protective than a normal cup helping you move around the cage better.
• Brine Ventilator Goalie Pant: If you want even more protection. for your legs, these pants from Brine are the perfect solution. They feature pads around the hips and thighs, helping you worry less about getting hit so you can focus on the game.
• STX Valor Lacrosse Goalie Shin Guards: Tired of bruises covering your shins after practice and games? These shin guards from STX can protect your legs without limiting your mobility between the pipes.

Other guides you may be interested in:

Photo source: Flickr

Lacrosse Team Sports Gait Sentinel box lacrosse goalie head & shaft combo strung lax handle 40″ soft

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Gait Torque Lacrosse Head Review

Gait Torque Lacrosse Head Review – In recent years, Lacrosse has become one of the most popular games in the world.

Lacrosse game is all about chasing in which players need to catch a ball from a distance and have to pass to hit a goal.

To play the game more players need the right lacrosse stick with the head and so they are able to catch a ball for a shot.

Among others, Gait torque lacrosse head is a popular choice and available with a narrow pocket to improve the grip and control.

The Drop-V-shaped head will provide great accuracy and make players play the game with the utmost care.

Get ready to buy Gait Torque lacrosse head stick for accurate and quick results in the offensive game!!

Read More: Best Lacrosse Head

Pros and Cons of Gait Torque Lacrosse Head!

If you are the offensive midfielder runner in the lacrosse game, you need Gait torque lacrosse head stick to achieve the goal.

Here come the pros and cons of buying a Gait Torque Lacrosse head stick!!

Feature of the Gait Torque Lacrosse Head!

• Gait Torque offers a great way to customize the pocket on the players’ The head is very popular since it offers maximum accuracy and quick release of balls.
• The neck of the head is shiny and sure players will not find any difficultywhile releasing the ball to other middle players.
• The Gait Torque is a great stick for an offensive middle player who wants to control the playing field
• Probably Gait torque lacrosse head is the most favorable optionfor middle players and helps you to play the game even more energetic.

Conclusion:

Gait Torque Lacrosse stick with a head is important for the players to dominate the game in the field.

Browse the online store and choose the best and affordable Gait Torque head on your budget-friendly price!!

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#022: Premier Lacrosse League – Chaos Head Coach Andy Towers

#022: Premier Lacrosse League – Chaos Head Coach Andy Towers

Coaches are teachers, mentors, role-models, friends, and parents to many athletes. For most of us, Coaches impact and influence our lives during our most impressionable years. They drive us to be our best and give it everything. They show us that winning is the product of the team effort. They push us back out there when we fail. No matter what sport we play, or what level we play at, coaches lead.

Andy Towers is the Head Coach of the Chaos Lacrosse Club in the Premier Lacrosse League. He is a member of the United States Lacrosse Connecticut Hall of Fame ,as well as the Brown University Sports Hall of Fame. He is a world champion, multiple time All American, All Ivy and All New England; and the Ivy League Player of the Year. He was the 2019 coach of the year in the PLL’s inaugural season.

—

Listen to the podcast here:

Coaches are teachers, mentors, role models, friends, and parents of many athletes. For most of us, coaches impact and influence our lives during our most impressionable years. They drive us to be our best and give everything. It shows us that winning is the product of team effort. It pushes us up there when we fail. No matter what sport we play or what level we play at, coaches lead. Andy Towers is the head coach of the Chaos Lacrosse Club of the Premier Lacrosse League. He is a member of the United States Lacrosse Connecticut Hall of Fame as well as the Brown University Sports Hall of Fame.

He’s the world champion, multiple-time All-American, All-Ivy in All-New England in the Ivy League Player of the Year. He was the 2019 Coach of the Year in the PLL’s inaugural season. Coach Towers joins me in this episode to show us the impact coaches have on our development both as athletes and people. He shares what it takes to build the best teams and the best athletes in the youth, college, and professional sport.

He defines success as the result of leaving everything on the field with no regrets, and he candidly exits the humility of the elite performer by sharing his decision to fail at the collegiate level but also the resiliency he demonstrates to get back in the school and earn his spot in the Hall of Fame. Andy Towers is a pierce competitor, the ultimate team player, and a coach so inspirational and intense that by the end of our conversation, I was ready to put the table, rip the door off the wall and dominate.

—

Coach, welcome to the show.

Thanks. It’s a pleasure to be here, Fran.

This is the fourth in-person episode of the show, 4 of 22. I’ll take it with COVID because it’s so much better to be here and talk to you face-to-face.

I’m going to look at it as bad and clean up, so I like that.

We’ll see. We got a long way to go. We’re just starting here. I’m so excited and so motivated to sit here with you. It was so easy to put this conversation together because here in front of me is the head coach of the Chaos Lacrosse Club of the Premier Lacrosse League, Brown University Sports Hall of Famer, Connecticut Lacrosse Hall of Famer, multiple-time All-American in high school and college, Ivy League Player of the Year, and the Premier Lacrosse League Coach of the Year in 2019, the inaugural season.

I say this because lacrosse is near and dear to my heart. I sucked at lacrosse. Anyone who knows me and reads this will tell you that same thing. My longtime friend, someone you know, Connor Wilson, connected us. He’s a great player and a great coach in his own right. Back when we were in high school, he had this crazy idea to start this lacrosse team because we didn’t have one. He said, “I want you to be a part of the inaugural team.”

You’re incentivized as a team to play every single shift, as hard as you can, whether you’re winning or whether you’re losing. Click To Tweet

I said, “That’s great, but what do I do?” He said, “You’re big and you have decent speed. You probably won’t ever learn to catch and throw. You’re going to play long stick defender.” I said, “That’s great, but what do I do as a long stick defender?” He said, “The only thing you have to do is don’t let anybody get to the goal. When they come through this area in front of the goal, hit them as hard as you can.”

I perfected that technique to the tune of about 2 to 3 concussions. If anybody threw the ball at me, it was straight wood hands on the ground. I would remember being there and we would clear the ball. The shot would come in and goalie would catch it, and then everyone starts around the other way. I would be wide open. The goalie, another good friend of mine, would look at me every time, shake his head, and throw it away to the other end of the field because he knew that if it went to me, it’s going out of bounce and go back the other way.

That’s called knowing your personnel friend.

They knew, “Do not give it to that guy.” I played my heart out. We all did. First two years as a club team, we had to buy our equipment. We played and left everything on that field. We were able to make it a varsity team by the time we were juniors. Our junior and senior year was varsity. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything. Even now, my daughter, who you know and attended one of your camps, is loving the game. She started playing. I’ve already got my son the FIDDLESTX. He’s playing with it because it is such an amazing game to play. I couldn’t imagine what my life would have been like if I didn’t have this experience, so I’m fascinated with elite performance. I’m fascinated with the rise of this sport. Being here with you brings that all together, so thank you.

It’s a compliment to be considered for your show. I’ve done some due diligence on who you’ve had here and it’s incredibly humbling to be included with the group, so thank you for having me.

Let’s start with the PLL, the Premier Lacrosse League. Playoffs are coming out. In September 2018, Paul and Mike Rabil announced a new professional lacrosse league. It’s going to be a direct competitor to the Major League Lacrosse, but the difference is that this league is going to focus on lacrosse as a full-time job. There’s going to be equity in the league. There’s going to be healthcare and salaries. An important point of differentiation about the PLL versus other professional sports leagues is the marketing piece, the physical assets, pictures, and the audio in which they were making that open source. They were helping the players to promote themselves and become their own brands and build their own brands, unlike NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball.

In June 2019 inaugural season, six teams have grown to eight in 2020, 26 player roster, 19 to dress on game day. Instead of having specific markets, they travel to twelve different major markets, Boston, Philly, Atlanta, and DC. They were in my former hometown, Colorado Springs. The season is fourteen weeks, ten regular seasons, some playoffs, then finals. It runs in this period of time between indoor lacrosse league and the college League. You don’t have any overlap. You were one of the first coaches. What is so different about this league having played yourself in the Major League Lacrosse and the indoor league that made you jump in? This is a green pasture. You looked at it and there was an opportunity. What was it about that opportunity that got you involved?

I’m playing the sport growing up. My dad played the sport and my friends played the sport. I grew up in a hotbed in New Canaan, Connecticut. I played in college and got right into college coaching when I graduated from Brown. I spent roughly eighteen years coaching at the Division I level. When I got out of coaching, leaving Dartmouth in 2014, the last thing I said to my wife was, “I’m excited to be out of college coaching. If the opportunity to coach professional lacrosse comes about, that’s the one thing that I would jump back into.”

Paul Rabil and Mike Rabil launched this league. I had a friend of mine that ironically was a player that I coached at Dartmouth and was an assistant coach for me at Dartmouth, Ryan Danehy. He’s an assistant coach at Bucknell University. He’s an awesome player, coach, and friend. He’s one of my best friends. He coached the Long Island Lizards in the MLL and Paul was on that team. He became good friends with Paul and used to train him. I ultimately had Paul here. When I heard that this league was being launched, I said to Ryan, “I have a lot of interest in getting into that league. Pass my name on to Paul and if they’re interested, have him call me.”

I didn’t think too much of it. I was optimistic and hopeful, but my heart wasn’t set on it. There’s a lot of qualified coaches that were ex-players that are at the highest level. It’s a job that anybody with a lacrosse background would be super excited to learn more about and potentially get involved with. I was fortunate to get a phone interview. Mike Rabil, ironically, played football at Dartmouth and he was friends with Ryan Danehy. Fortunately, Mike Rabil, in his due diligence on me, sought out some of the Dartmouth players that played under me while I was there. I was fortunate that they gave me a good review. Ultimately, I got offered an assistant coaching job in the league.

Given the time commitment that Division I coaching demands, I felt that while I would be excited to be in the league, my sense was I didn’t feel it was fair to my family to commit to an assistant coaching position in the PLL due to the time associated with the travel and everything involved. If I wasn’t going to get a head coaching job, I wasn’t going to do it. I was good. I was fine. I was complimented to receive an assistant coaching job offer.

If you’re not being authentic, you’re just wasting time. You’re not moving forward. You’re creating another obstacle. Click To Tweet

With that said, they ended up coming back. One of the original guys that they had offered, which was Gary Gait, ended up not being able to do it. He was the head of women’s coach at Syracuse University and the best offensive player in the history of the sport. He didn’t get the approval from the Syracuse AD, is what I understood. I was the next guy in line and fortunately, I was given that opportunity and of course, I jumped on it.

You’ve said that the PLL, “The competitive spirit is the highest I’ve ever seen and I coached Division I.”

The highest level that I’ve ever played was trying out for the United States national team, which was even higher than Division I on a consistent basis. When you’ve got 100 of the best lacrosse players in the country competing to make a 23-man roster, the compete level is off the charts, Fran. With that said, it’s also crescendos. You go in there, try out for the US national team, check into your dorm room on a Friday afternoon, have a session Friday evening, and have a session Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon.

After those first three sessions, the way it usually works out is the guys that are having good tryouts, the guys that are in contention to make that team end up playing in what’s called a bubble game, that Saturday night session. What happens is the compete level falls off a little bit for the people that aren’t in that bubble game, and then people that are in the bubble game continue at that same level. With the PLL, you’ve got 8 teams with a 25-man roster and you only dress 19. These guys are competing not only to help your team win on game day and ultimately win the PLL championship, but they’re also competing to stay in that nineteen.

You figure 8 teams, 25 players. That’s 200 players, 19 dressing each time. You got about 170 players that are playing on game day. The fact is these guys, every single shift, every single play is another data point on whether or not you can verbally defend putting them in the lineup or putting somebody else ahead of them in the lineup. With the increase in pay that the PLL offered, which was roughly four times what the MLL was paying, the fact that they’re providing benefits to the players in the league and they’re giving them stock in the league. They’re helping them manage their social media presence, which fuels their marketability, which is phenomenal. It’s unbelievable foresight from Paul and Mike to see that opportunity and to be the first league that promotes the players more so than the individual teams, which is a contrast to every other pro team sport out there.

The fact that they could see that opportunity and jump on it is a benefit to all of us and certainly adds to the excitement of being on a roster but playing on game day for the guys on these teams. When I was coaching in the league, particularly the first season, I’m watching the compete level start to finish regardless of the score. The second criteria in making the playoffs in the PLL is gold differential. It’s not head-to-head. You could be up by eight goals at the end of the game, but you want to be up by ten goals and that does play a role in who ends up getting those last playoff spots. You’re incentivized to the team to play every single shift as hard as you can, whether you’re winning or you’re losing. The closest comparison that I could draw to the compete level of every minute of the PLL games was that of playing in that bubble game in the US world trials.

You got to build a team from nothing. The first year of this is when you go in. There’s a draft. There are four rounds you got to draft. Every draft at one player, which only left you with four players at the end of the draft.

What happened was when it launched, they launched six different teams of a baseline of players and they structured those teams based on familiarity with each other. The Whipsnakes, for instance, have a large contingency of University of Maryland grads. The Redwoods have a large contingency of Notre Dame grads. Atlas were the veteran US team players on a Hopkins-based. The Chrome were a lot of Duke grads. Our team at Chaos was a potluck group. We had 4 or 5 Albany grads. We had a couple of Duke guys, a couple of Yale guys, and a handful of Canadian players. Everybody that was leftover to some degree.

What was the vision for you? We always talk about transformative leaders. We talk about the ability of the leader to stand up and say, “This is the direction I need my organization to go. These are the values it’s going to exhibit. As I build this organization, this is my vision that it’s going to be created under it.” For you, what was that as you looked at that blank slate? Rarely in our careers do we have an opportunity to have a blank slate. You get to build this from nothing.

The way that our roster ended up shaking out, we ended up with more Canadian players than any other team. The Canadian players are the best indoor players in the world, generally speaking. Box lacrosse is like playing the hockey rink, not on the field. You’ve got boards. The balls never go out of bounds.

I played in high school and I got my ass kicked.

It’s a super physical game. It puts an emphasis on stick work. Because it’s close quarters, the passes are right on top of each other. The goals are small relative to the size of the goals and field lacrosse. It puts such an emphasis on having incredible stick work. My feeling was, from an offensive standpoint, let’s try to create a roster that on the offensive side of the ball, we’ve got as many great stick handlers as possible, which allows us to play a style that’s tough for teams to replicate in their preparation to play us. By the time that we are playing the game, they’re going to be playing catch up as a relates to how quickly we can move the ball and how efficient we are at scores.

Box players like NHL hockey players or hockey players in general, have an affinity for their teammate’s success. They’re almost soldiers to their teammate’s success. They’re unbelievable teammates and they are super skilled. Seeing that the dimensions of the field in the PLL are a little smaller than your traditional Division I field, ten yards smaller roughly, it’s somewhat of a hybrid, maybe 3 quarters field and 1 quarter box is the way that it’s set up. With the shot clock, it’s a faster game than your traditional Division I game.

That was the direction that we wanted to move in on the offensive end, and then on the defensive end, we wanted to create a team of ass beaters that if you are going to play, you’re going to have to earn everything that you get. We were able to do that. We had an unbelievable cover guy in Brodie Merrill, who was maybe the best long-stick midfielder in the history of the sport. He’s an unbelievable leader. He’s a Canadian. We had an unbelievable athlete in Jarrod Neumann who went to Providence College. He started the game late, but he’s a superior athlete and a super confident person, 6’5”, 225 was a Division I basketball recruit.

We had a couple of other guys on the roster, but we went out and we drafted Johnny Surdick, who was the national defenseman of the year from the Army, who is 6’5”, 215 pounds, ass beater. Jack Rowlett who played at North Carolina under a good friend of mine, Joe Breschi, who coached me when I was at Brown, ass beater. We went out and we tried to create an offense that moves the ball quickly and all played the same game. All were playmakers and goal scorers. On the defensive end, ass beaters. We were fortunate that Blaze Riorden was our goalie who, in my opinion, is the best player on the planet playing the sport.

Those things together gave us a unique identity in a sport with five other teams that were heavy Americans and five teams that maybe had the advantage due to the familiarity of the players on their roster where each team had a college where they had a lot of those grads. We didn’t have that inherent connection, but we did have a personality trait that was consistent on both ends of the field. We were able to have a lot of success in that first regular season, having the best record at 7 and 3. Unfortunately, I felt like we peaked at the wrong time. We had an injury that hurt us a little bit down the stretch. At the end of the day, we peaked too early in that first season.

In the first season, you did win Coach of the Year. We’ve got to give that to you. In the second season, you call it the bubble because of COVID and stuff, but you went to the championship game. You unfortunately lost. Had that game gone on a little bit longer, you guys were on the move to probably take it back.

The bubble was unique. We were out there for twenty days. The first week was training camp. The second week was round-robin play. We went 0 and 4 in the round-robin play. We tried to win every game. We’re doing the best we can to win the games. We lost two games in overtime and two other games. Going into the playoffs, we got the seventh seed and we drew number two to start. It was the Chrome team that had a great camp. They had beaten us in the round-robin play. We played the game with one of our best defensive players in Jack Rowlett, who had got a concussion the game before and we’ve shifted some things on the offensive side. There were some major changes that we did in terms of who we rolled out to play. It seemed to be the secret sauce for our offense.

We moved the ball incredibly well that game and blew the Chrome out in a game that I thought many people would go in there thinking the Chrome was going to win that game handily. We played the third seed, which was the Archers. We played this Friday night at 8:30 on NBCSN. It’s from an offensive perspective. It’s one of the scariest teams in the league, with many of the best offensive players in the league on that team with great chemistry. We were able to dominate the faceoffs and they had a tough time stopping our offense. We ended up winning that game, too.

We go and play with the Whipsnakes, who were the number one seed, who had won the championship the year before. We were up 6-2 in halftime and feeling good. Although they were the team that won the championship the year before, they went 4 and 0 in round-robin play in the bubble. Every game they won, they won by an average of six goals. They were clearly the best team in the bubble going into that game. Our faceoff guy, Tommy Kelly did a great job of neutralizing Joe Nardella, who in my opinion, was probably the best player in the bubble, winning over 75% of the faceoffs in the pro league, which is incomprehensible. It’s like averaging 50 points a game. We did a great job of neutralizing them.

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We’re up going into the fourth quarter with about ten minutes left. They won a few faceoffs in a row and they stuck some big shots. Ultimately, they ended up coming back and winning the game. I credit them. Our only goal is to win the PLL championship and we were closer in the bubble, ten minutes short of winning it. We were the first season where we had the best regular season record but lost in the semis. We’re hoping that the next time, we’re peaking at the right time and ultimately feel that we are. If we can continue to get better, we’re going to peak at the right time, and whether or not that’s enough to win the PLL championship, we’re going to find out.

What do you have to do? You’re going to go into the playoffs. You mentioned the differential on shots. You have a ten-shot differential, so you’ve got 86 shots for 76 shots against Atlas, who’s the number one team, 111 shots for 98 shots against. You said the key to the season is peaking at the right time. As you prepare, what are those 1 or 2 things that you’re telling the team, “We got to clean this up.”

We have nine regular season games. We went to training camp the last week in May 2021 with 30 guys. We were supposed to have a training camp. I’ve got eleven Canadians on my team. Due to Canada’s policy regarding COVID and returning to Canada, securing visas for Canadians that aren’t willing to move down and live in the States over the course of the summer has been a difficult process for us. Due to the difficulty of getting visas approved, that took us from 30 to 24 on those six guys who weren’t available for us at training camp. In our first session of training camp, we had three right-handed offensive players go down with injuries. Now we were at 21.

At the end of training camp, you have to have a roster of 25. That was easy because we had four spots available after that. We start the season against the Whipsnakes, who were two-time reigning champions, and we get off to a terrible start. They hammer us 13-7 or something like that, but the game was even that close. We are playing some guys out of position injured, but we have to fill the roster, so we do and we still got some great players. It’s tough to compete at this level if you aren’t firing on all cylinders.

After losing in Gillette and going 0 and 1 the first weekend, we had two games in week two. We played the Waterdogs and the Archers. We played better. We ended up losing to the Waterdogs by two and we lost the Archers by four. We were there. We were in position. We didn’t deserve to win either of those games, but we could have won. Players are playing out of position. Not everybody is available. We’re battling these issues still as well as injuries, and then we go into game four, which was in Baltimore against the Redwoods. Redwoods got better over the course of the offseason with some trade acquisitions.

We got a couple of guys back and some of the hurt guys were healthy. We got two guys that we’re able to secure their visas. We went out. We limited our offensive turnovers and we won the game. Even though we lost 75% of the faceoffs in that game, we ended up beating them 11-9. We were over three in the first three games of the season, and then we went to Baltimore. We win the next weekend in Long Island. We got two guys picked up off out of the player’s pool. We got another visa guy approved. An injury to one of our best players, Jack Rowlett, prevented him from playing in game six out in Minneapolis, so we lose 70% of the faceoff. We lose that game to the Atlas is number one in the league.

While we were down 9-3, we got all the way back to 11 to 10. There were six minutes left and we had the ball. We didn’t deserve to win the game, but we had a chance to win the game and we fell short. We have a by-week, an All-Star game, and another by-week, and then we go out to Colorado Springs, your hometown. We have the healthy depth for the first time at all positions across the board. We don’t have everybody approved, but we got 23 out of our top 25 approved. Most importantly, we got healthy depth.

We’re able to roll out a much more competitive roster as it relates to a player-to-player basis. We’re more organized and we’ve made some adjustments in what we’re doing schematically in the middle of the field. We’re still riding the best player who’s our goalie. The development of our individual pieces on the defensive end has gotten better and they’ve gotten more connected. We’re starting to get an identity for ourselves. We dressed nineteen each game. We go out to Colorado Springs and we win. We beat the Chrome. We’re excited. It was our best overall effort. I’m feeling confident that we are moving in the right direction was starting to peak at the right time.

We locked up a playoff spot with two games to go going into Albany. The good news is that we locked up the playing spot. The other side of the good news to it is that we’ve got two games and we feel like at this point, if you’re dressing 19 for the playoffs in Salt Lake City, 17 of those spots are locked up. We know exactly who our personnel are there. Creating these gameday lineups is the worst and the hardest part of the job. It’s not something that’s enjoyable.

It’s great to tell somebody that they’re in the lineup if they weren’t the week before, but nothing is worse than telling somebody that’s been in the lineup that they’re coming out. It’s an awkward conversation. My approach to it is I’m proactive and tactful. As soon as we make the decision, I call and tell them right away and make sure that they can’t misunderstand the reasoning behind it. I don’t send an email out to anybody until I have that conversation, align our thoughts, and articulate exactly why we’re making the decision that we’re making.

You got to give them that feedback, but you can’t risk a miscommunication spiraling into something that doesn’t need to be affecting the culture of the team. We made two changes. We know who our seventeen is and it’s coming down now. We’ve got four right-handed players. Two of them will be dressing as 18 and 19 for Salt Lake City and two of them were going to be on the restricted roster. I feel good about where we’re at. I feel like we’re reaching our potential as a group as we get closer to the most important part of the season and that’s the playoffs.

I can’t wait. I’m watching. I can imagine how you feel. You brought up the early days of your career. You grew up in New Canaan. It’s one of the strongest lacrosse programs in the country. You led your teams to three straight championships in Connecticut. You’re an All-American as a junior. You’ve mentioned the 19 & Under USA Team that you were a part of in 1987. You won the world championship in Australia.

Lacrosse was popular when we were kids, but it’s exploded now. It’s the fastest-growing team sport in the country and it’s now coast-to-coast. You’re seeing it where it used to be, primarily here on the East Coast. Why do you think it’s taken off? What is it about the sport that has gained so much popularity? What does it teach kids about competition that’s different from other sports like baseball or other spring sports like track?

The first thing, similar to basketball and even football to some degree, is lacrosse is fun to practice. The practice, the drills, and the games are fun. It’s fun to watch. It’s exciting to play. It has a combination of all the sports. Schematically, it’s the most like basketball. The way that you generate shots offensively, the way that you defend on-ball and off-ball defensively. The schemes and the tempo are identical. I’m a little older than you, but if you have the depth and you’ve got more athletes than your opponent, you can play up-tempo the way the Lakers did in the ‘80s. Play high tempo, max out the number of possession that each team gets. If you don’t have as much depth, you’re going to play a little more like the Celtics play, a little more half-court and slow it down.

It’s got a ton of similarities to basketball. It’s got the physicality at times of football and hockey. It looks a little like hockey. Hockey, like soccer, is perpetually unsettled in situations. Little games of 2 on 1 and 3 on 2. Lacrosse is more like basketball in that respect. Even though it resembles hockey, the physicality is that of hockey and football. It’s got a lot of many different sports in it. It’s entertaining to watch. It’s certainly fun to practice. Those things together make it something that’s fun to watch and fun to play. When somebody picks up a stick, they have a tough time putting it down.

There’s a lot of transferability and other sports even going the other way. You get a lot of people to come in lacrosse from other sports, but then you get a lot of people going the other way, especially coming out of college, into the NFL. Bill Belichick has talked a lot about lacrosse. I was watching something that he was talking about lacrosse. He’s like, “My favorite part is to watch the off-ball offense.” I’m like, “Of course, he’d be the only person to watch the off-ball offense.” He’s like, “It’s interesting what they’re doing back there trying to get into a position.” I’m like, “The rest of the world is watching the ball and this guy is watching everything else that’s going out of here.” Putting it in context, that’s why you’re the greatest coach of all time.

Players, too. Jim Brown was a Hall of Famer in football. Chris Hogan was a wide receiver for the Patriots. He’s quoted as saying that lacrosse is a space game. He credited playing college lacrosse to being successful as a wide receiver because it taught him about leverage. It taught him about finding the holes and the defense and then getting opening and getting in a position. There’s a lot of transferability in other sports that are interesting as well.

As a spring sport, you’re looking at baseball or lacrosse. Would you rather be in the outfield anticipating the ball coming to you, where it might come to you 2 or 3 times a game, or would you rather be part of perpetual action? At one sport, you’re anticipating having fun. In the other sport, you’re having nonstop fun and excitement. I’m not trying to tear down baseball. I played baseball when I was a little kid and it’s fun. The constant action and excitement of lacrosse make it no comparison as it relates to what was more fun for my friends and I growing up.

Certainly, we all played baseball until we were twelve years old. For the most part, we all made the move over to lacrosse and we had a lot of success as a high school team. My class in 1987 was the first class to go through a full youth program cycle. My dad along with Mr. Cochran, another guy in town, with the high school coach Hall of Famer Howard Benedict, launched the New Canaan Lacrosse youth program back in the late ‘70s.

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Our class was the first class to start as third graders and play all the way through. We were playing baseball at the same time, too. We played all the way through so that when we were ninth graders, we’d all had the stick in our hands for six years. There’s such a vantage seeing that. If you can’t pass and catch, it’s a tough game to play. Six years of playing youth lacrosse allowed us to have a roster full of guys that can pass and catch. When you’re married that up with the quality of the high school coach that we had in coach Benedict, we were in a good position to win the state championship, and we did.

You’ve been referred to as “a blue-collar coach and former player who ended up at a white-collar institution in Brown.” Let me throw out a few things. While at Brown, you led the Bruins to Ivy and New England championships. You’re in Division I All-American three times at two different positions, All-Ivy and All-New England, three times, and an Ivy League Player of the Year all at once. You graduated in Brown with season and career goal-scoring records, which held up for 23 years and was not broken until 2016. It’s not bad for a blue-collar kid from New Canaan going to Brown. I can say that because I did not get accepted when I applied to Brown, so I’m a little bit resentful. I loved Boston University and it gave me a journalism degree which I get to use, so it’s okay.

You referenced your attitude as a major driver of your success at the collegiate level. Some called it polarizing. It’s what I read about a lot. You said, “I felt like if I talk smack or set the stage by celebrating in a flagrant way, that I was putting pressure on myself to follow through and be successful.” Can you expand on that? How did your attitude put pressure on yourself to perform? This is the highest level. There’s enough pressure there, but now in a sense, you’re standing up and saying, “Bring it here.” You either have to perform or you’re embarrassed.

First and foremost, I played for Hall of Fame coaches. That was coach Benedict to Canaan High School, Dom Starsia and Peter Lasagna at Brown. The second piece to that is I had unbelievable teammates. The teammates that I had at New Canaan High School were 30 years ahead of their time. In 1987, we had eighteen Division I players on that team, which is absurd. When I was at Brown, I played with a few Hall of Famers, many All-Americans, and many All-Ivy players, but we all shared the same vision for what we wanted out of our college experience.

When I was looking at schools, I looked at Duke, Virginia, Harvard, Cornell, Rutgers, and Brown. I had a lot of options and I ended up choosing Brown. My older brother, Tommy, who is four years older than me, went to Brown. We had familiarity with the school, the program, and the Coach Dom Starsia, who’s Hall of Famer. My teammates at that time all had similar options as recruits coming out of high school. Dom’s vision for Brown’s path to winning a national championship was appealing to all of us.

You have two choices coming out, or at least I viewed it this way. 1) You could go to a program that has had a ton of success already and be part of an ongoing tradition or 2) You could go to a program that may have been successful but hasn’t yet cemented itself as one of the best in Division I Lacrosse. That was Brown for us. We had a great class ahead of us, Jay McMahon, Mike Gannon, Craig Vachris, Mike Marinelli, and Steve Gresalfi, Darren Lowe, and Sam Jackson. We had a great group in our class. Jay McMahon was another one that was a class ahead of me. He’s a phenomenal player, a first-team All-American.

We had so many great high school players in three grades in a row that we were able to move the needle for the Brown lacrosse program. When we went there, it was probably a top twelve team and we got as high as number two in the country in my junior year. We didn’t win the national championship, but we definitely move the program forward and we had a lot of team success. I was fortunate to play with great teammates and play for great coaches at a time when the program was on the rise and everything was aligned for our success.

It is a cool opportunity to be able to build that. It’s almost easier in some sense to fall in on something, but now when you have to build it and you’re a part of it, you can align yourself to that vision, and then you can help to drive it forward. Despite your success at Brown, you ran into a little bit of trouble and ended up in your junior year getting kicked out. What happened?

I didn’t go to class. I didn’t appreciate what I had at my disposal. I was smart enough when I was coming out of high school to choose Brown. I had some great other academic schools that I was looking at. To me, part of the appeal of Brown was it wasn’t a scholarship school. I loved the idea of being able to go and be part of a program and have a chance to win a national championship at a non-scholarship school. To me, that meant more, or at least the way I looked at it.

I was smart enough to choose Brown, but I wasn’t smart enough to understand the opportunity that I had while I was at Brown as a student of what it could potentially do for me and my future quality of life if I had taken advantage of it. It was incredibly humbling. I didn’t go to class and I partied too much. I was flagrant about it. I was not smart. I was irresponsible and immature. Quite frankly, in hindsight, I wish I had failed out of school after the first semester of my freshman year because that would have given me three and a half years of appreciating exactly what Brown had to offer me as a person and as a student lacrosse experience aside 100%.

I always viewed myself during my first three years at Brown as a lacrosse player. I didn’t view myself as a student-athlete at Brown because I didn’t do any schoolwork. I was arrogant, stupid, and immature. When I did eventually get kicked out of school, it was after our best year, my junior year. We were two in the country. I made first-team all American, I was on top of the world, and I was kicked out of school. It was the most humiliating experience I’ve ever had but the best thing that’s ever happened to me because it created a bounce-back opportunity for me. When it happened, my focus completely changed.

I was determined not to have wasted thousands of dollars of my parent’s money. Not only did they sent me to Brown but they also sent me to Lawrenceville to do a PG before I went to Brown. It’s also expensive. Here I was, a spoiled, entitled Fairfield County kid from New Canaan that pistol over that opportunity and was saying more or less to my parents, “It doesn’t matter how hard you work to create this opportunity for me, I’m a good lacrosse player. Screw you.”

That was unbelievably tough to handle for somebody that was cocky and needed to be knocked down. I felt knocked down. I learned my lesson the hard way. That’s the type of kid I was. I needed to lick the skillet three times before I realized that I’m getting third-degree burns on my tongue and that’s the way that I was. It was a great life lesson. It took me a long time to forgive myself and for the world to accept that I had changed from the person that I was during my first three years at Brown.

I appreciate your humility in telling that story because that’s a big part of what we teach. A big part of what we talk about on the show and in our work at the Talent War Group. It’s the ability to be humble, introspective, understand when we screw up and when we look at it. How did you get back?

The first thing I decided to do was getting back to Brown and graduating from Brown was my first priority. I was fortunate when I was coming into high school to get recruited by a guy, Mike Caravana, who was the assistant at Virginia. I almost went to Virginia before I chose Brown in the end. Mike Caravana was the head coach at Denison University out in Ohio. We formed a good relationship during the recruiting process.

When I got kicked out of school, Mike offered me a job to come out there and live with his family and be his assistant coach for a year. I jumped at that opportunity. Part of what Brown needed to see from me was a commitment to doing something positive for six months in a row. I researched to see if coaching lacrosse would check that box and they said it would. I accepted Mike’s offer, I went out there, and I coached the team with him.

I took two classes at Ohio State. I got A’s in those classes. I worked hard for Mike and was perpetually humbled every single day. I should have been a senior at Brown but instead, I wasn’t in school. I was coaching Division 3 Lacrosse out in Ohio and taking classes at Ohio State Newark campus. My teammates were winning games without me and playing in the national tournament without me. It pounded home the fact that I needed Brown and I needed that experience way more than Brown needed Andy Towers. That was something that was extremely motivating.

I was fortunate to get back into school. I valued the opportunity in a much bigger and profound way. I was able to graduate from Brown. I now have a reference point in my life that I can look back on and say, “I stumbled, I fell, and I got back up. I did the work. I accomplished what I set out to do and that was to make my parents proud and create value for the money that they’ve worked so hard to give me that opportunity.” Quite frankly, I’m fortunate that Brown let me back in and took advantage of the opportunity.

In 2014, you were inducted into the Brown Sports Hall of Fame.

It’s a reflection of having unbelievable teammates and having great coaches.

Also, resiliency on your part.

I was talented. I worked hard at becoming the best lacrosse player that I could become, particularly during my sophomore year in high school through college. The lacrosse box was checked. that was never the problem. It was being true and honest with myself about what my deficiencies were and who I was as a person. I was a great lacrosse player but a crappy person. I wouldn’t say I was a crappy friend. I’ve always been a good friend to people but I didn’t adequately appreciate the opportunities that I had at my disposal. Nothing is more sinful than waste.

Let’s talk about you as a coach. You’ve had a few different coaching jobs. You were an assistant coach at Yale, Brown, Fairfield University and head coaching positions at the University of Hartford and Dartmouth College. You referenced playing for Hall of Fame coaches, both in high school and at the college level. Coaches are teachers, mentors, role models, colleagues, friends, pseudo parents to so many kids, young adults, and athletes. Coaches are part of athlete’s lives at these critical moments of their development when they’re most impressionable and when they most need somebody outside of their parents that they can look up to and see how they live and the values that they exhibit.

In addition to your role at the professional level, you also have coached high school. You’ve coached everything from the professional level. I remember in the first conversation that we ever had, you spoke about teaching youth lacrosse. You said that you want kids to be invested. Your style and the way you approach the sport is all-in. The kids have to be all-in because you’re all over them to drive to be better. What role do you see the coach has in the development of young adults and the development of youth? How do you approach that position as a role model, a teacher, a mentor, and pseudo parent?

Growing up having played sports, I was fortunate to have a lot of great coaches. I know how important they were to me. I know the way that I looked at them, think about them, and how much of them has impacted my development and maturation as a person, how I approach fatherhood and being a spouse. I look at coaching outside of the sport. I coached lacrosse and I’ve also coached basketball, football, and other sports.

For me, I look at it as a responsibility to help kids eliminate regret in their lives. To me, that is the definition of success. It’s not getting the desired result that defines success. It’s doing everything that you can do proactively to get the desired result that defines success. It’s no different than preparing to take a test, preparing to play a game, trying to chase the girl you want to date, or trying to get a promotion at work.

You do everything that you can proactively as it relates to focus, effort, and toughness. If you do those things, you’re going to get the desired result a lot more than you would if you didn’t do those things. When you don’t get the desired result, you’re able to come to grips with it quickly and move on because what sets you free is knowing that you did everything that you could proactively.

In all of my programs and teams that I coach, we want to win games, win championships, and win situations but I’m not hung up on that. You don’t have to be a great player. You have to be a great teammate. You have to be a great competitor. You have to choose focus and toughness. If we aren’t successful due to limitations, I have no problem with that. I’m over it but if we aren’t successful due to decisions, I have a real problem with that.

Many of my failures in life, the Brown situation, was a decision to fail. That’s what I did. I decided to fail. It was a matter of time before all the sand ran out of the hourglass. That’s the foundation of my coaching approach, which is we’re going to go down fighting and we’re going to do everything that we can to get the desired result. Whether we do or we don’t, that’s doesn’t define success. What I find is that it sets the kids and coaches free. When they feel free, it’s more fun. When it’s more fun, you play harder. When you play harder, you’re more apt to get the desired result.

Coaching styles is a conversation that comes up a lot in today’s environment with young athletes. In episode three, we had Jerry Remy on. He was the broadcaster for the Boston Red Sox, a second baseman, and a member of the Red Sox Hall of Fame. I asked him about the difference between managers now and years ago. When you had Generation X, our generation was coached by the Baby Boomers and the Vietnam Veterans.

My high school football coach worked the night shift at a power plant, lived in his conversion van, and was looking forward every day to the hours between 3:00 and 5:00 where he could beat the crap out of us. If you messed up a play, he grabbed you by the facemask and twist your head around until you fell on the ground. He’d spit in your face until you corrected it. He kicked a guy in the head one time and everyone’s like, “I’m going to play my ass off for this guy. I don’t get kicked in the head.”

My lacrosse coach, on the other hand, was different. He was calm and composed. It was more of a disappointment. It was interesting to have these two kinds of different dynamics because you had the uncle who wanted to beat your ass in the fall and then you had your disappointed grandfather in the spring but you played equally hard for both of these guys.

Can you talk about players now versus players yesterday and the approach that you have to take as a coach to understand what’s going to resonate with them? How has that evolved over time? In your years in coaching, you’ve seen this evolution. From your perspective, how has that changed and how do coaches now have to stop and think about some of the things that are going to resonate better than they may have in the past?

I grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I was born in 1968. I graduating high school in 1987. Back then, coaches at times would hit you. I was physically kicked in the ass when I was in high school by a coach. I had a coach say something about my mom that I won’t repeat even though I’ve sworn on this show. It’s the way it was back then. It wasn’t necessarily frowned upon. It may have been looked upon as, “He’s a tough coach.” It was a means to an end.

I’ll never forget coming home after we lost a game in high school and my dad was sitting in the chair, and he said, “Tough game.” I said, “Tough game.” He said, “What did the coach say after the game?” I said, “He called mama C in front of the team.” He didn’t even look-up. He goes, “Maybe he’s trying to motivate you.” That was the mentality back then. In hindsight now, as a coach, I love that was my dad’s response. It was awesome because it made me appreciate the message and not get wrapped up in the packaging, which is so critical for young athletes and people to reach their potential seeing that not every coach is going to put his arm around you and tell you exactly what you need to hear.

Teamwork is critical to everything that we do. Click To Tweet

Sometimes, they’re going to kick in the ass and whether they physically do it or whether they undress you verbally, which would be nowadays version of that physical kick in the ass, they’re trying to get the best out of you. With that said, you can’t do that these days. I wouldn’t do that anyway. I don’t need kids to be great players for me. I need kids to control what’s decision, effort, and toughness related. If you do those things, you make coaching a great experience.

Most importantly, you create a template for success and everything that you’re going to do in your life moving ahead. It’s proactively doing everything that you can to be successful. It comes back to that. People could say that kids now are all coddled. Everybody gets a trophy and all that stuff. I don’t know if I necessarily am a believer in that 100%. That exists in some areas.

Ultimately, as coaches, your players and the culture of your program are going to take on the characteristics that you consistently show them that are important. Being proactive, tactful, clear in your communications, and setting adequate expectations that are accomplishable are all things that help the partnership work. It’s a partnership. As coaches, you create the rules for your team and your program. You need to exemplify the characteristics, as coaches, for your locker room.

You need to help parents now help their kids acquire those characteristics. As a coach, it’s not like, “We’re going out there and you’re going to do what I say. If I say jump, you say, ‘How high?’” You’re dealing with smart kids and smart people. If they ask you why you’re asking them to jump and your response is, “It’s because I say so.” They’re going to write you off. If they don’t write you off, when they tell their parents, their parents are going to write you off. Once the parents write you off, the kids are eventually going to write you off.

You need to be able to verbally defend why you’re asking every kid in your program or that you’re responsible for why you’re asking them to do what you’re asking them to do. If you can do that responsibly, respectfully, clearly, and it makes sense to them, then I found that nowadays, kids will go above and beyond and not only self-police but police each other within the framework of those characteristics. That’s cultivating leadership. That’s the way I look at my role as a coach and what you know hope to leave as a legacy.

There’s integrity and authenticity, a realness, about how you present yourself as a coach. There’s a realness to your emotion. It’s raw and it’s you. There’s no hiding. Jerry Remy said in episode three that if you’re a fake, everybody sees right through you. You can’t be a fake. You have to be genuine to who you are. Through your story, you’ve exhibited that. Through the various stages of your life, it’s always been real who you are at this moment in time. Can you talk a little bit about authenticity as a coach and the player’s perspective of when they see someone who is as invested in it as they are versus someone who’s there because it’s more their job versus their life?

That’s super humbling. I appreciate you saying that, Fran. Thank you. If you are not being authentic, not moving forward, and not creating another obstacle, you’re wasting time. I’m too selfish with my time to waste any of it. I say to every group that I coach, “You might not love everything that I say but I’m going to be proactive, hopefully, be tactful and be honest with you.” Even if you don’t like what I say, hopefully, you can appreciate the respect that we show you in the communications of our decisions.

We’re going to make mistakes all the time, we’re going to try to learn from those mistakes, and we’re going to admit those mistakes. Everything that we do, we’re going to have a purpose to it. We’re going to be able to verbally defend why we’re making these decisions. Some of those things will be black and white or super subjective. You might not agree with the reasoning or the ultimate decision. Hopefully, you can respect the fact that we’re coming right to you.

We’re saying that this is what we’re going to do, this is why we’re doing it, and we’re tactful in the way that we communicate that to you. If you do that, you feel a sense of ownership from everybody, even the people that you’re taking out of the lineup because they feel like they have a say. Even though we maybe make a decision that they don’t necessarily embrace, love, or agree with, the fact that you’re willing to have a conversation with them about that decision fuels a sense of ownership.

Ownership is critical between players, coaches, and support staff to have everybody on the same page. It’s easy to be on the same page with the coaches when you’re a starter or you’re playing. In my opinion, an authentic coach or a good coach is somebody that can keep everybody unified when they’re giving them the news that they don’t necessarily love, which is, “You’re not starting now. You’re out of the lineup this week. We’re putting in the player’s pool.” Those are the tough conversations.

To me, there’s no other way to be with people than to be straightforward, honest, and proactive. You’re not sitting on conversations that you know you have to have. You drop the dime, you man up, and you make the call. If you do that, a lot of times, those tough conversations end up being some of the best conversations that you can have.

I had a guy on my Chaos team years ago in my first season, Jeremy Thompson. He’s an unbelievable human being. He’s native American. I was calling to inform him in game five that he wasn’t going to be in the lineup. I was thinking, “I’m going to call up JT74 and I’m going to let him know.” I hate this conversation but I said, “The way I’m going to do things is the way I told these guys I was going to do things.”

We ended up having a 90-minute conversation and maybe three minutes of that was lacrosse-based. We went on to talk about his family and my learning experiences at Brown and some of these things. We were able to draw many parallels in our lives that made it an unforgettable conversation with this guy and have a genuine friendship and even though he doesn’t play for us anymore, he got picked up by another team. It’s conversations like that make it rewarding. It makes it a situation where you almost cheat yourself out of a part of life that you wouldn’t get if you didn’t proactively attack an uncomfortable or difficult situation.

That realness is what’s bringing you together. That’s what’s creating trust within the team and the organization. One of the things that I admire about your leadership is your ability to give credit. In this conversation, you’ve named 50 or 100 people in all areas of your life, all aspects, players, coaches, friends, people who’ve influenced you and people who’ve you’ve worked alongside who’ve worked with you and for you.

Acknowledgment of the role players play in an organization is a core tenant of you. If you watch any of your press conferences, it’s all about the players and you name them. I want to bring up one press conference, in particular. I have two parts to this conversation. Your goalie, Blaze Riorden, was asked, “Like the best goalie in the world, do you think you’re the best player in the world?” You immediately yelled out, “I do.” The whole plays can hear it.

I’m also fascinated by Blaze’s answer where he says, “I want to be the best teammate in the world. I want to be the best leader in the world. It’s always been a goal to be the best player in the world. Every year is a new year. Every game is a new opportunity. It starts with being the best version of yourself.”

For the record, Blaze is the number one goalie and possibly the number one player with 124 saves and a 61% save average. First, why are praise and acknowledgment so important to your leadership style? What does it mean on the other side as the player when they hear the coach praise them? If you are Blaze and your coach is the first person to say, “That’s the best player in the world.” What does that mean?

It might mean something different to different people. The two things are connected. Positive reinforcement is important. I don’t say anything I don’t believe.

That’s why I think this is important because it’s authentic. You meant it and it wasn’t bullcrap.

I 100% meant it. I mean it and I still mean it. You take what Blaze said in that interview and I don’t think that you reach the level that he’s reached if he doesn’t focus on being the best teammate and the best leader. He’s got unbelievable God-given ability. With that said, as quick as his hands are, as great as his positioning is, as much of a leader as he is in running the defense, and as great as he is helping us get out in transition, all of that stuff pails to his mentality.

He is not consumed by his success. He’s consumed by the team’s success. He is a soldier to his teammate’s success. That’s what he cares about. His responses in these postgame interviews are always like that. That’s who he is. He’s as authentic of a human being as you’re going to find. When you are leaders and your best players are the ones that are the most humble, the most understated, and recognize that their success is 100% connected to the success of those around them, that’s when you are on the verge of something special.

There’s a lot of talented players out there but there’s not a lot of talented players with intangibles like that. He’s 100% authentic. Part of the responsibility that we have as parents, spouses, co-workers, coaches, teachers, and whatever it may be is to recognize that teamwork is critical to everything that we do. In the game of lacrosse, for instance, there might be a guy that catches the ball in the back pipe and scores five right-handed goals. He’s not doing it alone.

It’s applicable to almost every single situation, even individual sports. You take golf or a tennis player, they might be the only one out there but they have their strength and conditioning coaches. They’ve got all of their team of people and it’s all part of that. It’s connected. It’s important to recognize that your success is the team’s success and the team’s success is your success. Good coaches do a good job of making sure that is a widely held opinion. They do a good job of making athletes aware of their intangibles.

Those are the things that you decide about yourself that you want others to see in you and say about you, “He’s a great teammate, hyper-competitive, got great body language, mentally tough, physically durable, and committed to the same degree whether he’s a starter or he doesn’t play at all. His attention to detail is consistent whether he’s a starter or he doesn’t play at all.” It’s character. The most important ingredient to team success is having a roster or having a locker room that is a high-character locker room. You try to make that a priority among the people that you’re in charge of.

That’s what the greats do. Austin Collie was in the previous episode and he’s talked about Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Reggie Wayne. They were the hardest-working players in the organization. He speaks about how he went in and he thought he was a hard worker until he saw this. This was the next level. There was this need to immediately correct mistakes and to work harder than everybody else. He has a great quote from that episode where he says, “How can I help make the team better?” It’s not, “How can the team make me better?”

That’s such an awesome quote. I talked to parents that I coach a ton of these teams. One of the worst pieces of advice that kids get from parents is, “If you want more playing time, go in and speak to the coach.” It’s the worst advice I’ve ever heard. All that does is tell the coach that all you care about is yourself. There’s not a good coach out there that is concerned about getting a specific player more playing time. It’s not about you. It’s about the team.

The fact that Austin Collie says it the way that he says it, “How can I help the team?” That’s a team-first question. That’s a we question. “How can I get more playing time?” It’s a me question. It’s one of the worst questions you can ask a coach. Yet, it seems like you hear that all the time. Nothing is more of a turnoff, at least to me, than when somebody comes in and says, “How can I get more playing time?” My response is, “Work your ass off. Shut up and wait for your turn. It might come and it might not but that’s in the best interest of the team. The team’s success is what I care about. That’s what you should be caring about more too.”

Let’s dig into that a little further. The coach has a responsibility to the team to get them to that end state but the coach can’t do it. There comes a point where you, as the coach, have done everything that you can do to prepare these players for success. How do you approach that juncture, that point in which you have internalized, “I’ve done everything I can. Now I have to turn it over to you as the players and as the leaders of that team to now execute?” How do you drive that into that organization?

I try to pound home the point that this is a partnership. We all want the same things. We all want to get the desired outcome. Whether that’s winning the game, winning a championship, or whatever it may be, it’s a partnership. If the players on the team do what you ask them to do with a super high compete level, focus, effort, toughness, and they aren’t successful, that’s my fault as the coach. If they don’t do what you ask them to do or they do but they don’t do it with a high compete level and they don’t do it with the things that are focused, effort, and toughness-related, then that’s their fault.

With that said, a good coach is going to take ownership of his team’s ability to focus, compete, play with toughness, and be mindful of that while you’re integrating scheme and all of those types of things so that they’re motivated and inspired by the fact that they feel ready to play, know what their respective role is, and know what we’re trying to do from a big picture standpoint in all areas of the game. At the end of the day, it’s a partnership.

Sometimes, the team needs a kick in the ass. Sometimes, they need to be calmed down. For me, I’m always trying to address, what are the facts of the situation here? Where are we? Where’s the other team that we’re playing? What are the keys to the game? Tie that back into focus, effort, toughness, and then I feel like we’re ready to go. As the game goes on, if there are schematic adjustments that need to be made, that falls on us as the coaches, everything is a conversation.

Our timeouts and practices are conversations. Coaching the PLL, you got some of the best lacrosse minds in the world on your team as players. I’d be foolish not to utilize their thoughts and their input. We do that but at the end of the day, we’re going to make the final decisions but we’re going to do it with input from the players. Once we commit to it, then everybody is picking up a shovel.

We say it all the time, “We don’t mind the idea, guys,” but that’s got to come during the week and at practices. Once we get to the game, it’s execution. We agree on what we’re going to do and we’re going to do that with focus, effort, and toughness. If we do that consistently, we’re going to be successful. We’re going to get the desired result a lot more than we would if we weren’t able to do that. That’s what’s sets you free.

There’s an intensity about you as a coach that I find admirable. Sitting here in this conversation and listening to it makes me want to flip the table and be like, “I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m going to rip someone’s head off.” This has been an amazing conversation. I am thankful and fortunate that we can share these lessons with our audience and the leaders that we’re developing. If you can’t take something away from this as a coach, a leader, an athlete, wherever you sit in an organization, then I don’t know what else that can do for you.

It’s super humbling. I appreciate it.

I do want to have a little bit of fun here at the end for a couple of things because you have a few phrases that you throw out a lot. I have seen some videos of you throwing these phrases out, which has resulted in people trying to rip doors off walls and smashing things across the room. I’m going to throw them out and I want you to come back real quick. What’s the three-line and what it means to you and your organization? The first one is, “Stick to the process.”

Do what we’ve practiced. Don’t second guess what our approach is. We’ve agreed on what our approach is and we’re going to go out there. As much as we have a plan in place at the end of the day, the team that plays the hardest is usually the one that wins. Part of playing hardest is using your voice, making smart decisions, being disciplined, and have a commitment doing your job within the framework of the big picture plan.

In special forces, we used to make a plan. When a guy would go to the door, you’d have a plan. You’d be ready to breach the door and he has plans to go right. When you breached the door, he goes left. You’re like, “What the hell did you do?”

That’s when the money is on the table.

Now it’s a skill because it’s like, “You almost got yourself shot in the back.” Number two, “Chemistry trumps talent every time.”

One hundred percent, especially in the PLL, this game is a team sport and it’s about getting connected. The difference between the best individual players versus that next year is razor-thin. Chemistry trumps everything. As you look to put together the best roster that you can, there is little value in super talented players that are high maintenance as people. The best players are the ones that appreciate the importance of being zero maintenance as people, as players, and as teammates. Zero maintenance people get connected the fastest and the best.

There’s a trust factor across the whole organization. Number three, “Sell your soul between the lines.”

Don’t get beaten up. Don’t get outworked in the blue-collar areas of the game. This game is about possessions. Outside of scoring more goals than the other team, it’s almost always the team that wins the groundball battle that ends up winning the game. In the PLL, the offenses are good that they’re going to score goals. Which team has the ball more? That’s usually the team that’s going to score more goals. In the middle of the field, you sell your soul. You got to be willing to take the pain associated with winning the situation. That might be a pain as it relates to endurance. It might be a pain as it relates to getting checked. It might be a pain to getting yanked out of the lineup and you don’t like that. Be willing to take the pain for the success of the team.

Here’s my favorite one, “Nothing is better than walking into a bar and having everybody go, ‘That guy can kick everybody’s ass.’ That’s the first guy you go over and punch in the face. Nothing is better than beating someone up who’s coming to kick your ass.”

Recognize that your success is the team’s success and the team’s success is your success. Click To Tweet

I was trying to create a parallel to a situation that our team was in. The Chrome that we were playing that game is a tough team. They got tough coaches. Their back was against the wall. They were rabid dogs waiting to be unleashed. If you wait to respond and let somebody get the first couple punches in and you don’t know how hard they punch, they might knock you out, and you might be dead before you even have a chance to get on your feet.

My point in saying that was to let these guys know don’t wait for the toughest guy in the bar to come over and start pushing you around and throw the first punch. You might not get up. You might get rinsed and get swept out of the bar. I wanted to make sure our guys understood the importance of going out and throwing the first punch. Nothing feels better than beating somebody up who thinks he’s tough who’s coming for you and knocking him out first. That’s what we try to do and that was the purpose of that story.

It’s words to live by. Who wins in a fight, Andy Towers or Stone Cold Steve Austin?

Hopefully, I never have to fight Stone Cold. My money would be on Stone Cold.

I like you but my money is on Stone Cold. You’re a big dude but he’s bigger. We got to close out, Coach. In World War II, the Jedburghs had to do three things to be successful every day. They had three core foundational aspects. In your world, you call them stick-skills. If you can’t catch on 30, you can’t do anything else. It doesn’t matter how good you are. The Jedburghs had to be able to shoot, move, and communicate foundational core tasks. Any other challenge, they could tackle divert energy if they were successful in those three things. What are the three things that you do every day to set the foundation for your success?

Get a workout in, handle my business administration, and make sure my family knows I love them. Those would be the three things that allow me to have zero regrets every day, which defines success.

We talk about the nine characteristics of elite performance on the show and we say that elite performers have to demonstrate all nine. They demonstrate them at different times, in every situation that needs all nine. Depending on the situation you’re in, you’re going to exhibit a couple of them at different times. I say that I take one and I attribute it to my guest because it’s what defines them. It’s what defines you. I look at you and I think of team ability. The ability to prioritize the need of the organization, the goal of the organization ahead of yourself, to build and work as a cohesive unit towards winning with this multiplicative attitude that the sum is greater than the individual parts exponentially.

Coach, thank you for joining me on the show and taking time out of your busy schedule. You have the playoffs coming up and we’ll be watching. We’ll be cheering for you and the Chaos. You’re not only a coach, but you’re a mentor, a role model, a leader, and a friend. You’re a legend in your own right. You are an inspiration to all of those who aspire not only to win but to dominate in anything that they set out to do. Thank you.

Thank you. I don’t know if you could give a bigger compliment to somebody than that. It’s humbling. I’m super appreciative of you having me on. It was an awesome time hanging out with you. I learned a ton and I take a ton from this. I’m excited about where we’re all going. Thanks a ton, Fran. I appreciate you having me on. It’s super humbling.

Good luck.

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About the author

Fran Racioppi

Francis Racioppi, CPP, CBCP, most recently led Genius Fund as the Chief Executive and Chief Operating Officer, a vertically integrated cannabis company in Los Angeles, CA. Prior to Genius, Fran served as the Director of Global Security for Snapchat where he was recruited to professionalize and scale the security organization across the globe and among all business units. Fran holds an MBA from New York University and graduated with honors from Boston University with a BA in Journalism and a minor in Political Science. Fran served 13 years in the United States Army as a Green Beret, deploying three times to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. A lifelong sailor, Fran volunteers teaching Veterans to sail as the Race Director for Sailahead a Veterans service organization dedicated to reducing the Veteran suicide rate. Fran has also served as the Treasurer of the United War Veterans Council, an NYC-based non-profit focused on the wellness and healing of transitioning veterans, as well as the host of the annual NYC Veterans Day Parade.

Gary Gait – Women’s Lacrosse Coach

Orange All-American and lacrosse Hall of Famer Gary Gait is the second head coach in the history of the Syracuse women’s lacrosse program. Gait is a 10-time NCAA champion, having won three titles as a player for the Orange (1988-90) and seven as an assistant women’s lacrosse coach at the University of Maryland (1995-01).

In his first season at the helm, Gait led the Orange to new heights. Syracuse won its first outright BIG EAST regular-season crown and successfully defended the tournament title. The Orange earned a program-best fifth seed in the NCAA Championship. where it defeated Towson and North Carolina to advance to the Final Four for the first time in school history.

The Orange set four NCAA single-season records on its way to a school-record 18 victories. Syracuse led the nation in scoring with 541 points. The Orange also established new standards for goals (380) and goals (18.01) and points (25.64) per game.

Under Gait’s tutelage, four student-athletes earned All-America honors, while six were named to the All-Region First Team – both program bests. Syracuse dominated the BIG EAST awards, claiming Attack and Defensive Player of the Year honors and seven all-conference nods.

As a player, Gait enjoyed success at every level. While at Syracuse he helped the Orange to three-straight NCAA titles, earned first-team All-America honors three times and received the Player of the Year award twice. Gait’s dominance continued at the professional level as he earned league MVP honors in both the National Lacrosse League and Major League Lacrosse. On the international scene, Gait has been recognized as one of the sport’s best players, earning International Lacrosse Federation (ILF) All-World Team honors.

Success on the Sidelines
Prior to returning to his alma mater, Gait spent two seasons as the head coach of the Colorado Mammoth of the National Lacrosse League (NLL). In his first two campaigns, he led the Mammoth to two playoff appearances and the 2006 league championship. Gait’s professional coaching experience also includes four seasons (2002-05) as player-coach of Major League Lacrosse’s (MLL) Baltimore Bayhawks. He won championships there as well, taking home MLL titles in 2002 and 2005.

Gait tasted success coaching on the international level when he led Team Canada to the 2007 Men’s World Indoor Championship. Gait’s squad rolled through the tournament, winning all five of its games, including the championship tilt, 15-14, versus the Iroquois. This past summer, he served as the head coach of the Canadian men’s under-19 team that won the silver medal at the ILF World Championship.

As an assistant at Maryland, Gait helped build one of the most impressive dynasties in NCAA history. The Terps compiled a remarkable 164-16 (.911) overall record in his nine years on the staff, including four undefeated seasons (1995, 1996, 1999, 2001) and seven consecutive NCAA championships (1995-01). He coached and recruited some of the greatest players in the history of the women’s game, including NCAA career scoring leader and 2001 Tewaaraton Trophy winner Jen Adams, as well as four-time All-American and 1995 National Defensive Player of the Year and 1996 National Offensive Player of the Year Kelly Amonte.

In all, Gait has mentored 29 All-Americans and eight players that at one time earned national player of the year honors.

Dominance on the Field
Gait’s success as a coach might only be surpassed by his accomplishments as a player. He has won every major collegiate, professional, and international championship in the sport during his career. In addition to his three NCAA championships with the Orange, Gait has won three NLL titles (1991, 1994-95), three MLL titles (2001-02, 2005), three Mann Cups (1991, 1997, 1999), which are awarded to the senior men’s lacrosse champions of Canada, the Heritage Cup (2004), which goes to the winner of the international box lacrosse tournament every two years, and the International Lacrosse Federation (ILF) World Championship (2006).

Donning the Orange
A native of Victoria, British Columbia, Gait and his twin brother, Paul, began their playing careers at Syracuse in 1987. There, under the tutelage of SU head coach Roy Simmons Jr., the duo revolutionized lacrosse, bringing a sense of style and excitement to the game that had never been seen before. At no time was that more evident than in the 1988 national semifinal against Penn at the Carrier Dome when Gary unveiled the “Air Gait,” scoring twice by dunking over the top of the goal.

While Gait’s individual theatrics delighted the crowd, Syracuse also excelled as a team with him running the midfield. His Orange squads registered an overall record of 51-5 (.911) from 1987-90, won three national titles, and posted two undefeated seasons (1988, 1990). In 1990, Gait was selected as the NCAA Tournament MVP on what many still call “the greatest lacrosse team ever assembled.”

Individually, he earned All-America honors four times, including three straight first-team nods (1988-90). He also won the Lt. Raymond Enners Award (National Player of the Year) twice (1988, 1990) and the Lt. Donald C. MacLaughlin Jr. Award (Midfielder of the Year) in 1988 and 1990.

Gait still holds the Syracuse career goals scored record (192), which was the NCAA single-season record until 2008. He also owns SU’s single-season goals mark (70), and his nine tallies against Navy in the 1990 NCAA Tournament tied the tournament and school single-game standards.

In conjunction with the 1997 Final Four, the NCAA Lacrosse Committee named Gait, and his brother, Paul, to the 25th Anniversary Lacrosse Team.

Joining the Professional Ranks
After his collegiate playing career, Gait took his talents to the professional level, where he played 15 years in the NLL with the Detroit Turbos, Philadelphia Wings, Baltimore Thunder, Pittsburgh CrossFire, Washington Power, and Colorado Mammoth. In 1991 with Detroit, he was named the NLL Rookie of the Year, and later in his career he was selected the league’s MVP a record six times, including five in a row (1995-99). He was also an All-Pro every season.

Gait led the NLL in points and goals seven times and he finished his indoor career as the league’s all-time leading scorer with 1,091 points (since broken). He also won three league championships, leading the Turbos to the title in 1991 and the Wings to consecutive titles in 1994 and 1995. In 2009, Gait returned after a three-year absence to play for the Rochester Knighthawks.

In recognition of his extraordinary NLL career, he was selected as one of five charter members of the league’s Hall of Fame in 2006.

Gait also played five outdoor seasons in Major League Lacrosse. He made his MLL debut with the Long Island Lizards in 2001 before taking over as player-coach of the Bayhawks the following season.

In his final MLL campaign, Gait led the league in goals, points, and hat tricks. He finished tied in the voting for league MVP and was named the MVP of the championship game after leading the Bayhawks to their second Steinfeld Cup. Gait also won championships with Baltimore in 2002 and the Lizards in 2001.

Gait’s other playing accomplishments include helping the Victoria Shamrocks to the Mann Cup in 1997 and 1999, winning the 2004 Heritage Cup (Canada), and leading Canada to its first world title since 1978 at the 2006 ILF World Championship in London, Ontario. Playing on the international stage for the final time, Gait saved his best for last, tallying four goals in the ILF title tilt to lead the Canadians to a 15-10 upset of the U.S. squad.

Gait, a 2005 National Lacrosse Hall of Fame inductee, also spends time off the field working to grow the game. He is the president of NDP Lacrosse, a national lacrosse development and education program, and was the chairman of the 2007 Under Armour Boys All-America selection committee.

He and his wife, Nicole, have two children, Taylor (14) and Braedon (12).

Al Jazeera (Qatar): how do you walk? 16 Walk Types And What They Can Say About Your Personality | Society | Inosmi

Criminals pay attention to gait and other non-verbal signals when looking for a potential victim. Serial killer Ted Bundy boasted in an interview before his execution that he can recognize the victim by the way she walks down the street, how she bows her head, her demeanor and the like.

Specialists have been studying various types of gait since the 19th century.And the way a person moves can tell a lot about the character of a person. This is stated in an article by Jane Davis published by the Learning Mind website.

Is it possible to understand a person’s character just by looking at his gait? Learn about the 16 gaits and what they have to say about your personality:

1. Long, confident steps

Long, confident strides indicate confidence and dominance, especially in women. In addition, this type of gait indicates that a woman enjoys sex life, because a long stride indicates the flexibility of the pelvis and spine.

The use of sweeping movements of the arms in sync with the legs speaks of a dominant personality.

2. Small, light steps

Small steps combined with a light movement of the hands indicate a submissive character of a person. If these movements are not synchronized, then this indicates uncertainty.

3. Brisk walking

Brisk walking indicates a friendly character. It also suggests a higher level of openness, awareness, and a lower level of neuroticism.

4. Slow walking

Unsurprisingly, slow walking indicates a more wary attitude towards life. Walking slowly with your head down may indicate introversion.

5. Synchronized walking

Psychopaths monitor gait patterns to determine if a person is vulnerable or not. Synchronized walking speaks of confidence and assertiveness, which is why they look for those who are not walking synchronously.

6.Pronation of the foot

Pronation of the foot is the natural movement of our feet from side to side when walking. Ballet dancers often have highly pronated feet as they try to achieve graceful positioning of the legs and feet. However, this is an unnatural way of walking, it takes effort. Thus, it is suggestive of high self-esteem and narcissistic traits.

7. Walking with sweeping movements

Extroverts tend to take long strides combined with waving their arms and swaying their hips.This type of people loves to be in the spotlight. Men, in particular, usually use this type of gait to demonstrate self-confidence.

8. Easy walking

Calm, self-confident people walk with an easy walking step, without strict adherence to the direction. And the lack of rush indicates high self-esteem.

9. Vigorous walking

You might think that a person who is going somewhere energetically just wants to get to their destination quickly.But research shows that this type of gait is associated with attention to detail. People walk in such a way as to stay focused.

10. Dragging

According to experts, people shake their feet when they are nervous, under stress or having difficulty solving problems. In addition, this type of gait is associated with Parkinson’s disease. It is even known as the Parkinson’s Walk.

11. Walking with an incline to the left

Another indicator of anxiety is gait, in which a person leans to the left.This may be related to the way the left and right hemispheres of the brain work, as the right hemisphere of the brain works more actively when we are concerned about something.

12. Walking on tiptoes

It is normal for young children to walk on tiptoe. But if they continue to tiptoe into adulthood, it is indicative of serious health conditions, including cerebral palsy and autism.

13. Walking with the shoulders down

This type of walking is associated with anxiety, especially in those who have recently experienced trauma.Humping is a sign that a person is trying to protect themselves from more pain.

14. Heavy gait

A slow, heavy gait indicates depression. Slow and heavy steps with your head down seem to tell everyone that you carry the burden of the world on your shoulders. However, experts say that brisk walking with your head up can help relieve symptoms of depression.

15. Stomp

If you stamp your feet while walking, then it speaks of hot temper and immaturity.Children often stomp their feet when they get hysterical.

16. Soft gait

If you step gently and quietly, it means that you feel calm, comfortable and quite happy with your life. Such people get along well with other people and do not create problems.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign mass media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial board.

Alexander GINEVSKY | Net goal

Behind his back, above the bed, there were photographs.On one of them, Dmitry Evseevich is very young. With hair flying to the back of the head, light as the wind. In a high jump at the very bar. The face is contorted with a grimace of tension. The whole body is like being shot after the ball. The ball is directed by his head … The goalkeeper did everything he could, but in this instant captured by the camera, he is powerless …

– If someday, one of you will play in a cool team, remember: Dmitry Evseevich systematically taught you to drink kefir, – with these words the physical education instructor took a white, misted bottle from the bedside table.He pressed the colored cap with a wide thumb and poured a glass. – Blessed drink. I can’t live without it, ”he said, and pulled a towel from his round shoulder. He wiped his red face, wet from the heat. – So so, – the voice of the physical education instructor freshened up. – What is the attitude towards the game? Our last one. We play in our usual manner. We have the medals in our pockets, so we don’t feel any psychological stress …

At the mention of the medals, the guys looked at each other and smiled.

– Not really chocolate again? Someone asked in a whisper.

– What are you ?! They said it was made of metal. Almost real!

– That’s great!

– True, – continued the physical education instructor, – will have to play for a draw …

– Dmitry Evseevich?!.

– Yes, we will erase these “torchbearers” into powder!

– What are we with them ?! Darn in no time!

– Well … again twenty-five. Again your childish maximalism, ”Dmitry Evseevich held out his hand in protest with a gold ring drowned in the plump flesh of his finger.- How much can you explain? Regardless of the outcome, we are the champions – once, – the physical education instructor bent one finger. – “Red Torch” our good neighbors – two. Playing on their field. I emphasize: we play at a party … If we darn them, as you say, they will take not second, but third place … Next. From whom does our camp rent a bathing suit? The Red Torch has three. This must not be forgotten. Who gives us Polish tents and sleeping bags for hiking? ..

The guys sitting on the veranda listened attentively to Dmitry Evseevich.Only Pashka Kolomentsev stealthily drove a blade of grass behind the ear of goalkeeper Vitka Kozlikov. Kozlikov absentmindedly slapped himself on the neck and this amused Pashka.

– Kolomentsev, – Dmitry Evseevich shook his finger, – have you heard what we are talking about?

– I heard, heard, – Pashka, choking with laughter, answered. – We play in our usual manner.

– And look at me, Kolomentsev, – the physical education instructor reminded, do not get caught up with your feints … Summing up. We play in the usual arrangement. Well … we answer a goal conceded with a goal.So?

– So!

– Two pocketed!

– I will … – Dmitry Evseevich smiled. – Captain, have the uniforms been washed? Ironed out?

Concerned Kolya Suteev began his report on the situation with ammunition.

Suddenly from the bushes near the path came:

– But since the free ocean is wide and a modest little shuttle shakes with a mighty ship, – I dared to appear on the wave …

It could only be Leonid Mikhailovich Lapshin.Educator of the baby squad. Cheerful, noisy, a little weird. In life, they often laugh at such, they are in no hurry to admire such. It’s no joke to say that a man is stuffed with verses like a haystack with fragrant blades of grass. Poems boiled in him, asked to go out, and therefore the teacher recited them from morning to evening. The baby fell in love with her Lapshin from the first day. From the first day she climbed on it like ants on a bushy tree. I climbed and also recited. And it is difficult to say which of them got more pleasure.

But the head of the camp Lapshin did not like it. From the second day when he saw such a picture. Surrounding the stretched blanket, the entire detachment, led by the teacher, stood under the porch of their residence. Another “cosmonaut” jumped from the porch directly onto this blanket. The astronaut squealed with delight, experiencing “weightlessness.”

The director frowned and went to the launch site. He asked Leonid Mikhailovich for a minute. Took to the side.

– What are you doing? .. – said the chief, with difficulty finding words to express his indignation.- Today – from the porch, tomorrow – they will climb onto the roof …

– Well, why, Arkady Borisovich, – the teacher smiled, pushing the bow of his glasses with his finger. – They are not such fools …

– Well, you know ?! So that I don’t see this again! – the chief chopped the air in his hearts, turned and went his own way. “One such Paganel will ruin my whole summer,” he thought of Lapshin as he walked away.

In his parental days, his mother came to Leonid Mikhailovich, as to a pioneer.A small elderly woman with a black straw hat on her head. She pulled an endless supply of treats out of her bag. At the same time, my mother looked at Lapshin with such adoration and pride, as if it were not a son, a second-year student at the University, an educator of a baby detachment, but a well-known diplomat from an embassy in some Mexico …

Leonid Mikhailovich went up to the steps of the terrace.

– Salute to the Olympians! He said, shaking his thick hair. Thick glasses flashed.

– Hello to the 8th squad!

– Hello, Leonid Mikhailovi!

– No applause, – said the teacher and suddenly quietly and mysteriously asked: – Get ready? ..

– Getting ready.

– I wish you good luck!

– Come get sick!

– I am flattered by your invitation. I will certainly bring my chickens, – Lapshin bowed ceremoniously and hurried with his mincing gait, repeating: – Summer cherishes its best flower, even though it blooms and withers by itself.But if a flaw has found a shelter in it, any weed will become more worthy of it …

And, as always, Lashin rushed after him:

– It gives!

– Freaky.

– So guys, Dmitry Evseevich caught himself, please attention. I didn’t tell you about the surprise.

– Surprise ?!

– Wow!

– What other surprise?

– After the game, the hosts treat us to dinner. Festive. Among other things, there will be oranges, walnuts and bananas.For the winners …

– Ur-ra !!

When the jubilation subsided, the defender Venka Scratching asked:

– Dmitry Evseevich, how much? ..

– How long is it?

– They will give something …

– For you personally, Scratching, a pood of one, the other and the third.

Fans from five camps gathered at the Red Torch stadium. Still would! Final game. All teams that take first, second and third places will be awarded medals.

Leonid Mikhailovich brought his chickens, as promised. They could be heard from afar, even when they were walking. Together with their teacher, they bawled throughout the forest:

– Some who boast of their kinship and nobility, some by strength, some with a brilliant galloon, some with a wallet, some with buckles on a dress, some with a falcon, a dog, a horse …

– Noodles!

– The noodles are coming! – They were talking animatedly in the camp of Mayak fans.

– The callsigns of the football match were played.Both teams lined up to greet.

Whistle. The game has begun.

Forwards of both teams immediately began to pass to their defenders. The defenders, after thinking for a while, sent the ball to the goalkeeper. They did it with a daze: how not to roll it into their own gates. The work of the goalkeepers, although calm, was still there. Soon they both got wet. Because the attackers were sending them the ball already bypassing the defenders. The defenders are bored. They looked at their goalkeepers indifferently, without any sympathy.Embarrassed by this turn, the captains ran up to their attackers and whispered:

– Are you already completely crazy? ..

– Did you forget about the installation on the game? – answered them reasonably.

And so it went on. If the ball dropped between two opponents, then one of them kindly stepped aside, they say, it’s somehow awkward to take it away from the owners. Or, they say, this is not a good occupation – offending guests.

The judge has already begun to threaten and gesture to call both teams to more active actions.And the fans finally waited for a happy moment when they could shout at full speed:

– For Fakel soap!

– “Lighthouse” for soap!

– Judge for the soap!

Lyudochka was sitting on Leonid Mikhailovich’s lap. The youngest in the squad. She didn’t even look at the field, as if she knew that nothing interesting was happening there. Lyudochka weaved a wreath of bells. Weaved one, put it on the teacher’s head and set to work on the other.

– Leon, how is it for soap? Do you want to wash it? She asked, not looking up from her occupation.

But Leonid Mikhailovich was silent. A person far from sports, hardly understanding what was happening, he saw now only how the cheeks of the football field were filled with shame. The field turned red for the players.

But what is it? The ball is at the right extreme “Mayak”. At Pashka Kolomentsev’s. In front of him, the attacker of the enemy is indecisive. Pashka with the ball went straight to him. As if inviting to attack. “Well, what have become like a tree stump. Take it, take it away … And everything will be all right … “- Pashka whispered. The enemy seemed to have heard this plea.I went to him. But Kolomentsev swung to the left and immediately, along with the ball, rushed to the right. The attacker was left behind. And Pashka, along his edge, crossed over to half of the enemy.

The captain of the Fakel ran up to Kolya Suteev.

– What is he, huh? ..

“I don’t know,” Suteev shrugged his shoulders. – What are you asking me?

– How is that? .. Forgot, huh ?!

– Run better and help out the team, – Kolya snapped.

All the Fakel’s attackers rushed in the opposite direction to Kolomentsev.The defenders froze in dumbfoundedness in the penalty area. The horny goalkeeper yelled at them like a coachman on horses.

“Ah! There are so many of you there, – thought Pashka with gleeful excitement. – Four for one. Good. Now you will take it away, of course. Just not right away … Just we’ll see how you do it … Come on, come on, darlings. Here is the ball. It’s round. Well?!.”

Pashka glanced to the left. No one of their own. “So much the better,” he thought desperately, and finally decided that he wouldn’t give up the ball for that.

Kolomentsev walked along the sideline, just miraculously not falling out of the field. Now he weaves laces of short feints, then he breaks through the opponents who pressed against him. It seemed that the ball itself did not want to part with Pashka’s legs, so they understood each other. And only when Kolomentsev went to the gate, he suddenly hesitated: to beat or not to beat? That is the question … As they say …

But then the Fakel goalkeeper, as it were, suggested to Pashka what to do. “No, I won’t hit… “- decided Kolomentsev. He froze in place, kicked the ball with his toe and gently threw it over the far-flung goalkeeper. He jumped, arms outstretched, but in vain. The ball fell behind him, and, still obedient to Pashka’s will, slowly, reluctantly, rolled into the goal.

… And then the game began. The game for which so many people have gathered. For the sake of which they put on a sports uniform and go out on the field. The game to win …

Pashkin’s goal turned out to be fatal for Fakel: Red Torch fell back to third place.

The medal ceremony has begun. And while this procedure was going on, Kolomentsev saw Dmitry Evseevich and the physical instructor of the “Red Torch” talking a little to the side.

Dmitry Evseevich wiped his wet red face with a towel, throwing something sharp to the interlocutor. He waved his hand, turned away.

The Mayak team was invited to the dining room.

Dmitry Evseevich approached Pashka.

– Oh, Kolomentsev, what are you? .. Well, he planted a pig !….

Pashka raised his head.

– Dmitry Evseevich, I didn’t want to. Somehow it happened … And there were so many of them. And I am alone … And I did not think …

– It worked out … And with what appetite will you eat oranges? ..

They were already marching in formation.

Pashka stopped and shrugged.

– Yes I … yes I … I saw your oranges in the coffin!

He walked towards his camp.

– Kolomentsev, come back! Get back on line now!…

He was already far away when he heard the sound of running feet. Someone overtook him, the sound of footsteps was cut off.

Pashka raised his head. Lapshin stood before him. Smiling, he held out his hand.

“You know,” he said respectfully, “I didn’t understand everything right away. And you are great. You … I would like to shake your hand. And don’t be upset. You don’t even have the right to do that! Just listen …

Pashka looked gloomily into Lapshin’s face. He took a step to the side to go around him, but he grabbed Pashka by the hand.

– Just listen. Football is not an instant, not a good sight … – Lapshin thought a little. – I found in him a little resemblance to that in human life, when there is a struggle between the beautiful and ugliness and the one who thinks sanely – with extravagance. The fight excites me as always. She lives persistently and rudely in the flight of birds, – Lapshin’s voice rang, – in the murmur of a stream, definite, like in a game for the goblet, where there can never be a draw. You hear, – said Lapshin and repeated: – Where there can never be a draw…

Pashka pulled his hand.

– Leave me alone! Why are they stuck ?! I need your poems like a cane to a rooster … – he muttered.

Lapshin threw up his hands in puzzlement and remained standing still.

– Even Vladimi Vladimych Mayakovsky himself called one of his books “I got it!” With such a football word … – Lapshin said quietly, but this was said rather to himself.

After dinner, Kolomentsev was told that the physical education instructor asked him to come to him.

– I won’t go, – Pashka shook his head in annoyance.

But the physical education instructor found him himself, and almost dragged him by the collar.

They were sitting on Dmitry Evseevich’s creaking bed.

Fizruk was breathing heavily. For a long time he ruffled his thin gray hair.

“Here,” he said sharply, unexpectedly. He pulled up a stool, banged his hand on the old, shabby newspaper lying on it.

Pashka looked. Some kind of article. I began to read the underlined lines:

“I never got tired of playing football.On the contrary, so to speak, I always “light up” when I appear on the field. ”

“And there is nothing more sad for me than an empty ball, from which air is released …”

These words belonged to Edson Arantes before Nassment Pele.

– Have you read it? – Dmitry Evseevich asked dully.

– Read.

– He would have been in your place, – Dmitry Evseevich pointed at the signature, – he would have also … scored. And here he is … – the physical education instructor turned sharply and looked angrily at his photographs.- Ugh, it’s a shame! What I teach is called … systematically drinking kefir … – he turned away and after a long silence said: – And this, brother … it’s good, Kolomentsev, that you did it yourself …

Pashka looked out the open window. Small butterflies flew into the light from the darkness into the room. Their small wings flashed with elongated sparks. The distant, motionless light of a street lamp could be seen through the black thicket of bushes.

– We need protection, but, however, football has been conceived from time immemorial as an attack, and it should be an attack.And if, breathing the century, you, like in one of the best schools, have become a man in football, then this is the purest goal!

– Have you heard? – Dmitry Evseevich got out of bed, whispered to Pashka: – Oh, yes, student! Straight to nine, cannon …

– Dmitry Evseevich, – Lapshin’s voice came from the street, – are you at your place?

– Yes.

– I’m going to you to talk …

– Well, now, I feel, he will give me a couple of heat. Go, Kolomentsev, go to your place, go.

Lapshin, seeing Pashka coming down the steps of the terrace to meet him, stopped.

– A-huh?!. Bombardier, he didn’t immediately recognize. – It’s dark now, no one will see. Would you mind shaking your hand?

Pashka first wiped his sweaty palm on his pants.

Mother returned from the farm. Without taking off her boots, she walked into the room, sat down heavily on the bed; I didn’t even throw back the covers. She dropped her hands between her knees. For some time she looked with an indifferent gaze as the dark veins slowly swell, as they bulge out with rope cords.

“Baby, I wish you to hold out… Now I know you can … “- he did not notice that he was muttering it aloud, hotly. Even his own steps, weakly bending legs, stepping under the weight of an overweight body with a shuffle, flat – with the whole foot – did not drown his words.

90,000 media: Panarin beaten by Wilson will miss the rest of the season due to injury

Alexander Ovechkin’s Canadian teammate in the Washington Capitals, Tom Wilson, attacked two Russians in a match against the New York Rangers. First, he hit the lying Pavel Buchnevich with his fist from above, and then knocked over Artemy Panarin, who was left without a helmet, head down.After this episode, Panarin no longer went on the ice and risks missing the rest of the season due to injury.

In a match between two very “Russian” NHL teams – the Washington Capitals and the New York Rangers – a terrible incident took place, which had every chance of turning into a tragic one.

The game began with a scoring shootout: first, the capital took the lead (2: 0), then the Rangers managed to recoup and turn the tide of the meeting (3: 2), and then the Canadian striker of Washington, Tom Wilson, almost turned the career of Artemy Panarin …

The conflict erupted from the usual game episode: “New York” won the right to the majority, the Russian striker Pavel Buchnevich burst into a nickle and tried to close the pass, but he was prevented by the defender of “Washington” Trevor van Riemsdyck. In a tough fight, Buchnevich fell on the ice and missed the chance to excel – and then Tom Wilson’s performance of inadequacy began.

A Canadian striker with his right hand hit the lying Buchnevich on the back. The Russian at that moment did not represent any danger and did not try to either bring the puck into the goal or bump into any of the Washington players.

Wilson’s act looked like inexplicable aggression and mockery of a lying opponent who did not even see who was beating him. For the Russian team-mate stood up New York striker Ryan Strohm, who grabbed Wilson from behind and began to drag him aside. Many players from both teams quickly joined the brawl, not figuring out who was right and wrong.

After Buchnevich, Wilson quickly switched to a new victim and began to beat Storm from above.At that moment, Panarin ran into him, grabbed him by the body and dragged him to the side.

Hardened in numerous fights, Wilson quickly turned around, knocked the helmet off the Russian with a couple of blows to the head, and then suddenly grabbed him by the hair and dragged him down.

With this dirty trick, the North American made Panarin lose his balance and knocked him head down – so that he hit the back of his head hard. It looked very scary.

Incorrect. Pulled his hair and then slammed his head on the ground.Slow-no video, watch Wilson’s left hand pic.twitter.com/CLT1t2blSm

– dantelives13 (@ dantelives13) May 4, 2021

With the help of the referees and many teammates, the fighters were finally separated, but for Panarin this was the last action in the match. He suffered an injury to his lower body, due to which he no longer went to the site. In total, he spent 10 minutes and 40 seconds on the ice, scoring two assists during this time.Now he has 58 points in the season – 17 goals + 41 assists.

In the absence of their main star, the Rangers lost the initiative and lost to Washington 3-6.

According to media reports, Panarin will not be able to help his team until the end of the season.

It should be noted here that the “blue shirts” have only three matches left in the regular season of the NHL, since they did not make it to the playoffs – after this defeat, the team lost even mathematical chances to Washington.

Preliminary word is that NYR Artemi Panarin won’t play the rest of the season.

– Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) May 4, 2021

Rangers head coach David Quinn expressed hope that Panarin would recover soon, and noted that the injury did not seem to be very serious. However, the specialist strongly condemned Wilson for his wild tricks in a fight and unjustified aggression on the ice.

“Everyone saw everything. There is a line in games that cannot be crossed, and what he did was complete disrespect for hockey. One of the NHL stars could have been seriously injured. And we must take into account that Wilson gets up this is not the first time. His behavior is completely unjustified, ”- Quinn was indignant.

The Canadian received a 14 minute fine for his actions, but this is not the end. Most likely, after studying the incident, Wilson will be given a long suspension for more than one match.

He has already received a seven-game suspension this season for injuring Boston Bruins defender Brandon Carlo.In that episode, Carlo was at the side, and Wilson, with all his might, bumped his elbow into his head and put it on the glass.

In general, the Canadian striker’s reputation leaves much to be desired. On top of that, after the fight with Panarin, Wilson also continued to provoke the Rangers players. While on the penalty box, the Canadian with a mocking smile spread his arms to the sides and depicted Conor McGregor’s imposing gait, with which the Irishman goes to fights.

The North American press is actively calling for a long-term disqualification for Wilson.

“Watch this video and see how close the NHL was to death on ice!

Disqualify this guy from the end of the regular season and the entire playoffs. And make him re-qualify to play in the NHL, “- wrote New York Post journalist Larry Brooks on his Twitter account.

And The Hockey News columnist Ken Campbell thinks being suspended before the end of the season is still the minimum penalty for an offender like Wilson.

“The NHL should, at a minimum, suspend Wilson for the last four regular season games and for the entire playoffs – and this is the minimum possible measure. He has crossed all the boundaries a long time ago, “wrote Campbell.

The NHL must, at the absolute bare minimum, suspend Tom Wilson for the final four games of the regular season and all of the playoffs.Enough was enough a long time ago with this guy.

– Ken Campbell (@ Ken_Campbell27) May 4, 2021

In this match, the Russian captain of “Washington” Alexander Ovechkin was also injured. He spent only 39 seconds on the ice, after which he suffered an injury to his lower body. It is worth noting that the striker had already missed four matches recently due to another injury.It was clearly not a day for Russians.

90,000 Read “The Story of Football” – Andrey Petrovich Starostin – Page 43

In 1967, Yashin was elected to the Moscow City Council of Working People’s Deputies. He graduated from the school of coaches, then the higher party school. Where he finds time that does not belong to football, no one, not even Yashin himself, knows.

He grew before our very eyes as a person, as a citizen, knowing that he should serve the society not only on the football field.

Apparently, the philosophical mindset gives it a kind of regularity in movements, slowness and weight in judgments in everyday conditions.

If we add to this that he is straightforwardly frank in his judgments, then the attractiveness of his personality will be understandable. “Lev” for veterans, “Lev” for peers, “Lev Ivanovich” for young people, he is equally authoritative for players, coaches, referees, heads of the football federation.

Zamorra owes its fame to an extraordinary reaction and an amazing instinct in choosing a place at the gate. He seemed to predict in what angle the blow would be directed. With the precision of an automaton, he fixed the ball with his hands when the leather “projectile” was about to cross the goal line.

In 1934 I first saw the Czechoslovak goalkeeper Planicka and was amazed at the range of his actions. Unlike our goalkeepers of that time (and they were excellent masters of their craft) Planichka played not only within the goalkeeper’s area, but throughout the penalty area. Not tall for a goalkeeper, he was distinguished by jumping ability and easily removed the ball from the head of the tallest opponent.

Neither in throws to the upper and lower corners of the goal, nor in the choice of position, Yashin is not inferior to his famous predecessors.His tactical innovation is that he expanded the goalkeeper’s actions outside the penalty area. He became a goalkeeper, largely acting as a defender. He can be seen in the game 30 – 35 meters from the endline. Agree that a goalkeeper heading is an unusual sight. I have repeatedly witnessed seemingly such a risky, if not to say adventurous, tactics. But just his actions are based on an error-free calculation of the flight of the ball and the course of development of the attack. Yashin’s game thinking is unmatched.It is said to be a gift from God. Time, space and motion are taken into account by him in innumerable small quantities. As the attack of his team develops, he, along with all the players, moves from the goal into the field, as if providing the necessary connections with his defenders. When the counterattack begins, he plasticly retreats to the required distance – just enough to prevent the opponent from throwing the ball over his head with an overhead kick into the unprotected goal.

Over the six years of working with him in the USSR national team, I have never had a chance to see Yashin in a helpless position, which is easy for a goalkeeper playing in a wide space.

I remember the qualifying match for the European Cup in 1959 at the People’s Stadium in Budapest, when the national teams of Hungary and the Soviet Union met. At the moment the Hungarians developed a counterattack, Igor Netto and Anatoly Maslenkin, having collided at the central circle, left Tikhi alone with Yashin. The classic duel of football grandmasters began, into which no one could interfere. One hundred thousand spectators held their breath, watching as the striker slowly moved forward, and the goalkeeper, controlling his actions and counting centimeters and fractions of a second in his mind, made false attacks, retreated, expecting a possible mistake in dribbling.Tikhi continued to be the master of the increasingly aggravated situation for Yashin. He was already 7 – 8 meters from the goal … And yet he lost the fight: at the moment when the forward swung to strike, Yashin rushed forward and won his centimeter and a split second – just enough to have time to block the path of the ball to the goal with his chest and hands.

The USSR national team, while touring the countries of South America, won a victory over the Argentine national team for the first time in the history of Argentine football, which was defeated at home, at the River Plate stadium.Soviet footballers played so well that they won the highest award: during the match, applause was heard from the crowded stands of the stadium every now and then. An unprecedented case! The characterization of the quality of the game was very expressively expressed in the local newspaper, which headlined the report on the match: “Meskhi – 3,000,000 pesos, Metreveli – 3,000,000 pesos, Yashin – no price.”

But one should not think that only roses covered the sports path of the famous goalkeeper. There were also thorns. There were failures that could knock even an outstanding athlete out of the saddle.

At the championship in Chile, in the quarterfinal match of Soviet footballers with the hosts of the championship, happiness tilted in favor of the national team of Chile, and Lev Yashin drank a bitter cup. He missed balls, which, it seemed, could have been taken by an ordinary goalkeeper. The audience could not believe their eyes. Is this the same Yashin, about whom they wrote: “Who has not seen Yashin, he was not at the World Cup?” No one wanted to reckon with the fact that, despite the range of distances from which the goals were scored, it was not easy to reflect them: through the midst of the players, the flight of the ball was not visible.

Yashin drove to Chile to the sound of fanfare. He left Arica as a defeated hero. And yet he was seen off by crowds of fans, nobly sympathizing with the debunked idol.

When we flew home across the ocean, I asked myself: could he at thirty-three, having gone through such a psychological trauma, not break?

No, Yashin did not break. He soon played for the European national team and for the world team. His popularity grew from match to match. He was awarded the highest calling – the best sportsman of the year.And in Moscow, at the Lenin stadium, the editor of the France Football magazine presented him with a golden soccer ball.

Yashin was already forty years old. He was twice the age of many of the players who played with him on the same team, and the coaches continued to consider him the backbone of the team. What is the secret of sports longevity, an unfading art?

There is no secret. To get an answer, you need to look at how Yashin trained. He learned the truth that any talent flourishes in work. If you weigh Yashin’s training suit after training, then it will be 2 – 3 kilograms heavier from the sweat spilled by the goalkeeper during the two hours of training.

Do not think that he has chosen a special training method. He trained like everyone else. Common sense was the key to his training. This common sense told him that it was pointless to rush into the top and bottom corners for every ball he hit. A simple arithmetic calculation of such falls in one lesson on the ground will give a four-digit figure. It is easy to understand what coefficient of physical and nervous wear and tear Yashin’s body would experience if he flew to the corners of the goal with the same desperation as in the game.

This is why he often kicked balls in training. But he was sure to “see off” the ball with his eyes, as if mentally touching it, so to speak, training the throw in his mind. Sometimes he makes test throws, eliciting applause from the trainees. But this is like a control and measuring method of readiness, an audit of existing capabilities.

A special place in his training is the improvement of throwing the ball by hand. He owns the patent for putting the ball into the game with a push from the shoulder. Having arrived in Scotland for the first time, Yashin impressed the seasoned Hempden Stadium fans when he effortlessly pushed the ball over the center of the field right at the feet of central striker Eduard Streltsov.The speed of the throw, the assessment of the situation, the accuracy of the pass and the range of the ball’s flight caused an enthusiastic response in the stands.

This tactic makes Yashin an active initiator of counterattacks without wasting time: the ball always hits his partner, who is in the most advantageous position, unmistakably.

Analyzing the methodology of Yashin’s preparation, one can come to the conclusion that he, without sparing himself, works on the field to maintain physical shape and with a sense of proportion spends his emotions when training directly at the goal.Perhaps because of this, his reaction continues to remain “young”, despite his forty years of age.

When Yashin leaves training, looking at a tired gait, he can be given 60 years. When he comes to play, he looks 20 years old.

Golden Head of Donetsk – Rambler / sport

What is football for us girls? A male and unattractive game, where eleven on the one hand and exactly the same number on the other cannot divide a round half-kilogram object, fall on the grass like a picture, get some kind of cards.Everything is true, but not in Donetsk! In Donetsk, football was a religion, the stadium was a peculiar temple, and the horse-run lanterns were candles that fans stubbornly lit in the name of the sports victories of their favorite team. This is in pre-war times, and even earlier, when the red country was red and huge, football was not just a religion of the day off, but a happy daily pastime of many boys of the city-toiler.

In the 70s and 80s of the last century, almost every courtyard of Donetsk had a football field.Each mine had a football team. Donetsk lived in football. If in the years of independence football was perceived as a theater, as a spectacle, sometimes quite expensive, then in those days everything was different. Oh, how many boys imitated the game of the great Starukhin, copied his gait and his signature way of scoring goals. Head! A golden head.

Starukhin loved and knew how to butt. He went bald early, loved to lie in wait for a high flying ball and butt it into the net. During the years when Starukhin played, he was the only master of heading.He did not jump particularly high, but with some incredible instinct he knew how to guess the point where he needed to be. From childhood, Starukhin loved to score with his head, developed his abilities. Everyone knew that Starukhin’s golden head should not be allowed to a leather soccer ball! And yet he seized the moment, sneaked up and beat! Bam! Not football, but some kind of billiards. One round object over another round object.

Sad holiday

Today, Shakhtar’s golden head could have turned 70 years old, but it has not been with us for 19 years.Vitaly Starukhin is a man admired by the whole Donbass. It was not just a person, it was an icon. And not only football. He was the personification of the Donetsk mentality in the 80s of the XX century. He himself is not a native Donetsk resident, he was born in Minsk. He started his career late by today’s standards, he went to study at the Minsk children’s football school, being eleven. The first role is the goalkeeper, the second is the midfielder. Minsk, then there was Odessa, after Poltava. In Poltava for the second time and now forever Starukhin changed roles, left midfield for forwards.The head coach of the Poltava Stroitel Yuriy Voinov decided to try Starukhin in the attack and did not lose. Under Voinov, Starukhin got into the Ukrainian national team.

And then a real detective story begins. The leaders of Shakhtar Donetsk decided to get Starukhin at all costs and “kidnapped” a talented football player from Poltava, but the forward is not a needle for you, the loss was quickly discovered. At night, several men and Starukhin’s wife drove up to the location of the training base of the “Builder” club.Vitaly went out to the newcomers, his wife and the “kidnappers” described the situation to him. Later, the footballer said that he managed to take only a tracksuit and boots with him. A scandal erupted, the USSR Football Federation strictly forbade the player to play for Shakhtar, which that year was successfully fighting for a return to the top league.

It occurred to the coach to release Starukhin under the name of Chernykh in the second team. Soon, the deception was almost revealed. The key word is almost. The protocols of the games of the understudies were sent to the Football Federation, and there they were carefully studied by the head coach of the national youth team of the country, Yevgeny Lyadin.An urgent telegram was sent from Moscow with a request to attend the training camp of the USSR youth team to the footballer Chernykh. They replied by telegram that the Chernykh footballer suddenly fell ill and should not be counted on. After this incident, Donetsk coaches began to write Starukhin into the protocols of matches of understudies under different names.

Under his last name, Starukhin made his debut in the fall of 1972 in the team’s friendly home match against the Cuban national team (1: 0). The peak of Vitaly’s career came in the 79th season.26 goals made Starukhin the most accurate sniper of the USSR Championship. He was named footballer of the year. For the first time, such an honor fell to a footballer who had not played in the national team before.

All Starukhin’s awards cannot be counted, but I will try to tell you about the most important ones. He is the silver medalist of the USSR championship in 1975 and 1979, the bronze medalist of the USSR championship in 1978, the USSR Cup winner in 1980, the best football player of the USSR in 1979, the best football player in Ukraine in 1979, the best scorer of the USSR championship in 1979, bronze medalist Spartakiad of the peoples of the USSR in 1979, a member of the Grigory Fedotov club (123 goals), a member of Oleg Blokhin’s club (110 goals scored)

Each appearance of Vitaly Starukhin on Donetsk streets was accompanied by almost applause.A whole professor of philology, Vyacheslav Terkulov, was once a boy and served balls at football matches when Vitaly Starukhin played. Terkulov recalls: “He was the most rational player, he did not have any special physical characteristics. He could not run across anyone, but he was always at the right time and in the right place. He was affectionately called “Granny”. They constantly took autographs from him. He also had a very nice family, they always came to the games. It was a golden age. It was such a period when Shakhtar was closer to the people than ever.The most popular team since the creation of Shakhtar in 1936. The stadium has never been empty. People even sat on the waste heap. ”

Starukhin was an idol not only for ordinary people living in Donbass, but also for those Donetsk people who left for Moscow. After Shakhtar’s victory in the USSR Cup, immediately after the match, they interviewed famous Donbass players who were at the stadium. Yevgeny Martynov said excitedly that after this victory of his favorite team, after Starukhin’s game, he wanted to return home as soon as possible to write new songs and create.He was incredibly excited and inspired.

After each victory of Shakhtar, production at the mines increased, people went to work enthusiastic! The city lived from match to match. From victory to victory. The loss was perceived as grief. Although we tried to convince ourselves that you can’t always win. When Shakhtar won the USSR Cup, it was then more important for the Donetsk people than Shakhtar’s victory in the Ukrainian league in recent years. But, of course, the last UEFA Cup and the fact that Shakhtar Donetsk became the last cup winner also filled the hearts of football fans with incredible joy.

Starukhin left twice. The first time from the team, the second from life. Alas, Starukhin played for his favorite team only until 1981. He was only 32 years old! I could have played more, hammered into the glory of the miners. For the next 20 years, one of the best forwards in the Soviet Union trained children’s teams at the Miner’s school and inspected regional championships.

When Starukhin died (August 9, 2000), there were a variety of rumors about his death that he fell and severely damaged his insides, but this is not so.Starukhin did a lot of gardening, lived in a dacha in Panteleimonovka, in August 2000 there was a terrible heat. The Starukhins couple worked a lot in the heat, while drinking ice-cold water from the refrigerator. Starukhin caught a cold and began to cough. He coughed for several days, felt weak, his wife called an ambulance. He was assigned to pulmonology, in the ward there were several men who recognized him.

And Starukhin asks his wife: “Mommy! Please bring a TV set, Shakhtar is playing with Slavia. ”The legendary miner died in intensive care, the diagnosis was made after an autopsy – bilateral pneumonia, pleurisy.The children called Shakhtar and said that Babusya had died. They asked not to report this before the start of the match, and when the game was broadcast, the commentator said that the famous football player Vitaly Starukhin was seriously ill.

Football club “Shakhtar” from the time of Starukhin is the golden ratio of football. This is an example of what a real national football should be like, patriotic, verified, honest, and devastating. Much later, Shakhtar took off again to the football Olympus, but the names were different – for some reason, more often non-Slavic.Starukhin was buried at the Donetsk Sea cemetery, and a star was installed near the Donbass Arena with the name of the great striker of the great team of the Donetsk land.

Khimki-M lost big in Reutov

On Friday, the youth squad of the red and blacks fought on the road from Reutov against “Prialit”, which from year to year is one of the leaders of the Third Division. The opponent’s experience made itself felt – the home team won a major victory over our reservists.

During the warm-up, the head coach of the red-and-blacks Vladimir Bogdanavichus turned to the head of the team: “Hey, isn’t Andrei Kitam warming up there? It hurts like a gait. “As if hearing this, the rival goalkeeper, who trained in Khimki a year ago, looked around and ran to the curb to say hello.

“That’s it,” the coach said angrily. “We educate players for rivals.” And, as it turned out, our mentor was not upset in vain. Kitam showed himself in all its glory already in the 10th minute: Evgeny Goryachev shot point-blank from the center of the penalty area, and the goalkeeper pulled the ball out of the corner in a gorgeous jump. Next, Timur Djikia, Andrei Titov, and the same Goryachev had dangerous moments at the opponent’s goal, but Prialit opened the score in the match.Andrey Ornat successfully watched for a rebound in the center of the penalty area and finished off the ball into the goal after Dmitry Zornikov’s save – 1: 0, and Khimki, who had been playing the second number during the entire half, had to “open up” after the break.

In the second half, the red-blacks took control of the ball. Bogdanavichus refreshed the game with two successful substitutions, and in the 66th minute, Zaurbek Kokayev, who entered the field, threw the ball to Titov, who hammered the ball into the “nine” with scissors. It seemed that Khimki was about to go, but the incipient comeback was “killed” by Vyacheslav Sukhanov, who cut down Alexander Ivanov in the penalty area.The arbiter pointed to the “point” without hesitation. Alexander Selivanov approached the ball and shot into the corner. Zornikov guessed the direction of the blow, but he lacked a little luck.

After a goal conceded from the penalty spot, Khimki players rushed to recoup, and Prialit twice caught the red and blacks on counterattacks. First, Ivanov closed the serve from the flank, and then Ornat shot Zornikov point-blank. As a result – 4: 1 in favor of Mikhail Chitrikashvili’s charges. The next match the red-blacks will play on the road against the capital LFC Lokomotiv on May 16.

LFC “Prialit” (Reutov) – LFC “Khimki-M” (Khimki) 4: 1 (1: 0)

Goals: Ornat, 33 – 1: 0; Titov, 66 – 1: 1; Selivanov, 71 (penalty) – 2: 1; Ivanov, 76 – 3: 1; Ornat, 81 – 4: 1.

LFC “Prialit”: Kitam, Gorshkov (Sherenkov, 23), Talantsev (Tambashov, 87), Burtsev, Pozdneev, Lapin (Batskikh, 89), Ivanov, Gusev, Efremov, Aliev (Selivanov, 46), Ornat ( Girko).

Spare: Makarov.

LFC “Khimki-M”: Zornikov, Akinin (k), Akhverdiev (Kokaev, 46), Bukin (Egorov, 68), Vinokurov (Pushkin, 46), Volkov, Goryachev, Dzhikia (Lebedev, 74), Sorokin (Kolesnikov, 79), Sukhanov, Titov.

Spare: Cherkai.

Warnings: none

Chief Arbiter: Igor Vertkov (Moscow).

Assistants: Maxim Melnik, Dmitry Miroshnichenko (both from Moscow).

Reserve judge: Nikita Danchenkov (Moscow).

Inspector: Leonid Koida (Moscow).

May 11, 2018. Reutov. Start stadium. 100 spectators. 18 degrees.

90,000 Royal gait.Results of the NHL Western Conference Finals – Hockey News

Los Angeles and Chicago have produced one of the best series in the modern NHL, the winners from which came the kings of the seventh matches.

HIDDEN FINAL?

In the NHL, it is extremely rare to hear complaints that two teams cannot meet in the final due to the fact that they are speaking at the same conference. Over the decades, both fans and participants in the action have become accustomed to this state of affairs. The transfer of individual teams from one conference to another helps to make the impossible come true, as something happened before this season with Detroit.From now on, there are fewer matches with the conditional “Colorado” in the regular season, but these bitter rivals got a chance to meet in the Stanley Cup final.

The series “Chicago” – “Los Angeles” prompted such thoughts. In the event that these teams played in different conferences and got to the decisive stage, the hockey world would see the best Stanley Cup final in history. No matter how hackneyed the cliché about a series worthy of a finale may be, it fits perfectly with the confrontation between “hawks” and “kings”.

“No matter how hackneyed the cliché about a series worthy of a finale, the confrontation between hawks and kings, it fits perfectly.”

It is difficult to imagine what the Rangers have to do to meet this level. Anyone who missed the massacre of “hawks” and “kings” should bite their elbows and frantically download recordings of all seven games .

Why do experts and ordinary fans unanimously call this series the best in the current playoffs, or even in the last few years? After all, the completely crazy fight between “Philadelphia” and “Pittsburgh” is still fresh in my memory.Only in that Pennsylvania derby, overflowing with emotions, mutual hatred overlapped the quality of hockey. And in fairness, goalkeepers have become the main creators of anomalous performance. You can also recall the recent meeting between San Jose and Los Angeles, in which the kings managed to recoup from 0-3. But this is the case when a great team proves its greatness, leaving the opponent in a fool. In the Western Conference finals, the rivals were worthy of each other and used all their strengths.

HEROES OF LAST YEARS

Probably, it could not be otherwise when it comes to the clash of the Stanley Cup winners of the last two years. “Chicago” and “Los Angeles” are not among the upstarts who eke out a miserable existence both before and after a successful season. But in the history of the NHL there are many such examples, and the most striking is the post-lockout Carolina. Our heroes, after their victories, did not retreat back, and in some ways even revealed themselves from a new side. They were helped by fresh blood, new faces in the championship squads.

When Joel Kenneville’s team, , first lifted the Stanley Cup overhead, Brandon Saad was still part of the program, in which the best juniors in the United States compete as a separate team in the USHL. When the Hawks made the league double last season, Saad was a contender for the Calder Trophy, but had yet to play a key role in the Blackhawks’ formation. The current Stanley Cup is another matter. Brandon became part of the Saad – Shaw – Kane striking link, which tore Los Angeles in its own way, but even that was not enough for the final victory.On account of yesterday’s junior Saad only in this series 9 (4 + 5) points.

Los Angeles had an equally strong trump card in the playoffs. Marian Gaborik, on his own, trampled a path towards one of the teams, in which his talent faded faster than a match caught in the wind. To face the New York Rangers, where he spent four seasons, the Slovak striker hammered 12 goals. At the moment, it is he who is the best sniper of the Stanley Cup. A quarter of those goals fell on Corey Crawford.And the most important goal in this playoffs Gaborik spent eight minutes before the end of the seventh match of the conference final, when the score was 4: 3 in favor of “Chicago”, and the vacation is closer than ever.

KING TRANSFORMATION

This streak and the playoffs as a whole opened our eyes to a previously unclear side of Los Angeles. As it turned out, this is a team of not only hard workers and gorillas, but creators. Unlike the championship path two years ago, the Kings have become more watchable, prettier to an outside viewer.And what are the seventh matches of the first and second rounds worth? Los Angeles knocked out their rivals, beating San Jose 5-1 and Anaheim 6-2. “Chicago” lost in an equal fight, and for two rivals set another record. For the first time in NHL history, teams scored five goals in the first period of Game 7.

Undoubtedly, the final of the Western Conference was a confrontation between two top coaches, gurus of the coaching department. Kenneville proved to be a flexible specialist and was constantly looking for new combinations.Without this quality of steering “hawks” they would hardly have pulled the series from 1-3. Sutter, in turn, willingly got involved in the match, bending his line and forcing the players to maintain the highest pace. However, after the sixth game of the series, the coaches echoed each other, repeating that the main characters are the players. And in a way, Kenneville and Sutter are right. Whatever tactics you choose, no matter how you shuffle the links, in the end, the puck is delivered to the goal by the guys who go out on the ice. And if we are talking about the best hockey players in the world, then their role only increases.

SHOWMAN KANE

The final of the conference was the stage for the inimitable hockey showman Patrick Kane . In the last three games of the series, he scored more than one point per game , but the main thing is how he did it. At times it seemed as though Kane could not be taken away from the puck, and his every move instilled panic in the Kings defenders. On the other side of the barricades, Drew Doughty worked, who spent almost half an hour on the ice, made key selections and was the real king of someone else’s blue line.A lot of words have already been said about how good the Kopitar-Gaborik ligament is.

Kane and Gaborik, Toews and Kopitar, Shaw and Carter, Keith and Doughty – they all added aesthetics and provided unprecedented TV ratings. The series surpassed last year’s Stanley Cup final in terms of NBC viewership, while Los Angeles, still hardly a hockey city, has a record audience on TV.

“When a ticket to the finals is played in overtime of the seventh game, experience and nerves of steel come to the fore.”

Will the final series be able to compete with her? Potentially New York versus Los Angeles is a sweet cake for Gary Battman, but to realize the potential, teams need to play out some comparable thriller. Only a loud sign is indispensable here.

Stars in this series were laid out 100 percent, and it is difficult to find a person who held the final of the conference below his level. Unless Patrick Sharp played Los Angeles the way Blackhawks fans expected him to.But there is no revelation that Corey Crawford did not help out at the decisive moments and lost to his counterpart. Even in the last league season, Crawford proved himself to be a goalkeeper with well-known weaknesses. Unlike Jonathan Quick, he is hardly an elite goalkeeper. It is possible that this minimal difference between just a good keeper and a guy who can drag the team on himself, and lies the reason for the final victory of Los Angeles.