9 Triangle Passing Drills for Youth Lacrosse
Triangle Passing Drills are great for lacrosse players at any level. Some of the most fundamental drills for basic stick skills, coaches can use these in practices, camps, clinics, even pregame warm-ups to teach everything from picking up ground balls to backdoor cuts.
Lacrosse is built around the triangle. Almost all beginning Attackmen, Midfielders, and Defensive units learn to work within triangle formations at first. In traditional settled 6-on-6 offense, two triangles usually rotate in opposite directions to each other. The Defense usually sets up in a triangle shape to defend against the 4-on-3 Fast Break.
Start any practice with a few of these 9 Triangle Passing Drills below. These drills all imitate game situations. You will also help your players develop good footwork, athletic conditioning, and muscle memory for passing, catching, and picking up ground balls on the run. No standing still.
The Passing and Catching drills are listed here from easiest to more difficult. Feel free to mix and combine them as needed by your team.
1. The Basic Triangle
This is a great drill to transition your players from basic stick-work to catching and throwing on the run. Use this basic drill to teach spacing, switching hands, and other simple skills.
2. The Roll Away
Use this simple variation to teach your players to roll away from defenders, turn outside to protect their sticks, and move their feet to get their hands free to pass.
4. Down the Line
Catching and throwing on the run is critical for every lacrosse player. This drill will get players moving their feet without the ball, leading their passes, and catching and throwing out in front, all while running at full speed.
5. Over-the-Shoulder
Use this variation to help your players position their bodies and sticks to catch and throw on-the-run without losing a step.
From Fast Breaks to Clears to broken plays in the middle of the field, a good over-the-shoulder pass can change the momentum of a game and give your team extra scoring chances.
6. Backdoor Cuts
Backdoor cuts and V-cuts are two of the easiest ways to get open. Teach your players to create goal-scoring opportunities from anywhere on the field.
7. Give-and-Go’s
Quick passes lead to quick goals. Teach your players to pass and move! Slip behind the Defense and create extra scoring chances with this fast-paced variation. Your players get double the amount of passess and catches in this drill.
8. Split Dodge
One of the most basic dodges in lacrosse, the Split Dodge can be added to any of these variations to imitate game situations and get past your Defender. Make sure you practice your moves. The more reps, the better!
At its core, each of these drills are about helping your players practice game situations.
By using these drills in practice, you’ll not only see improvements in stick skills–you’ll also see help them with their sense of field awareness and spacing.
If you have any creative variations of your own, share them with us!
Lacrosse Drill: Triangle Rotation Shooting Drill
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Objective
This drill is excellent for teaching players to time off ball movement, get open, and to get your hands free on a dodge that starts the play. You want your midfielders to learn to follow the dodge and allow for a “One More” pass to attack the weak side of the defense after they slide to defend the dodge from the girl up top.
Drill Description
· X1 starts the drill by dodging from the point and bouncing out wide. The player can choose to throw the ball back across body to X3 or also roll back if you are simulating a double team from the defense.
· X1 will move the ball to X3, who has trailed the dodge and waiting right inside the 8m.
· X3 will then move the ball quickly to X2 on the crease area.
· X2 needs to make a move across crease and then return to pop off the crease to receive the “One More” pass from X3 and then finish the shot.
· X1 then moves to the X2 position, X2 moves to the back for the X3 line, and X3 moves to the X1 line.
Skills Practiced
· Off ball movement
· Communication
· Ball movement
· Roll back and throw back moves
· “One More Concept”
Variation
Add defenders at each line and have them play loose defense on the play. You can also add a 4th player to the side of X1 that will be an additional person to move off ball, or have their defender double the dodge from X1 and force a solid roll back.
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Football tactics and strategy. Material number 2.
Doubling of flanks and flank triangles. Part 2: practice
The second, practical part of a large material on flank triangles
As promised, I am releasing the second part of my material on doubling flanks and flank triangles. Before reading this text, I suggest that you familiarize yourself with the first part, it is devoted to the whole theory. The second part will be completely devoted to practice. Playing on the wing requires not so much tactical awareness as passing quality, speed of thought and excellent orientation in tight play.
Although we will work hard on the construction of triangles, but still most of the exercises (today there will be a lot of this word) are aimed precisely at absolutizing the quality of ordinary football aspects – the so-called basics. This does not mean that the exercises will be easy. Each exercise should require you to think, constant mental work, and the more you think in training, the more familiar it will be to do it in games.
More to say – you need to make sure that you think more in training than in games. You want your training to force you to process as much information as you can’t. That’s why it’s training, that here the result is not important, development is important. But in the game, when there are situations when everything depends on who thinks faster – you or your opponent, the answer will be unequivocal.
First: playing in tight spaces
The first important aspect of playing on the flank is playing in tight spaces. The flank has an edge, unlike the center of the field, this complicates the work with the ball, and this complication should be leveled as much as possible. We will work on this.
6v6 in a confined space
Perhaps the most effective exercise for playing in a confined space. It is not recommended to vary it, since all exercise parameters are maximally calculated for optimal training. In a square of 25×25 meters there are two teams – defending and attacking.
Exactly 6 on 6. The task of the defenders is not so much to press as to placate. The task of the attackers is not to let one player stay at the feet for more than 5 seconds.
The situation is maximally modeled under the conditions of a flank triangle, only in more difficult conditions. Those who read the first material may remember that most of the situations with the flank triangle involved 3v3 situations, when each player in the triangle has his own guardian, exactly the same here. Just in this exercise, it is far from necessary to play with one touch – it is too difficult. Of course, we should strive for 5 seconds, but this is almost a pro level. Just strive.
4v2+1 with breakthrough
A great intense exercise that combines several aspects of the game at once: working in a limited space, working on cutting passes and playing on the third.
Three zones. The easiest variation uses 13 players and a field area measuring 45×18 meters. The blue zones are filled with football players, the yellow zone is “neutral”.
In turn, the blue zones can be divided into one “playable” and one “non-playable”. There are 6 players in each blue zone, and there is one more player in the playing zone. The bottom line is that in the “playing” area where the ball is located, pass the ball to a certain player (he is marked black) between two blue ones in one touch.
Blue could just cover black, but they are given a task and take the ball away in a certain amount of time. After a direct selection, the defender becomes the owner of the ball, that is, joins the reds. After that, you need to make at least three regular passes, after which you can continue to perform the main task. After the necessary pass, the player marked with black breaks through the yellow zone to the blue, and it becomes a playable one.
In addition to the fact that the exercise is wonderful a priori, it also has the advantage of variation. If you need to focus on one specific component, you just need to change the parameters.
For example: if you need to focus on playing in a limited space, reduce the area of the site. Need an emphasis on how your players work well in a limited number of players in the ball zone? – reduce the number of players on the attacking side. You can add defensive players, add another player to pass to, and so on. The breakthrough must be fast. If your level does not allow you to play in one touch, then play two or three at first, but aim for one. That’s what training is for
6v6 with four goals
This exercise is more about the correct distribution of the human resource on the field, but there is also the possibility to also vary the exercise if you want to focus on something else. It is played about a little less than half the field. Two teams of six players each with two goals in their own half, no goalkeepers. Task: score in one of the two gates.
The right to do so is given only when at least four players from the attacking group go beyond the white line.
After a goal is scored or the attacking team is lost, at least 3 passes must occur, after which the other team can begin to perform the same task. Try to play with one touch. Despite the rules, try to get out of the half of the field with the whole team, and not with four players.
Working on passing culture
As we work on improving the work of the flank triangles, we must have extremely fast thinking: quickly assess the situation on the field, quickly find all options for continuing the attack, quickly choose the best of all options, and quickly fulfill what is intended. This is what the next exercise is about.
Wall game
As simple as it is effective exercise. Do not be surprised at its elementary nature, because the drawing “through the wall” itself is simple, and requires not so much intellectual (tactical) training as technical. Everything is extremely simple. There is a pole. On one side of the pole there are three people, one with a ball, on the opposite side – two, between them – one.
The player with the ball gives a strong and accurate pass to the “pillar”. The task of the post is to give a soft pass to the move to the one who gave him a strong pass. More details can be seen in the illustration.
In order to return to the previous situation and start the exercise again, it is necessary that the person who received the ball passes to the next player, he himself went to the end of the line. Meanwhile, the one who stood in line opposite goes to the post position. Thus, everything will be closed in a circle.
Hexagon 3v3 + 2
This exercise focuses on the purposeful practice of the diagonal pass. Here comes across 1 in 5-10 purely vertical passes, all the rest are diagonal. Two teams. Both alternately play with and without the ball. In our situation, the blues control the ball. The players behind the hexagon (in other words, the hexagon) also stand up for the team with the ball, but they do not have the right to go beyond it.
See the two posts in the center? It is NEVER possible to give a pass between them.
This is prohibited because it is through this passing line that a vertical pass is most likely to be encountered. The exercise develops the purity of indirect passes, which is most important when playing through triangles. I will not tire of repeating – strive for one touch.
6v3+5 with a sharp group transfer
And so, you see three teams: the team with the ball, the one in red. The team in purple is the pressing team. The blue team is neutral. The exercise takes place in a 25×12 square. The bottom line is that the blue team also plays with the ball. Blues are not allowed to enter the square, they can only pass to the team with the ball. The game takes place only in this half of the field until the ball is intercepted by the purple.
After the interception, the three cautioned players from the purple side, as well as the other three reds who just had the ball, run to the other side, and the ball is delivered without resistance to the purple trinity.
Also, the two flank players in blue run to their mirror positions. It turns out a similar picture:
Thus, an absolutely mirror situation is obtained. The exercise is wildly intense and perhaps one of the best exercises for instant decision making and execution. It reduces your passing options to a maximum of two, you just have to make an easy pass, but in such a hustle and bustle, even in game mode, even an easy pass seems like a 70-meter pass. This exercise helps to level pressure with the help of speed of thinking and execution of the plan.
3v1 + 3v1 with two squares
This exercise is good because it trains both long transfers and short passes. Limit the number of passes in one square to make it harder. The main goal is not to lose the ball with a long pass.
In fact, you can start playing without resistance, but then you must definitely play with one touch. Then you can use balvans as a handy tool, and over time you can move on to live defenders, because right away you are unlikely to be able to do this exercise perfectly.
After a while, you can increase the squares, and add another defender to raise the complexity of the exercise to the maximum.
Building triangles
We are still working on improving the play of flank TRIANGLES, right? We will also focus on this. Here I will highlight 3 most effective exercises in order to create triangles in my half of the field. By the way, the last exercise can partly be attributed to working with triangles.
Now let’s work on building the triangles themselves under pressure. Here we, as in the previous exercise, will make the situation look like a game, but at the same time we will complicate it several times. The game is played on a 50×60 meter area. Two teams. With the ball – nine players, without the ball – 5. The task of the players without the ball is simple – to take the ball away through interception or tackle.
The two behind are not allowed to go above the horizontal line below which in the illustration itself are the 4th and 5th numbers of the team with the ball.
The last three, on the contrary, cannot fall below this line. The task of the attackers is to build a triangle either from the 4th, 7th and 9th numbers, or from the 5th, 6th and 8th numbers. But there are two rules: you cannot pass through the lines with the ball. They can be passed ONLY through a pass, and you can’t pass through two or three lines at once. That is, long passes are also prohibited. At the same time, the pressurers know about this and can safely use it.
According to the rules, the triangle will only form if the right players (4, 7, 9 or 5, 6 and 8) line up in the right zones. If this is the right flank, then these are zones B2, A8 (right side) and B4, on the left side these are zones A2, A8 (left side) and A4. At the same time, one of the players in the triangle must have the ball at their feet. Then the game will be won.
You won’t be able to do it the first time (if the pressers don’t just press, but block the passing lines, taking into account all the prohibitions).
Record on video, analyze, offer your tactics for passing this game. No good way to win this game will be bad in a real match. When you win, analyze the winning game. Try to find new ways to win, limit the number of passes to make it more difficult. This is also a very useful exercise for pressing, if you’re interested.
3VS4 + 2 with access to the flank
The exercise is aimed at improving the build-up, but it is also interesting for us, because in order to build a triangle, where the last player will be the wingback, you need to get out of the pressure and give it to him ball. This is what we will do in this exercise. The Reds have the ball in the white zone, it must be given to the men in the squares on the flank. The difficulty is that there are three pressurers against them.
Pressers can’t just cut off the pass line to the player in the square. You just need to put pressure on. Also, you can’t just take it and throw everyone with one pass, all passes go down, and it is advisable to pass to a person in the square after getting out of pressure and giving a soft, short and calm pass.
Try to complete the task for the minimum number of passes.
Triangle release
Three teams are playing. The exercise begins with such a picture. The team in black is pressing. The task of the Reds is to get out from under the pressure through the flanks. The ball can only go to the next half of the field at the feet of one of the blue team, and they can only be given the ball from the half-flank. When the ball goes to the second half of the field, blacks wait on this half, and the reds attack the yellows. Of course, the blue ones are also included in the attack.
After a tackle or a goal, the yellows have the ball, the reds press, the blues for the yellows. So in a circle. The exercise is good in that it develops the ability to open purely vertically in the laterals, and teaches insiders to enter the half-flank and interact with wingbacks under any circumstances. Incredible exercise, which can be attributed to the extremely intense. Perhaps one of the most energy-intensive.