Practice Planning & Drills for Field Hockey

Nine-time Old Dominion Athletic Conference Coach of the Year Enza Steele presents guidelines for developing well-structured, complete field hockey practice. Coach Steele takes you through a full practice, hitting all of the key areas you need to develop a successful team.

Coach Steele highlights the importance of planning your practices to get the most out of the limited time you have with your players. She does a masterful job of walking you through the areas of her practice. Beginning with a smart board explanation and then on-field demonstrations, Steele presents a practice plan adaptable to any level of play.

In this DVD, you will learn how to prepare and execute an efficient, purposeful practice covering the following skill sets:

• Pre-practice warm up and team building exercises
• Ball control using passing and receiving techniques
• Goalie workouts using multiple offensive attacks
• Defensive clearings

Once players can effectively control the ball, they are challenged to perfect longer, timed passes which in turn provides increased scoring opportunities from a wider variety of positions on the field. Each drill initiates with passing the ball and typically concludes with a shot on goal.

Multiple fast-paced passing and shooting drills will provide your players with increased ball touches. Shooting on goal at the conclusion of the drills adds an important element that players work hard achieve. Players move through the drills focusing their efforts to end their drill in a goal. This additionally ensures the goalie will experience many different kinds of shots from different shooters.

Conditioning and agility training are accomplished by using competitive activities that are fun for players and encourage team building. As players compete against each other, their fundamental field hockey skills can be evaluated and coached as they play. Players natural competitive nature ensures that they will enthusiastically participate in these well thought out exercises.

These competitive activities and games will give you ideas on how to get your team in great game condition, as well as add some variety to your practices to make it more enjoyable for your players.

The success enjoyed by Lynchburg College over the past 30 seasons can be attributed directly to the skills being taught to the players by Coach Steele and her dedication to the game.

70 minutes. 2013.