The Syracuse Way: Building a Championship Lacrosse Program

John Desko has won five NCAA National Championships as a head coach and been part of six more as an assistant coach. Now for the first time, Desko offers you a look inside of one of the most successful and celebrated lacrosse programs ever assembled. The concepts, techniques and drills provided in this video have a proven track record of success--the record speaks for itself.

Structuring Your Team's Season
In Part I, Coach Desko discusses how to organize and structure a school lacrosse team. This segment is designed to give you and your players an idea of how a proper, year-round lacrosse program is setup. This "big picture" take on the lacrosse and academic calendar will give both coaches and players a good head start in understanding their goals and priorities for any given part of the year.

Some of the topics Desko hits on include:

• Initial team meeting, orientation, schedule review and support planning
• First two weeks, schedules, including initial strength and conditioning program
• Fall practice schedule and tournament benefits, post fall plan and winter plan
• Spring pre-season double sessions to regular season
• Setting goals for post season play and individual player goals during the summer

Teaching Syracuse Lacrosse
In Part II, Desko reveals his practice philosophy, which utilizes a progressive drill technique to teach the dynamic version of the lacrosse played at Syracuse.

Desko teaches his unique catching and throwing drills that will introduce your players to fundamental ball movements and body movements. The Spike Drill and Diamond Drill teach fundamental catching and throwing techniques while hard wiring critical foot and hand work into your players.

Learn 3v2 and 5v4 drills that will allow your athletes to utilize these catching, throwing and ball movement patterns in scrimmage conditions. Defensive positioning is introduced and movement and spacing are stressed.

Desko progresses to full field fast breaks and broken situations. Players are now approaching live game situations where player movement, ball movement and team coordination become the focus of the action.

Coach Desko mixes practice and game footage to illustrate the drills and to show how the skills manifest themselves in crucial game situations.

In his time as head coach, Desko coached the Syracuse lacrosse team to seven NCAA finals appearances and nine Final Fours. Desko also coached Team USA to a runner-up finish at the 2006 World Lacrosse Championship. Order now and begin to reap the benefit of this brilliant coaching mind!

79 minutes. 2012.