All Access Practice: Team Lacrosse Drills with Mike Pressler & Staff

with Mike Pressler,
Bryant University Head Coach;
5x Northeast Conference titles;
4x NCAA Tournament appearances;
2014 NCAA Tournament quarterfinals;
2005 F. Morris Touchstone Award

The beginning of the season is the time to set goals for your team and sketch out how you would like to schedule your practices to achieve those goals. As a coach, you need to have a plan of what your theme for each practice is (offensive play, defensive movement, stickwork, ground balls, etc.), otherwise both you and your players will be frustrated due to a lack of focus.

This video featuring Bryant's Mike Pressler covers how to reiterate your team culture and reestablish the core values that make up that culture. You'll also see how to reinforce that culture through engaging practice sessions full of worthwhile drills.

Practice Drills

A total of 18 drills are included in this video and are laid out in such a way to show the natural progression of a practice; starting small with stick work and then progressing to full field concepts. During the white board sessions, the Bryant coaching staff highlights coaching points, and cover how to incorporate more players into each drill, making sure your entire team is engaged with little down time. The coaches also explain how each drill is beneficial to the overall development of your team.

Coach Pressler and his staff show many variations of skill sets throughout the video. There are several ground ball drills, passing drills and small sided play drills. The small sided drills are especially useful for when your athletes need a fresh atmosphere that still stresses the fundamentals of the game.

Drill Examples

Pressler's Star Drill sets the tone for players by making them stay focused and engaged. It also emphasizes the most basic aspects of the game: accurate passing, being able to catch anything thrown your way, and handling your stick in traffic. If your athletes can't execute those skills, then your team won't be very successful. Adding to its versatility, the Star Drill can also be run against a defense and altered to throw using just one hand or the other.

Another great passing drill is Partner Passing with Footwork. This drill combines two of the most important aspects of lacrosse: stick skills and footwork. Without proper footwork, players are unable to set up for more powerful shots with accurate ball placement and have a tougher time defending because they lack good balance.

Coach Pressler's Spider drill is game-like in nature by preparing simulated man-up and man-down situations. There will be times in games where your team finds itself in both situations, and how your players handle it will determine how often you win. The ball moves quickly in this drill, requiring athletes to make decisions at a faster pace.

Setting up your practices correctly is one of the first steps to training a championship team. This video from Coach Pressler includes many of his preferred drills and viewpoints on practice that will be sure to aid in your effort to win more games.

179 minutes. 2019.