Women's Lacrosse: Building a Slow Break

with Steve Wagner,
College at Brockport Head Women's Lacrosse Coach; 2016 SUNYAC Coach of the Year

Successful women's lacrosse programs utilize transition as part of their offensive playbook. While the benefits of a great fast break have been much documented, in order to maximize scoring opportunities, a team must be able to attack the goal in transition when numbers are even, or even when an offensive team is down a player.

Using an effective, balanced approach, Brockport head coach Steve Wagner presents a slow break that is both dynamic and efficient, allowing teams to continue the attack once a fast break is shut down, but before 7v7 play begins. Using this approach, your team will be able to generate scoring opportunities in all situations off of a clear.

Coach Wagner provides a complete plan for teaching an effective slow break that you can use with your team right away. Following an overview of slow break basics, you will learn seven steps of an effective slow break that include multiple scoring opportunities. Coach Wagner breaks down each step of the progression on a whiteboard before taking you out to the field to demonstrate it with his team. You will learn a drill to practice all seven steps of the slow break in a progressive fashion.

Game-Like Drills to Develop a Slow Break

Utilizing full-field drills involving players at all positions, Coach Wagner demonstrates the need for fast ball movement, faster off-ball movement, and making fast decisions as cornerstones of an effective fast break. All drills emphasize the need to swing opposing defenders to one side, allowing the ball to go into space. Then, using a series of cuts and drives to the goal, Wagner shows how a defense can be taken advantage of before 7v7 play is initiated.

Whether the situation calls for a drive to goal, draw-and-dump opportunity, or feeding cutters, the drills and strategy call for perfect timing in order to achieve maximum looks on goal during a slow break.

Emphasis on Attacking Zone Teams

By instituting an effective slow break, Coach Wagner provides an opportunity to attack teams that employ zone defenses. He demonstrates the need to shift a defense to one side of the field off of a clear, attack the other side, and provide open looks after off-ball play, neutralizing zone teams until the ball has settled down.

As teams are expected to employ more zone defense as a result of the coming possession clock rule, Coach Wagner's slow break scenario is an ideal fit for a team looking to continue an up-tempo attack against zone defenses trying to slow them down.

76 minutes. 2017.