Never Played...Ever

[ohgod12]

Ive read a few threads saying, "oh ive never played before i need help", but i felt my case was interesting. Ive never played goal before, ive never played lax before. I had freinds on my highschools lacrosse team, and they were just like hey we need a goalie you should play. After much reflection i decided to give it a try. So they gave me a helmet and a throat gaurd threw me in the net and i was pretty good, we ended up playing indoor and doing pretty well, considering we playing much larger schools. Well long story short the coach told me im starting varsity. I realize varsity is a whole diffrent animal from indoor. So any help, advice, tips, or tricks are greatly appreciated. Our season starts in 9 days and i want to be ready. Thank You.

[Lacrosse4life31]

There really isn't to much difference in varsity/JV. Just that the players in Varsity are/have:
1. Faster shots
2. More acurate shots
3. more developed plays
4. better fakes/stick handling skills
5. just plain old stronger/faster

So just keep practicing nothing else to really say. Basically make sure your a good match to the opposing team, meaning, workout/practice alot

[Sjrlax69]

Perfect your stance, take shots, make some kind of thumb gaurd!

[conorgillhero12]

coach knows you have never played right? well if he does he might cut you a little slack to let you settle in

[m2daRizzle]

the best advice I ever got as a goalie was to never get down on myself. If you get scored on (which will happen) dont let it get in your head or you will do horribly the rest of the game. Learn from your mistakes, but dont dwell on the past. In order to get prepared I would get a lot of shots in and work on your outlet passes/clears with your D-men and middies.

[Ballinman]

All this information everyone is giving you is tremendously helpful, but in my opinion, you should just know the basic common sense stuff for goalie for right now (arch, passing, how defense works,clearing) and just play your first game on whim. For example, my first time as goalie or ever played with a goalie stick for more then a couple minutes was my first game, and I did tremendously well for just playing and having fun. I knew that I had to talk and call out ball position. Only when you play your first game you know truly how it feels and what you need to work on, then you can find techniques and information after to make you become a better player. Or thats what I did, lol.