Types of Rides

[Swishy K]

I would love to get some ideas on the different types of rides teams and coaches like to use. I know the basic one where the middies drop back and cover the center line and the attack form a triangle and shift depending where the ball is thrown. But any other creative suggestions would be great. And does anyone know where to get more material on the types of rides?

Thanks.

[Bobsch]

If you like taking risks every once in a while and have lots of time to practice it, you can try the 10 man ride.

[Newnan Coach]

I'm working on a ride with my team where we run a traditional ride like your talking about where you drop your middies and form the triangle. If you can force the long pass across field you bump the backside middie back up field to take away the up pass from the backside defender while the attack moves thier triangle and the two middies that continue to drop form a man down defense behind the more argressive ride to hold off the offense if they break the ride. It's less risky than the ten man ride and you teach man down defense already.

I'd like to know what you think?

[ColtsLax]

our ten man ride goes like this.

we have two middies, a pole and a goalie match up deep, then two poles and a middie go up and form a triangle. One pole takes point at the top of the box, and seal off the middle, the two wings jump anyone who tries to carry. The attack pressure the poles and goalies who are in the wings and at x. The Point pole then tries to double if no one is in the middle,

[CaptMDG]

In the Scholastic Coach, March 1974 issue, I wrote an article about our ride that was so successful during our 1974 season. Chuck Winters was the head coach at the time. If you can get the article it will diagram the ride against all sorts of clears. If you cannot get the article read the basic concepts below and start diagraming clears and place the ride against them.

Basic Concepts:

Our defensemen shut off their attackmen always.
Our midfielders shut off their midfielders always.
Our attack (the key to the ride) shut off any inside clearing defensemen and/or any defenseman playing low on the midfield line always. We treat any defenseman on the midfiled line like a midfielder. We leave the defensemen on the side of the field alone.

The key is to train your attack to ride playing body position on any clearing defenseman. Most attack want to go for homerun checks that allow a good stickhandler to dodge in the open field.

One attackman in this scheme is always the chaser. He plays like a free safety in football. If everyone is doing their job, the only outlet pass available is to either sideline. The sideline is our "eleventh man." The chaser takes an angle of pursuit to the man who receives the pass and plays good body position to angle the defenseman out of bounds.

The only pass this defenseman has available to him in order to get out of trouble is a crossfield pass to the other sideline defenseman. He is under pressure, tiptoeing(sp?) the sideline and has to make a 60 yard pass. This is when the "Crossfield Pass Rule" comes in. On any crossfield pass the nearest midfielder to the receiving sideline slides up hard to that defenseman and all other middies slide one man over. Again, the only pass this defenseman has available is another 60 yard crossfield pass under pressure.

The key is to develop attackmen who understand and appreciate the value of their defensive skills. At Cortland, in that era, we had scads of attackmen and everyone of them could put a ball into the goal or feed through an eye of the needle. We chose the starters based on their defensive abilities and Cortland was playing on the national stage. Not bad for a college of only 3,000 students.

PS. I am so glad Cortland is back in the mix. - Congrats to the Red Dragons for winning the DIII championship this year.

[WHEELAX2]

unfortunately, the riding game has changed quite a bit as the clearing rules have changed..

a lot of teams are not pressing nearly as much as they used to in olden times.. :bull:

[CTLaxer]

I use a zone press with my girls team. Not like anyone wanted to know about a girls team ride, but just incase they did...voila.

[CaptMDG]

TO Wheelax2: That is still the beauty of this ride, even under today's clearing rules. We cut off all their short sticks immediately and that is their only job. The attack MUST get below the clearing defense immediately and force the ball to the sidelines. Time is on the riding teams side.

[CaptMDG]

I totally understand the era of specialization. I do not particularly like it, but that is another thread. Concepts remain the same though. When their middies fly off, we fly off with them. The crossfield pass rule remains the same except the slide now comes from the defense. I will never give up the hard riding concept because of our newer substitution rules. It makes for lazy attackmen and pissed off middies and defensemen.

[Beacher]

If you want to watch a good clear (and ride) check out an ILF game. Without a clock, skills like the ride become very important. CaptMDG, I might just check out your system for next season.

[afrolaxman]

CptMDG-
nice system, I like it. in texas, we had fairly simple rides (did not find a lot of reading back then, so happy forums like this one exist, so much better for the game), and as a coach we usually had to bite the bullet because of a lacking defense minded attackman (even one, most of the time). if I ever coach again (crossing my fingers), I will definitely use it to see how it looks and works.

[Swishy K]

CptMDG's ride is like the one my team uses. But like afrolaxman, my attack are offense minded, aren't the fastest players, although they have the best stick skills and shots, and simply can't be that "free safety" chaser that is a must for success.

Any tips for modifying that ride a little to compensate?

[afrolaxman]

I would suggest to get your attackmen aside, and pound into their minds the ball belongs on the their team, in their stick.
Get some loose ball drills started to encourage your attackmen to get hungry for the ball:
Start with 2 poles v 1 attack, with small lanes for passing (to give your attackmen a chance to break up the clear). Line up the 2 positions in three lines (1 pole, 1 attack, and 1 pole) near the end line, and roll the ball so the defender has an easier chance than the attackmen have at it (a shot or bad pass rolls lazily into the corner, lets say).
Create a way for the poles and attackmen to tally up the wins (loser does extra laps of some sort), get some serious competitiveness going between the groups. Then, when the attack are getting tired and beat regularly, switch it up, and have 2 attack v 1 pole, with a 2nd pole getting released a bit late (force the attackmen to get the ball loose before the 1 pole has a chance to clear it).
This kind of drill will quickly become just a man-ball drill if you don't monitor it, and while the man-ball idea is great (and crucial), you got to stress what this is all about is quickly gaining posession, and keep away from the other team.
Once the attackmen have a distinct possesion of the ball (I define this as a player can create a quality pass or shot), the drill is over, and bring on new guys. The defense have to just get it out of the box. If you have athletic players, then, make the playable area bigger, to stretch it a little longer. This is a quick drill to create short spurts and lots of repetition.

[Brady]

So what about a full on lock-down ride. I sometimes tell my boys to follow whoever was covering them on a turnover (save or turnover). So the middies are riding their middies and the attackmen are locked on the pole that was covering them. Essentially I allow the goalie to walk all the way down to shoot on our goalie if he'd like. Invariably (and maybe it's just indicative of the stick skills of the opposing goalies) the goalie gets nervous by the time he hits the restraining line and if he has the courage to hit midfield he's not going any further. So with no one to pass to he ends up turning the ball over by either throwing it out of bounds or throwing a pass that gets intercepted.

My question is, what are the drawbacks of this ride and why don't I see it more often? Is it just a matter of getting your team disciplined enough to fully lock off all passing options or is there a clear disadvantage that I'm just missing?

When the boys commit to it, we've had about a 95% success rate.

[Brady]

Bump and update.

We played a team in indoor the other night that fought our ride by picking the midfielders at the midfield X. This was a little effective until my middies caught onto it and began switching. Is there any other clear cut way to break this ride?

Thoughts, please?

[CoachK]

Well, rides used to be more effective with the 10 second rule, now we have to make changes. The clearing team can go back into the box, more more teams are running off 1 clearing pole for a middie, but many of the concepts are still the same.

I'm pretty torn here (I don't want to share), I feel like the best ride available right now is one that doesn't prevent the team from crossing midfield, but to let them cross midfield & prevent them from touching the box. 10 seconds starts at that point, & depending on your level of play, takeaways get real easy. Here's one version of the ride,

LSM marks the middie at the faceoff X, middies lock off, poles lock off. Attackmen back up to the midfield line. When the D is ready, our attackmen jump the predetermined players (usually goalie, bottom right pole, & bottom left pole). We want to force their worst pole to bring the ball over the midline so we leave him open. As that happens their is a middie back call & our LSM breaks for the ball. Our other middies adjust & we have our LSM on their worst LP, & they have 10 seconds to get it in the box.... Everyone else stays locked off, no outlet passes, & you have a turnover. It's pretty simple, but requires an excellent & speedy LSM. NCAA programs are running it with more regularity (as are some bigger club teams). I believe it's more effective for teams at lower levels as the off hands are typically not as well developed.

We had great luck with it last year, & expect more as time goes on. The best way to beat it is to get the LSM moving toward the pole (usually a foot race to the corner of the box or to the cage) & have the pole carrying the ball stop & roll backward looking for the now open middie back. Attackmen can make this difficult, but 10 seconds isn't a lot of time. Some teams figured it out & simply didn't send the pole over they'd run multiple picks (double picks & staggered picks) to get attackmen open to clear via pass.

Okay now you have it, my now not so secret ride explained. Good luck, the rule changes are pretty rough & most older rides aren't as effective or are too aggressive (10 man for instance). Their is also a zone version of this ride as well as a few other options but I'm not going to let everything out of the bag (just like I won't spell check this)!!

[3rdPersonPlural]

CoachK, I noted that the UCSB club did a rifde like this to great effect.

They would (and perhaps still do) face guard all the attackmen and all the middies and the goalie (as he has the sense to look to pass) and two of the three d-men.

They practically herd the remaining d-man over the midfield line. It's like cave men herding mammoths to a cliff. As soon as the 10 second count starts, there's a 10 man ride with the lsm and a samurai middie tearing into the pole, and nobody looks open and he has 10 seconds to do something constructive and the pole is under ferocious pressure and it works EVERY TIME!