Brine National Team Tryouts 2017 - 2024/2023

The following Notes were taken while observing the Brine National Lacrosse Tryouts for the North Carolina 2024/2023 Team.

Date: 1/22/2017

Location: Duke Practice Fields

Tryout Setup

Tryout was conducted at the Duke Lacrosse Turf practice fields
There were 2 full fields
Boys high school occuiped 1 full field. The other field was was shared between a girls tryout and the boys 2024/2023
A registration booth was setup near the fields, which worked well

Boys were broken up into 5 groups
Line Drills
- Righty outside with a shallow arc
- Lefty outside with a shallow arc
- Ground balls righty
- Ground balls lefty
- Rightly inside quick sticks
- Lefty inside quick sticks
1 on 1's top & bottom
- Goalies passed the ball to the defender, the defender passed the ball to the offensive player
- Middies not in drill stood in a line near the dividing line heading towards the goal, this forced the midfield to drive to one side (left or right)
- Attack were able to pick a side at X to perform dodges, but had to catch the ball from the defender at an arc, so as to not quickly burn their defender (who was passing them the ball)
4 on 4 Escalation
- 4 lines of defenders and offensive players were placed just outside the box
- Attack and Defense were behind the goal, midfielders were divided into offense and defense
- The goalie passed a ball to the back left attack, where they went 1 on 1
- After each attempt at goal, another 2 players (offense and defense) entered the drill and the play repeated until a 4 on 4
6 on 6 Escalation
- Same drill as above, but with 6 lines of defenders and offense, starting from a 1 on 1 to 6 on 6 (Note: This could have been an N-1 play, to mimic man down situations)
When the girls tryout ended the boys were able to finish with a full field scrimmage
Note: Goalies were rotated at regular intervals

Check in went smooth, coach checking in was very informative and friendly
Plenty of space for parents and players to hangout and warmup
Coaches informed the kids that they would hear about making it within a week, good communication and follow thru as they heard within a couple of days
Escalation drills were good, it showed how attack could handle a 1v1 and the two man game, then involving the midfield to form a more complete picture

Not enough coaches doing evaluations, the kid to coach ratio was way too high
Not enough coaches working to make sure kids were doing the drills correctly, for example some of the groups of line drills received very few coach interactions
There should have been two coaches running and getting the extra balls off the field during the escalation drills
Would recommend a drill coach and evaluator be paired up together
If 5 line drills then there should be 10 coaches (1 person to run the drill, the other to evaluate). The evaluators should have rotated to each line drill station
Many of the kids only got 4/5 touches on the ball during the game situation drills.
Coaches took approx 10 min explaining how to properly set picks, this was an elite player tryout, instruction should be very minimal.
No consideration was done for noting a kids strong hand or weak hand. Lefties or kids with no weak hand should have been evaluated on their own
Too many kids to for a half field evaluation