Defensive Strategies in Women's Lacrosse

Video Transcript

"Alright, now I'm just going to talk a little bit on defense. There's two main defensive strategies that you can utilize for your team. The first, of course, is man, which is kind of already drawn out here. Basically, what it is, is the very beginning when you set up for the draw, you're going to be paired with a player from the opposite team and you just say that that's your player for the rest of the game that you're marking, and it's your goal, it's your job to be on them and to make sure that they're not getting any passes, that if they get the ball, you're there defending them. And sometimes, you can do, kind of man where you're communicating with your other team. If you need to switch players, pick up another player's man if they went to a different player, because they were closer or whatever, that's, that's a different way you can make that work. But some disadvantages to man defense is that it's very tiring, that sometimes it's difficult to communicate with, because you, there are players that are closer to the person who has the ball, but it's your player so you have to run over there and get it, and your other teammate doesn't pick up the player. It can just be a little bit more difficult to do. And definitely more energy is spent doing man defense. But the other defense that you can do is zone defense, which is used a lot in basketball too, so it's, it's a little bit, if you've played basketball, it's a little bit easier to understand. But basically what you do, defense, you know, when you're around the goal you're defending, let's say this is the red team's goal they're defending, so, right here, you as defenders, you have a zone that's yours, that you, whoever players from the opposite team that come in there, you're defending that zone. So normally you have the point and cover point by the crease, and they normally try to stay pretty close to the crease so players can't get between them, between them and the goalie. That's definitely as a defender, your main job as far as body positioning is to try to keep yourself between the player with the ball and the goalie, so that's cutting off their lane to shoot. But you have cover point and point, on the creases, and then you have your other defensive players picking up a zone around the goal. And so basically, whatever players come into their zone, they're guarding them. So this makes a little bit more sense so, 'cause your defenders are a little bit more stationary, they're not running everywhere their player goes, they're staying in their specific area and just marking the players as they come in to their, to their zone. So that's a lot less energy expenditure and there's, if you communicate well, it's a better defense because then it's, it's, you're using teamwork instead of maybe just your individual efforts to guard players. Everyone's guarding the players. And you can also, you can blend the two defenses together, sometimes you'll have a star player on the opposite team that you want to get someone to mark from your team all the time,that's always with them, kind of taking them out of the game, but the rest of the players play zone. You can, you can blend it to different, different things. You'll say that maybe one player from your defense is always marking the person with the ball, and then the rest of the players do a zone for the players that don't have the ball. There's different ways that you can blend it. But that's basically the two different types of defense you can do with women's lacrosse. "