“THE HYBRID METHOD”

AA vs. A 

When you join the Clams (high school) or Littlenecks (youth), you are not put onto a specific team. There is no permanent "A" team or "B" team. Every player is simply a member of their respective class. As part of a player pool, every player is considered for AA and A placements when applicable. Each player has the opportunity to defend and/or EARN their placement on AA rosters, rather than being stuck on a specific team based on a singular beginning-of-season tryout. The fluidity of our rosters allows us to continue to field top teams at the best events in the country while at the same time giving a high percentage of our athletes the opportunity to experience the highest levels of club lacrosse.  We pride ourselves on PLAYER MOBILITY. If a player excels, he won't have to wait a year to be rewarded for it.

PRACTICES AND TRAINING

All members of a class play and train together. It is equally valuable for players to play in both a highly challenging environment (one in which most players better than they are) and in an environment that is less challenging and allows them to thrive. These concepts, sometimes referred to as overloading and underloading, respectively, are crucial to player development and roster mobility. Everyone gets a lot of looks against as many players as possible = everyone wins.

TOURNAMENT SELECTION

Prior to each tournament season (Fall and Summer), every player in the Clam and Littleneck program receives a personalized "tournament selection sheet" with the slate of events that best fits their developmental needs and the needs of their class. At many tournaments, team placements (AA vs. A) at these events are decided in the weeks leading up to the event, giving all players as much time as possible to earn or defend their roster spot on a specific team.

TRAINING PHILOSOPHY

READ – DECIDE – EXECUTE

In order to play the way we want to play and achieve our goal of always preparing players for a higher level of lacrosse, we pride ourselves on maximizing the amount of game speed repetitions every player at our training sessions is able to accomplish. In every moment on the lacrosse field, players are asked to do three things over and over again:

1. Read - gain an understanding of what teammates and opponents are doing, where they are, and create a prediction of what is going to happen next. In order to train our players to read more effectively, we must constantly put them in situations where there is complicated information coming their way. Just like learning to read written language, we start with simple reads ("draw and dump"). After a while, just as kids progress from picture books to chapter books, we present our players with more nuanced situations, and further train their ability to process information while tired and under pressure.
2. Decide - when a read is made, every player makes a decision about what to do next. Through games and drills that reward certain actions, motions, and decisions, athletes are trained to make certain decisions based on certain reads. Whether a player is on offense with or without the ball, or on defense covering the ball or in a "help" decision, there is rarely one right answer to a situation. Our training focuses on providing every lacrosse athlete with a consistent mental "playbook" that allows them to make as many correct decisions as possible!
3. Execute - If training reads and decisions is training the mind, training execution is training the body. Through thousands of reps every year, we master shooting and passing form, footwork, team offense, team defense, and everything need to make sure that good reads and good decisions can come to fruition. Through a renewed focus on position specific training, we have every position on the field covered!