NCAA Lacrosse is Gone for the Season, What to do Now?

With the announcement from the NCAA that all winter and spring championships will be canceled, we have effectively seen the end of the college lacrosse season. Conferences are suspending competition, schools are eliminating practices and competition, and most are sending kids home for the semester. So with this loss of so much lacrosse, how are you going to spend your free time this spring? No more games all afternoon on Saturdays and Sundays, no more Memorial Day Weekend, and no more random weeknight games that take over social media for 24 hours. Here are my suggestions of what to do during this lost season.

Watch old games and learn from past greats

One of my favorite things to do is to throw on an old Syracuse game from the 1990’s and just watch Casey Powell cook dudes in the dome for 2 hours. Just throw it on in the background and witness greatness take over. One of the best parts of lacrosse is that it’s a small community. You’ll hear names like Paul Carcaterra, John Desko, Doug Knight, and other familiar ones while watching these old games. As a player or coach, you can learn so much from the games of the past. Watch how an offensive player moves off ball to position themselves for a good shot, or see how a long pole uses his feet to set up a cool check. The strategy is wild to observe too with so much motion, picks, and off ball movement. One of my favorites is the barn burning 1997 Syracuse vs Virginia game in the Dome. Cuse and UVA put up a combined 43 points and it’s an absolute blast to watch.

Finally learn how to string a stick

Learning a new skill is always hard to do. There is that initial fear of just being so terrible at something that you should just quit. You never think it will work out until you put the time into it. And honestly, where do you even start? Do I just start doing random patters? What all do I need to do it? Have no fear because it’s 2020 and we have an ocean of resources on how to string lacrosse sticks. StringKing introduced a free web services called uSTRING which has a huge data base of how to string different heads with all sorts of patters. It includes videos, pictures, and in-depth tutorials on how to get your pocket just right. You’ll need to set up an account but that is just as easy as inserting an email and password. They won’t spam your inbox and it’s an incredible resource that is available for free. Whether you’re a beginner to the stringing game, or a long time member of the community looking for a new way of doing it this is the perfect resource for you to start your stringing journey.

Get on the wall and get better

Classic cliche by every coach every off season, “You kids better have your stick in your hands and be on that wall every day!” We have all heard it at some point in our careers (and some of us are saying this to the younger generation). But why would you spend time out on the wall working? The season is over no reason to care anymore. Just kick back and crank 90s on kids to get those Victory Royales all off season and keep swiping up on TikTok. Summer season will come and all your skills will come back right? Typically this is not the case, and missing out on so much game time and practice is going to hurt your stick skills. Just take the 10 to 15 minutes a day and bang out on the wall for a little bit. Throw the headphones in and get all your aggression out from the day. Lacrosse is not a sport you can just walk into and expect to succeed. The stick is the great equalizer that separates the good players from the great ones. Follow this Taylor Cummings routine and you will have the fastest stick on the field in no time.

Design a custom helmet for next year’s team

Customize Helmets at LacrosseMonkey

Sitting in class/work with nothing to do. Computer open and just looking for lacrosse highlights or some sort of news story. Then you think, “well I could use a new travel helmet. Maybe I make it look super sick and just stand out this year”. Look no further than our very own helmet customizer for the Cascade S. Take a couple minutes and see what you can make. If you really think it’s sick, send it to us on Twitter or Instagram and maybe we will post it with a little shout out for ya.