How to get rid of the fear of the lacrosse ball

Fear of the lacrosse ball is a common trait all goalies go through. I don’t care what experienced goalkeepers say. They may have forgotten the times they were afraid of the ball if they haven’t experienced it in a long time. Or they’re just trying to act tough. No matter. We all go through it, and today I want to give you two quick tactics to eliminate fear, or at least reduce it.

As a young goalkeeper, he experienced fear of the ball every time he leveled up. Whether from middle school to high school, or from high school to college, the increased speed of the ball caused me a little bit of fear.

I wasn’t afraid of the balls going into the net. For some reason, I was okay with the fact that I was young, these guys were older, and I wasn’t expected to stop those balls yet. No, it was the fear of being hit with the ball.

But the number one way to get over the fear of getting hit by the ball was to pad yourself. And that is my recommendation for you today. The number one way to prevent fear of the ball is…

#1) Put on more protective gear.

This is the number one reason why you won’t do this… Peer pressure. That is all. You see college goalies online wearing next to nothing and you think. “That’s what I’m supposed to look like. That’s what a great goalkeeper looks like.” Well that’s not true.

Elite goalkeepers take shots, more often than not, from elite shooters. These shooters can pick a corner from twenty meters. The chances of them taking the ball out of the goalies thigh are small. But for you, the developing young goalkeeper, that is not the case. I always say that as a lacrosse goalie, you are one bad shot away from developing fear of the ball.

As a fifth grader, my school had a rule that I had to wear head-to-toe gear. As silly as it may sound, and as heavy and slow as I felt in the cage, I wasn’t afraid of the ball. That’s because there wasn’t a place in me that wasn’t protected. What it allowed me to do was just focus on stopping the ball. I just had to worry about seeing it and putting something in front of it. A perfect learning environment.

So put aside your fear of looking weird to your friends who are NOT in the cage and put on some football pants and shin guards. Throw on some shoulder pads if you don’t have shoulder pads on your chest pad and see how much better you feel in the cage.

#2) Get the shooters back to practice.

Now I know you can’t have shooters back in games. But you can have them back in practice to give you more time to react to the ball. The fear of the ball disappears the further the shooter is from the goal. It’s that easy. So ask your coach to put the players back into practice. Throw some cones so they know where to shoot from.

If the distance from which you can safely see a ball is fifteen yards, throw out a stick or a pair of gloves and tell the shooters to shoot before that line. If it’s twelve or ten yards, move it around a bit. Either way, shooters will know and you’ll feel safe knowing the shots are coming from a distance you can handle.

game’s Day

On match day, feel free to undress to show what an elite goalkeeper should look like, if necessary. But I bet you’ll feel so secure in the cage with some extra padding that you won’t want to take it off.