How Being a Lacrosse Goalie Taught Me Confidence

By Coach Damon

Posted In: General, Story

Got an email this week from a college goalie.

I am a current sophomore goalkeeper at Dean College, I recently listened to your podcast with Landon Whitney and your conversation about “irrational confidence” which reminded me of an essay I wrote at the very end of my freshman year last year. It entails the story of how I became a lax goalie and how Lax Goalie Rat played a huge role in my life leading up to now. I thought it was something you may like to read.

It’s an awesome story about finding confidence through the vehicle that is lacrosse goalie.

I’m sure you’ll feel as inspired as I was after this reading this story.

Enter Elijah Beland

Since childhood my enthusiasm for athletics has never waned. In my elementary years I eagerly pursued just about every single major sport.

I attempted football but found myself consistently outsized by other kids. Hockey presented a similar challenge—I could never skate as proficiently as my peers.

Soccer matches often saw opponents effortlessly dribble past me. Despite trying my hand at baseball, golf, gymnastics, and even taekwondo, the outcome remained consistent: I never felt ‘good enough’ to find enjoyment from these activities.

These repeated setbacks weighed heavily on young Elijah, leaving me bewildered as to why others consistently outperformed me.

Until I tried lacrosse goalie.

Lacrosse first caught my attention in fifth grade, some of my best friends would come to my house with their lacrosse sticks and play pass, I thought it was cool how they could use the stick to cradle the ball in all sorts of interesting ways that my young, naïve mind thought defied gravity.

In the spring of my fifth grade year, I attended my first lacrosse practice and immediately suffered the same result as when I tried other sports. I couldn’t throw or catch the ball very well and I was slow, in fact I loathed all the running the sport entailed.

However, at the end of the practice my coach raised a question: who wants to be our goalie? My hand immediately sprang in the air as I knew that the goalie barely needed to run. To my surprise I was the only one who volunteered, and I got the job.

My talents as a lacrosse goaltender were not very spectacular when I first started. What appeared to be a daunting challenge quickly became an exciting endeavor. I was fascinated by the position’s specialization.

I enjoyed my one-of-a-kind role on the field—standing alone yet firm in the face of a lightning-fast rubber ball. The courage necessary to protect the goal fueled a feeling of purpose in me.

Furthermore, wearing unique goalkeeper gear not only distinguished me but also gave me a sense of pride.

As the final barrier between success and loss, I took comfort in the duty placed upon me. However, arguably the most satisfying part was the post-game ritual: the entire team converged upon me every game to celebrate the win, or console the loss.

I wanted to become one of the best goalies in Maine, and I knew it was possible because there weren’t a lot of goalies in Maine who really knew the fundamentals at the time and there weren’t a lot of resources for those goalies to train.

Because of this, I had a rather unorthodox way of learning and training. Lacrosse goalie coaches are extremely scarce in Maine, so I had to go online to learn everything about how to train.

In seventh grade, I found online resources such as Coach Damon of LaxGoalieRat.com, I learned all the fundamentals of playing goalie by reading Coach Damon’s articles, he wrote about everything from arc play, to stance, and even the importance of a well strung goalie stick.

But what Coach Damon wrote about that resonated deeply with me was the importance of the mental game, he said that playing lacrosse goalie is up to eighty percent mental. From prior experience playing sports I knew that I was far from being the most athletic person on the field and that the mental game could be a real catalyst for me.

I was full of anxiety as a child and really struggled with my confidence. At one point in my life I was taking six separate medications just to be able to sleep at night.

Coach Damon also hosts a podcast where he interviews all the greatest goalies in the sport. Many of these goalies also spoke about the mental game and the techniques they used to build mental toughness.

I began to use the techniques I learned; first practicing positive self-talk, this means not being hard on my self and knowing that it’s okay when I make a mistake, next having the memory of a goldfish, which means to immediately wipe the memory of a failure and focus on doing the next right thing.

And lastly, my favorite: “irrational confidence” which is the inner belief that no matter how much the odds may be stacked against me, knowing that there is always a chance that the impossible, is possible.

As I continued to practice these mental techniques throughout middle and high school, I not only saw my skills as a goalie grow by a vast margin, but my struggles with anxiety almost completely subsided.

By my senior year of high school, I had grown into a confident, hardworking kid and no longer required any medications. I am now a completely different person from when I first discovered Coach Damon and Lax Goalie Rat.

Confidence is something that I’ve spent a vast amount of time thinking about in my life, and I feel that I have nailed what confidence is and how it is achieved.

First, I believe that confidence is a strong sense of self, I know exactly who I am, what I am capable of right now, and what I could achieve in the future. This is backed by complete preparation and grit in everyday life, if I want to have unwavering confidence in not just being a goalie, but in school and all facets of life, I make sure to leave no stone unturned in my preparation.

I was able to achieve many personal goals; I was a three-time Maine state all-star, broke both my schools career saves record and single-season saves record, was a two-time captain, and made it onto one of the best travel teams in New England: 3d New England.

It was on this team that I met Matt Schairer, the head coach at Dean College. I loved his laid-back “lacrosse dude” vibe. He can often be found sporting a backwards hat which hides his long, brunette hair tied up in a man bun.

But what Coach Matt did that got me hooked on playing for him was that he preached the importance of mental toughness, the same skills that I had worked on for so long in my life.

I am currently a freshman at Dean and managed to lock-down the position of starting goalie over 3 other goalies on the team. I started every game of the season and helped bring my team to the conference championship where we tragically lost 13-12, and I even made the all-tournament team.

I have never meant anything more than when I say that choosing to be a lacrosse goalie was the best decision I ever made in my life and I truly would not be the same person I am today if I hadn’t.