3 Things I’m Working On for the Lax Goalie Rat Site
This week is a quick post to share with you a few things I’m working on for the Lax Goalie Rat site.
I’m really excited for these new projects and I can’t wait to complete them so that I can share with LGR community.
Any of these seem interesting to you? Let me know in the comments.
Online Lacrosse Goalie Camp
Edit: My lacrosse goalie camp is here! Check out that link for all the details on what I think is the best lacrosse goalie training available online!
Parents from all over the US sometimes write me to ask if I’m hosting a camp in their area. While I would love to do it, unfortunately its just not possible for me to make a bunch of trips to host camps.
As an alternative, I’m working on something I think is very interesting – an online lacrosse goalie camp.
It’s an idea I’ve had for years and I’m now working to get it done!
The camp will consist of mostly videos – both on the field instruction and in the classroom knowledge training and mental toughness building. While the written form is great for communicating many aspects of being a dominating goalie, some things are best shown via video.
The camp will feature private forums so goalies can post their results and everyone in the camp can check their progress and root them on. You can also ask me any questions related to the camp in this area.
So far I’ve spent several weekends recording instructional videos with the help of current college players.
I’m working on editing and packaging these up into a complete lacrosse goalie camp. I have about 75% of this camp completed and am targeting to finish by the end of the year.
I’ll be gathering a short list of interested goalies shortly to be the first set campers. So if you’re interested in that, shoot me a quick email ([email protected]).
Stay tuned for more info on the online lacrosse goalie camp likely in January.
Clickable Heat Map Tool
Heat maps are an incredibly valuable method of visualizing and interpreting data.
For those of you who are baseball fans you’ve probably seen hitters heat maps which visualize the batter’s likelihood of success on pitches to different locations.
For example, as a pitcher you should avoid throwing balls down and inside to this batter. Red zone!
I’d like to create the same thing for lacrosse goalies. With this tool you’ll be able to click to mark both saves and goals and something like this would be the output.
If red represents goals, where should you shoot on this goalie? Where should this goalie work on saves?
The lacrosse goalie heat map helps identify a goalie’s hot and cold zones. While this info is very useful to opposing attackman, it’s also useful to the goalie to understand where we need to spend more time practicing.
In addition to the goalie view, we could also produce a field view. To understand visually where the team and goalie are allowing goals and making saves from different locations on the field.
Visualizing the data in this way often gives insights into the goalie’s game or the team’s defensive game that were not apparent before.
I’ve done a fair amount of researching and asking around and haven’t found any tool capable of creating your own clickable heat map for sports analysis. If anyone knows of something, leave me a comment below.
Otherwise look for this tool to come out from Lax Goalie Rat sometime in the future.
Weekly Posts
Since 2015, with just a handful of exceptions, I’ve published a weekly post to the Lax Goalie Rat blog.
The writing process is something that I didn’t realize I’d enjoy this much.
My passion is lacrosse goalies so digging into the different topics that are important to lacrosse goalies, their coaches and parents has yet to get old – despite being at over 150(!) posts and counting.
Writing the weekly posts has also helped me learn. When a young goalie emails me a question, most often I have the answer ready to go, but sometimes I don’t.
Sometimes I need to spend an hour researching or a few hours out on the lacrosse field trying something before I get the right answer. That part I love.
If you have a lacrosse goalie (or general lacrosse) topic you think I haven’t fully covered on the blog, please let me know.
That said, I may take a break from the weekly posts to focus my extra time on the 2 projects above. I do have a full-time job that isn’t a lacrosse goalie coach so my free time is somewhat limited. But we’ll see how it goes.
Conclusion
Just wanted to type up a quick post letting you know what to expect from this site in the upcoming months and next year.
Here’s what I’m working:
- Online Lacrosse Goalie Camp
- Clickable Heat Maps
- Weekly Blog Posts
The first two items will also be the priority so you might expect the weekly blog post to take a back seat until items 1 and 2 are finished.
Anything else you’d like to see from this site?
Until next time! Coach Damon
Let me know what you think about these things I’m working on. Any of them interest you?
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Not to be cocky but after seeing so many coaches and reading as much as i can find i have found that i havent learned anything new in around a year an a half. I have assumed i just need to do what i know i have to and just correct the mistakes i know im making, should i stop trying to find new coahes and find shooters so i can ” coach myself” or should i continue to find new people?
Hi Jack – After awhile it’s a matter of simply putting in the work. Doing the drills, doing the exercises, taking shots. So once you’ve learned the basics, you’re exactly right, stop researching and get out there and put what you learned into practice so it becomes second nature. You can always use video too to analyze things in your technique that might not be apparent when playing. Good luck! D
The heat map would be great as an interactive tool, I use a pre-designed sheet for my stats at present which I fill in for my goalies during games. It’s useful but hard to use while coaching, as app would be the dream. One that I could incorporate all my stats on.
Yeah an app you enter stats or shot information into real-time would be the ideal end state. We’ll see if I can get there 🙂
I’ve been working on a homebrew version of a heat map throughout fall ball. It’s an interesting tool and my goalie reviews the data after each game. I track data on paper and then translate to digital, so an app could make it work better. A couple observations I’ve found so far…
* goal view and field view are important together. giving up a stick side low goal on a fast break is very different than a 15 yard shot.
* similarly, recording bounce shot (or not) and some trajectory info (low to low, high to low, etc…) is helpful is diagnosing weaknesses / strengths.
* without video, it’s very difficult to get highly accurate info. +/- is typically 1ft on vertical and horizontal (goal view) and ~ 2 yd and ~ 10 degrees on the radial.