Lacrosse Tryouts – How do you pick your team? Pt. 1

Person

How do we grade the person? This one is not the easiest to give an objective grade, but the most important to have. I want my team to be full of quality character individuals. These individuals represent more than themselves. They represent their families, each other, the school, and you the coach. I love the concept of “if you don’t want your mom to see it on the front page of the newspaper, don’t do it”.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need squeaky clean players, I need players with the potential to learn from mistakes. I love lacrosse and sports in general as a sandbox to make mistakes. Learn little lessons here so you don’t need the rougher lessons later in life. I want players that are there for something greater than themselves. They need to realize they are an important link in a chain, cog in a wheel, whatever analogy you want. If they are unwilling to commit to the team, then why should the team be willing to commit to them.

Everyone says they want a coachable player, but I don’t know if we spend enough time with players defining that. To take the paragraphs above here’s my abbreviated definition, a player willing to make mistakes and learn from them while executing their role as part of the team to the best of their ability and at the end of the day the sum of their actions are consistent with the identity of the organization.