Give and Go Lesson

Here is another video of our Atom league games played in Brandon a few weeks ago. It gives another lesson in basics that are applied from practice to game. We are teaching players to make a pass and follow it with movement. The instruction is also there to move toward the net when your team has the ball. To help drive this home for the little Atom players in Brandon I had them run a set play, Natalie would win the swim-off (one of the fastest 3 or 4 girls her age in Canada!), she would pass it back to Annika or Scott who would then look at Natalie attack the goal. The pass was made to her right shoulder if the defense was on the left - which always happened. She would accelerate and take the ball to the net to score.

This was a good teaching opportunity because Natalie had the speed to make this happen often. She also has the size and strength to make the ball handling and shooting a success most of the time. This happened 2 or 3 times in an early game which allowed Natalie, Scott and Annika to understand the process. All could handle it because we have taught "pass and go" and "pass to a moving target" many times. Once they knew the pattern they could repeat it and teach the other team members in future games, which they did.

The natural step from this was "if we can do this on a swim-off, why can't we do it all the time?" That was one of those situations where the athlete teaches themselves to apply something in scenario B after seeing it work in scenario A. That sort of applied knowledge is the most important, players have ownership of it. Hopefully we get a few competitive games close enough together that the kids can burn these lessons in to their heads for all time.