I spent the weekend in Philadelphia for the US Lacrosse convention recently, and I am continually impressed by the growth of the sport and the number of coaches and players looking to broaden their experience and knowledge by attending similar events.

I’d like to dedicate this article to a subject I have knowledge of as both a coach and a player: How coaches should approach developing players. More specifically, I will address the importance of focusing on a player’s long term potential and involvement in the sport of lacrosse.

I have to admit that I am spending more time coaching and less time playing recently. With that change, I have a new found respect for both my high school and college coaches. My high school coach, Jon Barocas, turned a dismal public high school program—with no funds, no field, no locker-room—into a perennial powerhouse in the Colorado high school lacrosse scene. He instilled discipline in his players and a championship feeling in every team he coached. Teams he coached have won and incredible 7 State Titles. He has also coached nearly 20 high school All-Americans.

I remember how difficult it was as a freshman in High School and how I wondered if I would get through it. However, I also remember how appreciative I was of the style I played for Coach Barocas when I showed up at Princeton four years later. I had already worked very hard in high school and was as prepared as I could be for the rigors of Coach Bill Tierney.

Coach Tierney also instilled discipline and a sense of team unity to what was a horrendous program on the verge of extinction before he got there. He inherited a program that was 1-12 and has since won 5 National Championships. I was fortunate enough to enjoy 3 of them.

Jon Barocas taught me how to work hard. He was able to instill in me and in all his players a sense of pride, determination, and teamwork. He showed us how to win. Coach Barocas was also a master motivator. Coach Tierney was able to build on those characteristics by teaching me the nuances of a finely tuned defense and teamwork at the next level. He stressed the need for each player to focus on their job, and to accomplish it to the best of their ability. It was far more important for one player to know his role and play it perfectly, than to try to do too much in Coach Tierney’s system.

After college, I spent several years coaching at the high school level for the Potomac School in McLean Virginia. I now focus on youth clinics across the country. I have tried (actually, it is a constant process) to coach the way I was coached and teach the lessons I was taught. It is difficult. Those two coaches have so much knowledge and experience—the depth of which is astounding.

Personally, while I learned a great deal, I am finding that it just scratches the surface of what is possible. I saw my coaches nimbly respond and react to all situations possible with players, parents, games, and officials, but I still need time to think about my reaction and how it will affect the team when I am in similar spots. There is no substitute for experience and these coaches had it and used it. They were both able to build great teams and manage and motivate great players.

In my experience, I have also found that there are other coaches who place too much emphasis on short-term success. The short-term success of a team or of a player should never come at the expense of the players’ long-term enjoyment of and involvement in the sport of lacrosse. I am a big believer in teaching young players the skills they need to perfect in order to be successful at the highest levels of lacrosse. In other words, young players start to develop bad habits at a young age, during youth leagues, summer leagues, or in high school. The truth of the matter is that many young players treat it as a type of “survival of the fittest” in that they develop tendencies that enable them to excel at that current level of play, but will not serve them well in the long run. Often coaches overlook bad habits if the outcome is positive. For example, I have seen youth players who have poor footwork but great checks will be successful until they play at the next level (i.e. middle school to high school; high school to college). I think this is where a coach needs to step in and force a player to have good footwork to go along with his good checks.

I have also seen teams that lack a solid offensive or defensive system at the middle and high school levels of play. In fact, such systems are necessary, at varying degrees of difficulty and complexity, at all levels of play. Younger players who are not taught to communicate and to play a coordinated system will suffer at the highest levels. This is also a coach’s responsibility.

My advice to youth coaches across the country is to focus on skills that will serve players well as they develop into better lacrosse players, while also focusing on the short-term success of the team. I understand that there is a tough balance to be found between short-term success and nurturing skills for the long-term. Clearly, if a coach focused only on the future, immediate success may be hard to come by. Nobody wants to lose, and younger players who lose a lot may be deterred from playing the game in the future. It is a tough balancing act. I think this is part of why it is difficult to find a great coach. I have the greatest respect for coaches at all levels. They have the best intentions and embark on the tough job of shaping today’s youth into tomorrow’s great athletes, thinkers and people.

----------------------------------------------------Editor-----------------------------------------------

Christian Cook graduated from Princeton in 1998. While at Princeton he won 3 National Championships, was a first Team All Ivy selection in ’97 and ’98, and was named to the All Decade Princeton Team. He was also a Third Team All American in ’97, a First Team All American in ’98, and the NCAA Defensive Player of the Year in ’98.

Since graduating he has gone to play in the MLL. He was named MLL Defensive Player of the Year in ’02.