Ever since I was young, I wondered why my father, Bill Tierney, was so intense on the fields. He was always yelling at players during practice, either scolding them for mistakes or praising them for good plays. That’s what a coach is supposed to do right? But, why do they have to yell? I used to wonder the same things and sometimes I still do.

But, now that I coach a lot myself, both for the Outlaws and for our ICON teams, I realize why it is not just yelling. It’s not like I am angry when I yell as a coach. I don’t get “mad” at a player when he makes a bad play. But, as a coach, there has to be some level of intensity. The day I stop yelling during practice, is the day that I no longer care about my players.

There are also the practical aspects. A lot of time players are spread all over the field, so you have to yell as a coach so everyone can hear you. Also, lacrosse players do not typically have the longest attention span in the world, so it also helps to keep their attention. A lot of times, it just makes sense.

There are certain considerations that a coach must be aware of when bringing a high level of intensity on to the field. There are personality differences between players. As a coach, you have to know which players respond well to that type of intensity and those whom it simply frustrates. Furthermore, yelling should never be a personal thing ever and a coach has to be very considerate of what he actually says when he yells. I believe that it is very important to yell at the play and not the player. A lot of times, I will call out a player on my team for making a bad play, but he knows it is nothing personal and that it is for everyone to learn from. I like to remind my players that it is never personal when they get made as an example for the team. They made a bad play, it is being displayed to the whole team as an example, and we move on and learn from it.

So, even after all these explanations, is yelling really necessary on the field? I guess not. I would much rather prefer not having a sore throat after practice. However, there are some things in life that take a certain level of high intensity. There are a select group of athletes who are better off going into a game or practice laughing, joking around and being extremely relaxed. But, for the majority of players, the level of focus that it takes to compete in a fast game like lacrosse, takes a high level of intensity.

However, the greatest lesson that I learned from my father when it came to intensity and all his yelling and carrying on, was that it prepared us for the big game. The pressure of constantly having a coach in your face throughout practice made it easy for us to deal with 30,000 fans in championship games. Developing some thick skin, being able to perform under pressure, and being able to stay focus amidst chaos are all huge lessons for athletes to take on the field and into the real world after lacrosse is all over.

And that is what lacrosse and other athletics is all about...giving young men and women opportunities to develop as people and provide them with the confidence and ability to handle whatever life throws at them.

Yesterday, at our 8th grade ICON team practice, we worked a lot on one on one defense. One of the things that I learned most from my father about lacrosse, is that defense wins championships. When you face better teams, or the pressure gets higher in the playoffs, you need to be able to shut teams down on the defensive side of the field.

People used to come up to me all the time when I was at Princeton and ask how many different defensive schemes we ran. Everyone thought we had this complex set of 80 different defenses! The fact of the matter was that we pretty much ran only one defense. We added some wrinkles here and there, but for the most part, we were in the same defensive scheme the whole time. However, within that defensive scheme, we were extremely sound fundamentally.

A couple of the fundamentals that we have been working on lately at ICON are the ones that made our team great at Princeton. The biggest thing that the defense did well at Princeton was they NEVER GOT BEAT TO THE TOPSIDE! The topside is to the middle of the field. So, midfielders are in charge of driving their man down the side, defensemen on the wing are told to make their guy go underneath to goal-line extended, and defensemen from behind our taught to beat their guy to goal-line extended, turn their hips toward the endline, and use their body to make the offensive player roll underneath. Keeping the offense from getting to the top-side does a number of things. One, it makes the offense take poor angle shots, which helps your goalie make more saves. Two, it gives them fewer options on where to feed the ball. Usually if you keep a guy down the side or make him go underneath, he has to make an outlet pass to an offensive player who is not in a dangerous spot to score. Three, if the rest of the team knows where they will have to slide to if someone gets beat, then the defense is that more affective.e

The next fundamental that we have been working on is sluffing in and looking away. If you are not the defenseman who is on ball, and you are not the defenseman who is adjacent to ball, and you are not the defenseman who is on the crease and is the first slide man, then you are AWAY FROM BALL. If you are away from ball, then you are getting in on the crease and LOOKING AWAY FROM BALL. This allows the defense to pack in tight, helps if you have to slide from the crease because you have help inside, and keeps teams from getting open on back door cuts.

The final fundamental we have been harping on is talk and communication. Communication is what brings a team defense together on the lacrosse field and if you are not talking, then it is going to be very hard for you to all be on the same page. A team defense can intimidate the opposing team by yelling out their positions, calling out ball, calling out if they are the slide man, calling out if they are away, and just being loud in general. By communicating and helping your team come together as a unit, you are making yourself a better defenseman, individually.

So, these are a few fundamentals that must be constantly worked on throughout the year. They are things that no matter how long a player has been in the game, he always can get better at and work on. Remember, offensive guys get the glory, but the defense always wins championships!

I wanted to create a place where we can write to the players and parents about various aspects of lacrosse that we don’t get the time to talk about on the field. I also want players and parents to comment back on this page (constructively and positively please) and ask any questions that you may have or want us to discuss.

I figured the best way for me to start this blog was to talk about what lacrosse meant to me growing up. For those of you that don’t know me, my father Bill Tierney is the head lacrosse coach for Princeton University. My father is considered to be one of the best coaches of all time, and there is no one that loves the game more than he does. Hence, I was born with a stick in my hand!

I started playing competitive lacrosse when I was five years old and I retired from professional lacrosse when I was 28, so I played for a good amount of time! My goals as a child were to win a National Championship with my father, which I did at Princeton and play for Team USA, which I was lucky enough to do twice. I can honestly tell you though that these accomplishments mean little to me now. They are in the past and I have moved on with my life. So, what does lacrosse mean to me now and why do I want to share that with younger players?

The greatest thing that lacrosse taught me was that life is a process, not an end result. To be honest with you, I don’t really remember the “big” days - the days that we won championships or I was given an individual award. I can barely recall those days. The days that I do recall are the days when I was younger throwing against a wall every day for hours on end against a wall. I remember the days of running in the rain or snow in high school. I remember training so hard in the weight room when I was 15 that I used to puke! These memories teach me that all those things that I worked so hard at were the building blocks. I decided that I wanted to build towards a goal in my life, and everything that I poured my energy into added to that goal. In the end, I knew that I had done everything that I could to achieve the end result, and fortunately it worked out for me. But, even if it had not, I would still look back at those memories and be proud of how I had done my best at something that I loved. This is a lesson that I carry in my daily life now. It allows me to see that I should enjoy each and every day that I have now, while I am in the process of creating my next “big” days.

The second thing lacrosse taught me goes along the same lines. There are a lot of times when things happen in lacrosse that our beyond our control. Sometimes the ref makes a terrible call, or the field is slippery, or our stick sucks, or we get hurt. At those times, trying our absolute best is all that we can do. There are a lot of times when people say, “Well, I tried my best, but it didn’t work out...oh well!”. But many times, those people are fooling themselves. If you can honestly look at yourself in the mirror after a game and say that you did everything you possibly could have done to help your team win, then that is enough. You don’t have to worry about the score or what your stats were. All you need to know is that you did your best. The reason that this is such an important lesson to learn is that life brings us many challenges that we have absolutely no control over. In those moments, that is when we are being asked to be the best people that we can possibly be, whatever that looks like for each individual.

One more lesson that lacrosse taught me was the lesson of humility. Our culture is fueled by wanting to be rich and famous. We worship celebrities like they are Gods. This is simply foolish. We are all capable of doing extraordinary things with our lives. It is a crime to take the life that we are given and waste even a second of our time and energy studying the lives of “stars” or trying to model ours after theirs. The funny part about all this is that the better you get at a specific thing in life, the more you notice others who are great at what they do! Athletes tend to get overblown egos all the time. We strive for attention and applause. Many times, you will notice that athletes feel that simply because they play a sport well, then they are somehow “better” than other people. Here’s something that should always be remembered : no matter how good you get at something, 99.99% of the rest of the world could care less because they are living their own lives. So, if you love lacrosse and you want to be the best that you can be at it...then great! But, if you are looking for the world to acknowledge you in some way because of it, you are going down the wrong path. Instead of looking for acknowledgement, start to appreciate those who are around you. Go talk to the shy kid who everyone else at school makes fun of and find out what his interests or hobbies are. Find out more about your teachers lives or what your parents love to do in their free time. What you will start to notice is that everyone around you has something that they are quite talented at, and they are people that you can learn more about life from.

Obviously, there is much more to be learned from sports, including lacrosse, but I felt that this was a good place for us to start our discussion. I hope this finds you all well.

Best,

Trevor Tierney