Lacrosse for Football Players

Are you looking for a way to keep your athlete busy during the spring season? For football players, lacrosse can be a great alternative to not only stay active but also to become a more well-rounded athlete. Many successful athletes have played both football and lacrosse, and there are many benefits to playing both sports. In this email, I'll explain why lacrosse can help your son and how playing it can help him become a better football player.

There has been many athletes that have played football to lacrosse and some of these are well know. Below are a few names of current or former athletes that played both sports growing up and made decisions once they got into college or afterwards of which sport they'd pursue.

• Johnny Hodges played lacrosse at Navy then switched to football and transferred to TCU to finish his football eligibility and helped them make it to the National Championship.
• Sam Hubbard decommitted from Notre Dame for lacrosse to play football at OSU
• Xavier Arline, spent his first two years at Navy playing football as a QB, but is now playing lacrosse for Navy and is starting.
• Chris Hogan, played lacrosse at Penn State, but then ended up playing in the NFL and being apart of two Super Bowl championships. He also played a year in the PLL (Professional Lacrosse League).
• Jared Bernhardt, played three seasons of lacrosse at Maryland and left with being the all time leader in points, a National Champion, and winning The Tewaaraton Award (lacrosse's equivalent to the Heisman Trophy). He used his extra year of eligibility to transfer to Ferris State and earned the starting QB position. He led the team to win the division two National Championship and is now playing WR for the Atlanta Falcons.
• Jim Brown, played football and lacrosse at Syracuse.
• John Mackey, played football and lacrosse at Syracuse.

1. Forces athletes to develop team communication skills 🗣️ 

A prominent, yet overlooked, benefit of playing lacrosse during the spring season is that you vastly increase your ability to communicate on the field. Players are not yelling at each other just for kicks, they're keeping in constant contact to prepare for any eventuality that will happen throughout the game. These communication tactics will urge you to get into the habit of informing your teammates of every little tidbit of valuable information that’s stored in your head. Although these outbursts may seem trivial at first, they make a tremendous difference. Football coaches are always on the hunt for vocal leaders that they can trust on the field. By building a habit of communication, you will separate yourself from the pack and help you stand out.

2. Improves Agility Needed for Effective Tackling and Juking. 🤼

It goes without saying that footwork is a crucial determinant of how successful a football player will be. Regardless of your position, agility will be needed in football. Not only does lacrosse place a heavy emphasis on agility, it can be argued that it’s what the entire sport is based around.

3. Promotes Physicality, Helping You to Better Initiate and Absorb Contact 💥

It’s no secret that football is a contact sport. Every play, bodies collide and there is contact being made. Not many sports offer contact, but lacrosse offers football players the rare opportunity to develop this area of their game. The physical contact in lacrosse is slightly different than football, reinforcing technical body checks and calculated stick checks as opposed to throwing opponents to the ground. Lacrosse forces football players to reassess their body positioning and basic approach to contacting an opponent. This makes them have to be more technically sound in terms of their physical capabilities.

4. Improve Hand-Eye Coordination 👁️

Many football positions (wide receiver, quarterback, defensive backs) stress hand-eye coordination.  Lacrosse does a tremendous job at building good hand-eye coordination since it’s an altogether different kind of exercise that most athletes are not accustomed to. The majority of athletes are used to catching and throwing balls with their hands directly rather than use an intermediary tool—such as a lacrosse stick—to perform athletic hand-eye movements.

5. Keep athletes in shape in the Spring 🏃

With football season beginning shortly after lacrosse, it's a great opportunity to get ready for football season. Lacrosse is a lot of running and some could think of it as "hidden conditioning". Also the movements in lacrosse should help athletes bodies in other sports and make them stronger overall.