Brown Lacrosse

Success is not magical or mystical, it is the natural occurrence of consistently

applying the basic fundamentals!

After seeing that, and realizing that was already part of my coaching philosophy, I was all ears,
and 100% ready to learn.

Coach Mike Daly had a heck of a lot to teach, and I’m glad I was paying attention. While I
played against Tufts in my college days, they are a different animal now. What I saw from them
was very good, but since those days in the early 2000s, Tufts has only gotten better. Now they’re
a national powerhouse.

Here are FOUR of the main takeaways from Coach Daly’s talk, and how you might be able to
use them on your team:

1) How To Be Successful

It’s covered in the quote above pretty generally, and it was a topic Daly hit on time and time
again. For example, while Tufts does not do a ton of regular line drills, they do stand 5 yards
apart at the beginning of practice and throw one handed passes to each other, working on form. If
coach Daly (who played baseball growing up) can’t throw a one hand pass from five yards, with
your stick, then your stick is deemed no good, and has to be changed. It’s simple, and one of the
many places Daly looks for key fundamental abilities.

For my High School team, fundamentals will be a much bigger focus this year. Why teach kids a
complicated offense when they can’t catch and pass extremely well? It’s a great point, and Daly
shows how it has a benefit at the college level. Clearly it will also help my team. If Tufts barely
runs an offense, and focuses more on fundamental skills, I think we will benefit from the same
approach.
2) The Right Attitude

Mistakes WILL happen. Daly said that over and over again as well. So why yell at a kid for
making a mistake? Instead, Daly focuses on HOW players react after making a mistake. If you
dodge, and get stripped, but don’t put your head down, and instead hustle back on D, then that is
OK. Poles shooting and dodging is also OK with Daly, as long as they do the fundamentals
correctly and hustle. Mistakes he can live with, but compounding mistakes with a bad attitude
and lack of hustle? Daly can’t stand that.

I love this coaching concept. My HS players definitely make mistakes, but most of them are still
learning the game. I have vowed to not focus on mistakes AT ALL this year, as long as the
attitude is good, and the hustle is there. My kids will react well to it, and practices will be harder,
but also more fun. That’s a win-win right there.

3) Don’t Micro-manage Practice

Can you stop a game midway and go out and coach your kids? No. Can you yell at each kid
during a game and tell them what to do? No. So why do that at practice? Kids need to learn what
works for them and what doesn’t on their own to some extent, and having a coach breathing
down their neck over every little thing doesn’t allow for that creativity, or confidence, to
develop. No player wants to get stripped… so what good does yelling at a kid right after it
happens do? No good at all.

Building players into high IQ players is the goal, not controlling every action on the field. Help
your players become better and focus on what they are doing right, and you might not have to
yell at all. It’s how Tufts rolls, it’s how Loyola rolls, and it’s how you should roll if you want to
be great.

4) Be Different!

Originally, Daly said he wanted to create a team at Tufts that ran the Princeton defense, and won
games 7-5, through pure control, and precision. When he realized that almost EVERY OTHER
team in the nation was doing very similar things, he decided to change things up. He credited his
outside approach to lacrosse here as beneficial, which makes a lot of sense. It speaks to how
effective a coach can be, even with no direct lacrosse experience, as long as they think about
things in a creative way.

For example. VERY FEW teams would let d-middies dodge after clearing the ball, but not Tufts.
Instead, the PROMOTED that type of play. Then Loyola used it to win a D1 NC. Or, how
EVERYONE ran a structured offense, but not Tufts. It’s basically just their transition offense
slowed down a bit. EVERYONE else is recruiting earlier and earlier now, so can you guess what
Tufts is doing? You guessed it, they’re waiting even longer to go out and contact prospective
players.

By doing things differently, you find new ways to be consistent, and stick to fundamentals. You
find ways to be creative within your basic structure, and as Daly laid out on Page 1, those are
some of the biggest keys to success.