How do you coach a lacrosse goalie if you never played goalie?

You coach the process, not the outcome. A coach who never played the position can still run elite goalie development by managing three things: what the goalie’s body is doing before the shot, whether they are getting real reps instead of warm-up reps, and whether they have a system for moving on after a goal. None of that requires having stood in the cage yourself.

The problem is not that coaches don’t care about their goalies, it’s that goalie development gets outsourced to whoever is shooting that day, and nobody is watching the goalie. Below are the five most common mistakes, and a practice block that fixes most of them at once.

Mistake 1: Using the goalie as a warm-up target

The most common goalie “development” in youth and high school lacrosse is ten minutes of players ripping shots at a goalie who has not moved, stretched, or tracked a single ball.

This is worse than doing nothing. It teaches flinching, it builds a habit of guessing, and it puts your most injury-exposed player in front of live shots cold. If your goalie’s only touches before practice are unstructured shots, you are training the exact habits you will spend the season trying to undo.

Fix: every goalie warm-up requires structure. We recommend 2 shooters from 10-12 yards out shooting at 70% speed. 10 high, 10 mid, 10 low, 10 anywhere a little faster.

Mistake 2: Coaching reaction speed instead of stillness

Coaches see a goalie get beat and say move faster. Almost always, the goalie moved too early.

A goalie who starts moving before the ball is released has committed to a location, and the shooter now has the entire rest of the net. The fastest hands in the program can’t recover from that. What actually separates goalies at every level is the ability to stay completely still and balanced until the ball leaves the stick, then explode to it.

Fix: when your goalie gets scored on, ask one question – were you still? Not why didn’t you have that? You will find that a large share of the goals in any given practice trace back to movement before release.

Mistake 3: Pulling the goalie out of team drills

Goalies get parked in the cage for 6v6 and then stand around during everything else. Meanwhile the position that requires the most communication on the field never practices communicating.

Fix: your goalie runs the defense out loud in every drill that involves a ball, including drills that aren’t about them. Ball location, slide calls, time and room. If your goalie is silent in practice, they will be silent in the fourth quarter.

Mistake 4: Coaching after the goal instead of before the shot

By the time the ball is in the net, the coachable moment is gone. Everything that decided that save happened in the two seconds before the release – stance, balance, eyes on the ball, arc position.

Fix: film one full drill from behind the cage, once a month. You do not need to know goalie technique to see whether your goalie’s feet are quiet and their head is still. That is 80% of the diagnosis, and any coach can do it from an iPhone on a tripod.

Mistake 5: Never repping the clear

A save is half the job. Most programs spend zero practice minutes on the goalie’s outlet, then wonder why possessions die at the defensive restraining line.

Fix: five minutes, twice a week. Save, turn, scan, outlet. Live pressure once your goalie can do it clean.

A 15-minute goalie block any coach can run

This block requires one coach, one shooter, and a bag of balls. It hits stance, tracking, hand path, and clearing in fifteen minutes.

Minutes 0–4 — Hands and eyes. Shooter at 8 yards, no pads necessary. Underhand tosses to all spots. The goalie’s only job is to stay still until release, then drive the top hand to the ball. Coach watches feet. If the feet move before the ball does, reset and repeat.

Minutes 4–8 — Stance under load. Goalie holds their stance while the shooter fakes at random, then shoots. This is the single best drill for killing pre-release movement.

Minutes 8–12 — Live at angle. Shooter takes five shots each from the alley, from the wing, and from up top. Coach is looking for one thing: does the goalie’s positioning on the arc change as the shooter moves, and are they set and still before the shot?

Minutes 12–15 — Save to clear. Every save is followed by a turn, a scan, and an outlet pass to a target. Add a rider in the last two minutes.

Run this twice a week and your goalie will develop faster than they would with a hundred unstructured shots.

What if your goalie needs more than a practice block?

Some things need a specialist, and that’s not a knock on your coaching. Positioning on shots on the run, hand path on off-stick shots, and the mental side after a bad game are all things that get fixed faster with someone who has lived in the position.

We run goalie-only training in Utah, and we work with programs directly.

Fall small group block — Kaysville. Four Monday nights: September 14, 21, 28 and October 5, 5:30–7:00pm at Centennial Junior High. Six goalies maximum, boys and girls train together. $250 for the block. Register: adaptivegoaltending.systeme.io/small-group-1

Fall Saturday clinics — Salt Lake City. October 24, November 14 and December 12, 10:00am–1:00pm at Juan Diego High School. Fifteen goalies per clinic, $175 each or $450 for the Fall Pass. Register: adaptivegoaltending.systeme.io/fall-clinics

If you have goalies in your program who would benefit, send them the links. If you’d rather talk through what your specific goalies need first, reply to this post’s contact form or reach out on Instagram.