Brett Queener is fast, mobile, and incredible with the stick. He can run coast to coast which sometimes gives his coaches fits. But I like to focus on the positives. A lacrosse goalie like Brett Queener is a threat. And a big one at that.
Timestamps
0:52 – Coach Edwards explains how Brett Queener is an inspiration to lacrosse goalies everywhere.
1:46 – When goalies have more lacrosse skills, they don’t need to be afraid to leave the cage.
2:30 – All players become more valuable athletes when they acquire more skills, and this can be done as simply as hitting a football dummy or lifting weights.
3:38 – Goalies shouldn’t be afraid to get aggressive and leave the cage. Become a threat.
Introduction
Hey there everybody, Coach Edwards here with LacrosseGoalieTips.com with another video, cranking them out today, and I’m going to wear the same shirt, I’m not going to change it this time so that you think I’ve done a new video like weeks and weeks apart. I’m not even wearing pants. Just kidding.
Why Brett Queener Is So Good
So here’s the deal. I got a great message this week. A guy sent me a video of Brett Queener. For those of you that don’t know who Brett Queener is now, he’s a very talented major league lacrosse goalie. As you’ll see by the YouTube video that I posted below, he’s a pretty talented guy. What I want you to know is, I wanted to share my little man-crush for Brett Queener. A lacrosse man-crush, let’s put it that way.
Brett Queener Is What Every Coach Is Wishing For
Brett Queener, as people will say, is a little bit of a different cat, but I disagree. I think that everybody’s got what Brett does in them, but physically they’re not able to make it happen. The cool thing that I like about Brett Queener is that as an example for lacrosse goalies out there, as a coach, I wish every athlete on my team was able to play as well athletically as Brett Queener.
Let me rephrase that. In high school, typically your endurance type guys who can run all day, they’re going to be middys, right? Your fast, quick little guys, they’re going to be attack. Your bigger guy is probably going to be defenseman, a lot of those football guys who come to lacrosse, where they can’t throw or catch, give them a little pole and let them hit stuff, right? And then the goalies are somewhere in that spectrum.
Get Inspired To Run Out Of The Cage
But when we make a save and we go to clear the ball, every coach wishes that every guy that has the ball had the endurance of their middys, had the strength and physicality of their defensemen, had the stick skills and speed and shiftiness of their attackmen, and the courage of their goalie. Right? Fair enough?
This Video Is Awesome
When you watch the video below and you see Brett run out of the cage and you think things like that, I want you not to go, “Oh my god, that’s horrible!” It’s inspiring. And the truth is that he’s got the stick skills of an attackman, he’s got incredible hand strength to basically cradle that stick like it’s a twig, and he’s shifting and fast, and he’s got wheels.
How To Become More Valuable As A Lacrosse Goalie
But wouldn’t everybody wish their goalie was like that? If you are a goalie and you’re not like that, you need to be more of that. You need to go out and train physically. I get a lot of questions from kids going, “How do I improve moving to the ball?” and I’m like, you know what, lift some weights.
Go hit a football dummy. Just go do something. Football dummy meaning not a football player who’s a “dummy,” I mean a football dummy. Go tackle stuff. Hit stuff. Learn how to sprint. If you’ve got a track and field team at your school, get involved with the coach who can teach you how to sprint.
Become An Athlete Who Plays Lacrosse Goalie
Because all in all, you will become more valuable as an athlete and as a goalie. The worst thing I see is when there’s a goalie who makes the save who then uses up the four seconds because they don’t have a clear, then they’ve got to jump out of the crease and now they get run down and they lose the ball because they’re not able to make a solid pass or run out of the way. If that’s you, you can get inspired because you can improve your game a lot just by working on those things.
Brett Queener Is A Threat – You Should Be Too
I want you to watch the video below of Brett Queener. I’m going to post another video next week about this as well about Brett and hopefully we get some more feedback on this. Get inspired by this type of goalie, and don’t go, “Oh my God that’s crazy!” No! Every coach wishes their goalie had that sort of athletic ability. He’s also a very good goalie to begin with, which is pretty sweet. And yes, maybe he’s a different cat, but aren’t we all?
Please Leave a Comment
If you’ve got a comment on this, do me a favor and leave it below. Just post it right on the bottom of this blog post and let’s keep that conversation going. I think it’s a great example. I was similar to that type of goalie, I wasn’t nearly as fast as Brett. He’s just smoking fast.
Be An Aggressive Lacrosse Goalie
But that idea of just getting out of the cage and being aggressive and being a threat. As a goalie, you are that 10th player on the field when it’s even strength. You don’t want to just be a dud on the field, you want to be an advantage, right? So get inspired and work within the game, within the rules, within the plays and things like that, but be inspired by that video.
Conclusion
Leave me your comment below. Do me a favor, Facebook, share this, tweet it, I’d really appreciate it. Again, I’m Coach Edwards at LacrosseGoalieTips.com, and I love having you watch this video, and I love helping goalies around the world. So hopefully that’s you too. Cheers. Talk to you soon.
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YES! We <3 Brett Queener! Just a lax GK mom here, but the thing that got my daughter dashing out of the cage initially was subbing in as a GK for a 5v5 tournament with a team that was not only lacking in skills, but wouldn't listen to her at all. As a result, she ended up getting really mad (very unlike her – she is Zen in the cage normally) and doing crazy stuff like running up to mid-field to intercept passes because SOMEBODY had to play defense, etc. Never seen her do anything like this and I was ROFL on the sidelines. It was awesome. Something broke free that day and she is no longer afraid to get out to make an interception when the opportunity arises, or run up the field to eat clock. Sure her club coach at the time yelled at her later, but I guess my advice as a non-laxer observer is to find opportunities to safely fail at this. IMHO, you only learn when & how to successfully leave the cage by getting burned by doing so unwisely. Mess with this at scrimmages or games that don't "count" (she got to play a little JV last year and that was a great time to experiment without the risk to a varsity team record, etc.). The only downside, parentally speaking, is that I could no longer try to film highlights using a stationary tripod (as evidenced here https://youtu.be/WOAtJeJeHZg when instead of crying over a missed highlight I decided to just be silly and tease her by making Queener a verb for this sort of play). Her team gave her the "Houdini" paper plate award for escaping the cage 🙂
Karen this is awesome. I particularly love that section at 1:15 where she is winded back in the cage. That’s awesome! I was laughing, but proud at the same time.
I think most goalies start to head out of the cage in frustration first. I know I did. I didn’t have D who I felt confident passing the ball to. So instead I mastered the art of the face dodge and just took off trying to create a 2 on 1 and getting past the attack up to the middies where I was more confident I could dump the ball and they could run with it. I had my fair share of fast breaks and even scored a goal once. Fun.
You are very right, find a place where you can safely fail. Just like any other player on the team, there needs to be a system in place for when she leaves the cage and heads up field just like ANY player. Most people see that big stick flying up the field and think, “OH NOOOOOO!” It shouldn’t be the case.
Great job Karen. May I suggest a swivelling video head for your tripod? Manfrotto makes an excellent one. (Just for comparison my mom video’d ALL my highschool games with a shoulder-held VHS! Remember those! lol Great job. And thanks so much for the comment. I appreciate it.
LOL – yeah, I laughed at the collapse too, especially loved that she waited until it was safe to be off her guard to do so 🙂 Our tripod swivels, but I was volunteering that game to do the clock at the table for penalties, so had set it up as a fixed focus and out of my reach. That whole play I had to grit my teeth and show excellent sportsmanship by NOT reacting like a partisan or parent at all (no cheering!), but trust me there were choice NSFW phrases running through my head as I realized I didn’t have that play on film. I got home, found that bit of film, cursed some more, but then decided to have a little fun with all that empty cage time… Fortunately she has a lot more running around highlights from other games where I could pilot the camera! Wow, VHS – yes, I’m that OLD. The kids don’t even send CDs any more, just YouTube or other links pasted into recruiting questionnaires.
I have a son who is a Jr. in High School and has been playing goalie since the 6th grade, He plays a lot like Brett, he is the fastest player on his team. He makes the game very exciting to watch because the opposing team never knows when he is going to pop out of the goal and pick off a pass or make a save and run it down. He is 6′ 1″ and has a long pole so he is very good at picking off passes and does not losses very many ground balls. His save percentage is in the high 60 to low 70%. He had a team last year that put an attack on the end line to even have a chance to win the end line balls. The other goalies on the team tell him he is playing to dangerous and should stay in the goal that he is going to cost them a game because of his active play. I tell him the at there are to types of goalie an active or a reactive goalie. I think he worries his coaches because he is so active, the frustrating thing is that coaches from other teams see his talents and have respect for him, but the program he is playing for has him as the JV goalie and back up Varsity. I don’t know about you but I would rather watch an active goalie and tell him to never change his game!
Scott thanks for the great comment! This is a great concept of “active and reactive”. I tend to look at it a little differently…is the goalie moving the ball up the field effectively or ineffectively? When you take the goalie stick out of the players hands and look at him as you would any other player…is he making good decisions or bad ones? A goalie leaving the cage and trying to dodge one extra player is the same bad choice as a long pole doing the same thing. Or a short stick doing the same thing.
A worried coach is just a coach who doesn’t understand how to utilize that active goalie. (Just ask the Mexico coach with Alec Gastony in the cage at World Championships.) Sometimes coaches don’t have the knowledge to deal with the goalie like that. But others, will embrace it and realize that an active goalie can be a real offensive threat…at times.
As long as your goalie is begin active and taking advantage of opportunities and not just being active out of frustration or active-for-active’s sake then it should be a good situation. If he’s being reckless that’s a whole ‘nuther deal.
Thanks for sharing Scott. Really appreciate those comments and the opportunity to discuss it further.
P.S. There is no tragedy to “costing” a JV game. JV games are where athletes should learn and experiment. These are exactly the games where your goalie should learn their limits. Those comments make me laugh. People really forget why they are playing on the JV to begin with.
What drills/ things can you work on to become an active goalie? Each game I become a little more active and active but I want to be like Brett Queener good when I do it.