Why Understanding Your Save Percentage is Just The Beginning For The Lacrosse Goalie

A good save percentage can make a lacrosse goalie feel good, but the real learning for the goalie comes when we dissect just what happened within those shots and saves that we made.  In this video, Coach Edwards lays out just why you need to start looking deeper into your save percentage.

Hey guys it’s Coach Edwards here from LacrosseGoalieTips.com and LacrosseGoalieUnviersity.com and welcome to another episode.

Took a little break during Super Bowl Week. Big Patriots fan here. Pretty excited about the result. Hope you are too, probably not but that’s ok.

Quick shout out to new subscribers from Troy, NY, Apopka, FL, Newberry, Florida and Londonderry, NH. That’s just a handful of new subscribers to the blog and I want to welcome you here as well. I’ve got a lot of free videos for our subscribers to our newsletter. If you haven’t yet subscribed please do so.

Listen, this week I’ve got an interesting question…I just shot an extended video for our Lacrosse Goalie University Members. If you aren’t a lacrosse Goalie University Member you’re going to want to check that out. The subscribe button is below. That’s my paid membership for lacrosse goalies who want to take it to the next level and want to have a little more interaction with me. There is a button above as well to join today.

The question this week is from that subscriber in New York and the question goes like this…it’s a long question. If we can keep the emails to me a little short I can read them on line. The gist was this:

“Dear Coach, I’m from a small school in New York and my save percentage hovers between 65% and 70%. Looking online I see that some college goalies have a save percentage lower than that. Should I apply to those types of schools?”

The bottom line is this…what I’ve touched on with my Lacrosse Goalie University members this month, and what I want to touch on, your save percentage alone doesn’t matter.

Now, for those of you who have seen my video on why the save percentage is the goalies grade. The ScoreBoard Is Not The Goalies Grade is here. You’ll want to check that out. This video doesn’t contradict that video but it does take it to another level.

Save percentage. When you have save percentage, and again, it is your grade of your performance relative to the score and the shots that you received. However, within that there are certain things that you need to understand. So, let’s say, you’re a lacrosse goalie and you’re on a team that always gives up shots within five yards and you’re horrible saving shots within 5 yards, your save percentage is going to be quite low.

But let’s say you’re on a team that only gives up shots from outside and your’e really good at those shots…you’re going to have a high save percentage.

What I want you to understand that it’s really important that you keep stats of your games. Those of you who have heard me talk about how my mom video every one of my high school games and probably most of my Junior High School games with the big VHS Camcorder. The thing was like holding a toaster oven to the side of your head. She video’d every one, and what I would do is go home and then critique myself. I’d do my own statistics, not just for me, but for the other goalie on the field as well.

What I wanted to do there was I wanted to make sure that I was the best goalie on the field for that game. So, for instance, I played in the Independant School League in New England and we would play St. Georges. And St. Georges had a hell of a team. They had Billy Bush who was on E Entertainment Tonight and he was one of their star attack men and he used to light me up. We used to get crushed.

Now the scoreboard said we did pretty horrible, but when I went home and looked at the save percentage, the shots that I saved versus the shots the other goalie, I had actually done quite well and had a higher save percentage. That made me feel good. And that’s what I recommend every goalie does. You go home and you check your own stats. And then within those stats you start to understand where are those shots I’m facing coming from on the field.

Now that’s what I go into detail with for our Lacrosse Goalie University Members thi s month. Let me leave you with this…if you are not looking at your statistics that critically, first and foremost, you can’t really compare yourself to another goalie elsewhere in the country, because the type of shots you face, the quality of shots you face, can be drastically different.

I got an email last season from two separate lacrosse goalies. One was a goalie from California who had a very low save percentage, sorry, a very poor save percentage. It was about 42% if I remember correctly. I also had a goalie write me from Minnesota. The goalie in Minnesota had been working with a prominent college goalie who was kind of his coach, and this goalie in Minnesota had a save percentage that was 60+.

Now they both went to the same camp ironically. The kid from California was expecting to get lit up. The kid from Minnesota was all jacked up that he had this really high save percentage but he ended up being disappointed because when he got to the camp, he got lit up and the California kid was thinking, This isn’t as bad as I thought this was going to be.

What this tells you there is that within your save percentage, you’re going to get one idea of your game, but when you compare yourself…this is true in your league, your state, the country…this is true for College goalies, Pro goalies, it’s all the same…the type of shot you face is something to look at within your save percentage and it’s going to give you an idea of what you need to work on in practice. It’s going to help you discuss with your coach, and coaches need to understand what the save percentage is for their goalie so they can know what to work on in practice. And so on and son on.

So, I want you, this week, to go out and take one of your games, look at one of your games on tape. And I want you to email me. If you’re a parent or a coach watching this I want you to do this with your goalie. Get a game from last season, if you want to be an overachiever then get a good game and a bad game. And look at those statistics and find out, within your save percentage, where did the shots come from on the field? OK?

And tell me what you learned. So, email me and I’ll discuss that in a future video and we will talk about some of those results. Remember this…the save percentage is the goalies grade for every game. So whether you win or lose, the save percentage is your grade, but within that, there are things we can learn within that save percentage. Where did the shots come from? What kind of shots are they? Let me know what you found out when you critique your own game. Again, I’ll discuss it further in another video.

If you’ve got a question for me, email me at coachedwards@lacrossegoalieuniversity.com. To all of my coaching clients, good luck this week. We’re still sitting in snow where I am but the season is coming fast and furious so let’s get ready now.

I’m Coach Edwards. Talk to you soon. Be sure to share this video. Share it on Facebook. Tweet it out. Pin it. Google plus it. I sure would appreciate it. Leave me a comment below. As always. See you soon. Cheers.