Parkway West Middle School Youth Lacrosse Program
Letter from Coach David Wolf
Parkway West Middle School Youth Lacrosse Program
Dear Parents,
2020 was a year to forget, and I’m hoping 2021 will work out better on all sorts of levels, including for the middle school lacrosse program! I am reaching out to you to provide you with some information on four things for the 2021 season:
1) Team structure,
2) My expectations for this season,
3) Information on registering with SLYLA (sorry, one more registration required), and
4) Additional resources available to you and your sons.
I apologize for the length of the letter, but want to give you as much information as I can at this point. For those of you that have players returning for another year with the program, please read through this letter to ensure you have all of the information on the upcoming spring 2021 season, particularly that which is related to the team structure.
Team Structure
With the numbers we have currently registered, we are planning to field one 14U team in the SLYLA spring league this year. All 6th through 8th graders will play on the 14U team, which will play a full 10v10 game. This means we’ll have 3 attack, 3 middies, 3 defensemen and 1 goalie on the field at games. Based on our numbers, we should be able to run with plenty of subs, even when there are conflicts for a few kids. We’ll do our best to put kids in positions that they want to play, while also ensuring they get experience at all positions (including goalie!).
Expectations
Practices start at 3:45 pm at Parkway West Middle School on the upper field, and will occur every Wednesday and Friday from Wednesday, March 3 through Friday, May 21. They’ll be expected to last 2 hours each day, depending on light.
Early in the season, prior to Daylight Savings, we’ll likely end earlier around 5:30 pm.
We understand that some players may need to show up late or leave early, depending on other circumstances or obligations (particularly those players coming from another school).
We will play two SLYLA games each Sunday from April 11 through May 23, with times varying each week (as early as 8am, as late as 6pm). This means no games on Easter, but we will play games on Mother’s Day (5/9) – apologies in advance to all the moms. The schedule is not expected to come out until March 29, which I will pass on to you when I receive it. We shouldn’t have more than an hour between each pair of games, and they will schedule them back-to-back fairly often.
SLYLA games will be held at one of three places:
* Ram’s Park (1 Rams Way, Earth City)
* SLYLA games 4/11
* Creve Coeur Soccer Complex (2350 Creve Coeur Mill Road, Maryland Heights)
*SLYLA games 4/25
* Lou Fusz Soccer Complex (2155 Creve Coeur Mill Road, Maryland Heights)
*SLYLA games on all other weekends
We will need parents to volunteer to serve as timer/scorekeeper for each SLYLA game. Once the schedule is released from SLYLA, I’ll send out an email that includes a sign-up for each game. It's very easy and you get a pretty good view of the game from the table!
We will also be scheduling additional games outside of SLYLA to give the players more opportunities for game experience. These will typically be against programs that do not participate in SLYLA, programs like Chaminade, Kirkwood and MICDS. They also tend to be away games (hosted at those schools), but we will also try to have a home game or two played at Parkway West Middle School.
Any changes in schedule, including cancellations of practices or games, will be communicated in two ways as early as possible:
* Via email (from either the program’s Gmail account – [email protected] -- or my personal Gmail account [email protected]
* Via the Parkway West Lacrosse program’s twitter account @pwestlax – note that this account will also include notices for the high school program
The expectation is that we will practice in the rain if there is no threat of lightning and we’re not dealing with a torrential downpour.
General practice plan, though we’ll mix it up and do our best to keep the kids moving and engaged:
* Initial team meeting
* Warm-up/stretching/games (10-15 min)
* Instruction/drills (60-90 min, roughly 15-20 min per drill)
* Game play (15-30 min)
* Ball hunt and wrap-up
School first, lacrosse second
We do not expect or intend to interfere with your sons’ school work – that takes priority over lacrosse. However, we do expect your sons to take responsibility for planning their time such that they can be present and successful at both to the extent possible.
In addition, we understand that any games on Sundays may conflict with other family events. As with school, family always takes priority over lacrosse.
Youth lacrosse is about learning the game
Mistakes are expected (and even encouraged) – if they never happened, there wouldn’t be much need for me or the other coaches.
We do expect to provide your sons with a basic lacrosse skill set (passing, catching, shooting, dodging, 1v1 defense, team offense and team defense). We do not expect that your son will be playing high school varsity-level lacrosse by the end of the season if the first time he picked up a stick was this February or March. We have a variety of experience levels on this team, and we will do our best to provide instruction that is commensurate with your sons’ skill levels.
3 main points stressed on day 1:
Work hard (the more they work in practice, the more they’ll learn)
Be a good sport (to each other, to coaches, to officials, to other teams)
Have fun
SLYLA registration
As noted above, the majority of our games are played through SLYLA. As such, our coaches and players are all required to register with SLYLA. I’ve outlined steps below:
· Go to www.slyla.com
· Click on the orange button on the right side of the screen that says “REGISTER NOW”
· Scroll down to 2021 14U Boys Registration and click the corresponding ‘Register’ button
· On the next screen, check to be sure that you see “2021 14U Boys Player Registration” at the top, then click ‘Continue’
If your son’s birthday does not fall in the period specified (possible for 6th graders registering for the 14U team), let me know. Players are allowed to play up, so our 6th graders can play with our 7th and 8 th graders. If we need to contact SLYLA, we can.
You’ll need to create an account (with a username and password), and then add your son as a participant. Our team is listed under the 14U Boys B Division (Parkway West). Registering with SLYLA will require a current US Lacrosse number – you will be able to renew your membership during the registration process, if necessary. Note that the name you provide to register your son with SLYLA needs to match the name used to obtain a US Lacrosse number.
If you have any issues, contact SLYLA (email either Dave Boots or Todd Dillon, who can be found under Board Members on the left side of the main SLYLA page) and let me know as well.
This will need to be completed by Friday, March 15.
Additional resources
As members of US Lacrosse, you have a lot of resources available to you on their website (once you log in). Note that there are some different rules for youth lacrosse and high school/college lacrosse that we will be discussing with the players (e.g., no one-arm stick checks), but it may be helpful to understand these differences yourselves. If you understand more, the games will be enjoyable, you’ll be able to have meaningful discussions about the general game with your son, and you’ll be a better fan!
Additionally, there are videos on proper contact that I would encourage both you and your sons to watch, as well as ideas for drills your son can work on outside of practice. We’ll be utilizing quite a few drills from the Mobile Coach app, which you should be able to access as well. On the other hand, you can also find a section on the US Lacrosse website that includes comments from college coaches on sport specialization, which highlights one more thing to think about: Encourage your kids to play other sports. Other sports like soccer, basketball and hockey translate well to lacrosse and vice versa.
I’ll end by telling you that lacrosse is a game I love, and I’m excited to help provide your sons with a place to learn the game and have fun doing it. We want to do our best to teach your sons good fundamental lacrosse, but we also want to help with the development of your sons’ character. Whether we’re getting our equipment on before practice, taking a water break, or running through 6-on-6, how these kids treat each other is just as important how well they can pass and catch.
Please keep in mind that we will also be abiding by the regulations and guidelines put forth by St. Louis County regarding how we’re able to practice and compete. As part of our precautions, we’ll be relying each player to bring his own water to practice and games (we won’t be sharing one of large Gatorade jugs or the smaller bottles).
If you have any questions related to practice, the program, or your son’s development as a lacrosse player, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.
David Wolf
[email protected]
636-346-5107