Lacrosse Dodging Drills: Face Dodge

In this lacrosse video Major League Lacrosse player Mikey Powell teaches the proper technique for a face dodge. Mastering the face dodge will bring many opportunities to an offensive player to blow past the defender and take a shot on goal.

Transcription:

My job on every lacrosse team I've ever been on has been to be the main dodger. An offense can't be successful unless one of the guys knows how to dodge and create an even and odd situation. So there's a couple of different dodges that I like to use and let's talk about the first one.

The first one is called the face dodge. A face dodge usually, most of the time is set up looking like you're about to shoot. When I approach a shot, if you've ever held a lacrosse ball, you know these are pretty hard. So my defenceman is probably gonna tense up a little bit knowing that there's a ball that's gonna be coming at him.

I want to make this..I want to sell this so I want it to look just like I'm shooting. And the difference is gonna be with the face dodge all I'm doing is I'm stepping and I'm swinging the stick across my body, keeping it in the same hand. So I'm swinging it across my body.
So I'm gonna look like I'm shooting, step in, bringing it across my body. Look at how my top hand slides up just like that. That's bringing it into a protected area. So I'm coming from here where my hands are on the shaft in a shooting position, sliding my hand up as I come through and keeping it right in front of my face the entire time. So it's always protected. Once I get by him, obviously, I have him beat, this is gonna be tough for him to get back into the play so I'm gonna finish it. I'm gonna finish the play.

So a little bit faster, my hands are away from my body just like a shot, step it in, coming through, keeping it in front of my body the whole time. Little bit faster, more game speed. So I'm gonna catch it and I'm trying to go as fast as I can but always keeping my stick protected. That's the face dodge.