Circle Up

Chaos, Communication and Stickwork!

Description of Drill: In this drill, players work on keeping their heads up in a tight space and communication.  You can adjust how many players in/outside of the circle, based on your roster size. All the X’s will have a ball outside the circle and the O’s will be inside the circle. 

The objective is for the O to pop out and receive a pass from the X on the outside and pass it back.  They have to check back to the middle before going to another X.  The X’s have to communicate to the O’s if they are available.  O's cannot receive a pass from the same X twice in a row! They have to find a new feed! They are timed between 45 seconds to 1:15 per skill.  Once their time is up, the second group goes in.  Switch up the skills per round, all right, catch right/throw left, catch left/ throw right, all left, etc.  Drill can take as long as 15 minutes to 30 minutes depending on the number of skills you do.
Equipment Needed: 6-14 players, balls, goal, large space

Skills Emphasized:  50/50 ground balls, awareness, quick decision making, off ball movement, communication, re-defending.

Coaching Points of Emphasis:  “Ball first” mentality off the initial GB, to attack the goal initially.  Quick reaction to the 50/50 ball to go attack or defense, this drill also allows our D to have some fun as well and become attackers at times. The fast pace then settled scenarios for the players to think critically about the play in front of them. Typically if the ball goes out of bounds, we will just start the next ball in to keep the speed of play up.

Diagram of Drill: