Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Do You Teach High School Freshman to Shoot Skip Shots?

I have always limited my freshman from shooting skip shots, partially because in games if they don't know how to do it their shots stop dead in the water and they look like Nancy girls; but more importantly because I think skip shots are lazy. When players rely on skip shots to get goals they don't learn how to shoot quality high corner, cross cage shots. I soon found out that if I don't allow my freshman to shoot some skip shots, then my goalie becomes horrible at blocking them in games, so I have to allow my freshman to shoot them.

Now I focus on explaining when skip shots work and when they don't. For instance, if there is little time on the shot clock (we call this going "red") than a cross cage skip shot might be good because it is less predictable and hopefully if the goalie does block it, the shot goes out of bounds and we get a new offensive possession. Another example would be a quick shot after they have had to work extremely hard to be in a position to take a shot, most likely trying a high corner shot will go over the cage because their legs are exhausted, a skip shot has a higher likelihood of being made because it is easier.

I also try to explain that in practice you will never be as good of a shooter if you rely on the skip shot when you are tired because you don't learn to be accurate or "leg up" when you are tired. We try to teach the players to shoot on the way up "leg up" instead of when they are falling down.

What do you teach your freshman players? Do you allow or disallow skip shots?

Labels: , , ,