If you want to become a better faceoff specialist and improve overall as a FOGO, you’ve come to the right place. This page will guide you through a wealth of already existing FREE resources, mostly videos that will provide you with tips, tricks, drills and real game tape examples.
Four Lacrosse Drills Every FOGO Needs
Contributed by US Lacrosse, Stevenson men’s lacrosse caoch Paul Cantabene (for us geezers, he’s a legend) demonstrates four drills that are a must if you want to be a faceoff-specialist.
Practicing The Clamp: Finding The Sweet Spot
Former Johns Hopkins and Rochester Rattlers faceoff man Mike Poppleton shares two simple drills to help improve your clamp, showing you how to practice hitting the “sweet spot” of your lacrosse head.
What If You Lose The Draw? How To Win 50/50 Balls
Trevor Baptiste is arguably the best face-off man to play the game. What he’s done so far in his senior campaign at Denver is incredible. Sure, you’ve seen all of the highlights where he wins face-offs clean. But what happens when you lose the draw and have to now scramble to win a 50/50 ball? Baptiste isn’t one of the FOGO greats because he wins every draw (which he’s done twice in 2018 already). He’s one of the greats because he knows how to win 50/50 balls, and allow his wings time to help win the ground ball battle for him.
In 2018, Charles Kelly of North Carolina won 8-of-20 face-offs against Baptiste. That wasn’t good enough for UNC as Denver still won out, but this is a great highlight tape of every face-off in that game, so you can see how these guys did battle. More often than not, it ended up being a scrum and there is a lot to take from this video, and especially watch these two things…
(1) What Trevor Baptiste does when he doesn’t win it clean to either gain position for the GB, or more specifically, to just NOT LET KELLY WIN, allowing time for the wings to get into the mix and win out for him.
(2) What how Kelly tries to tie Baptiste up and run interference, as from his side, he knew he wasn’t going to win it one-on-one, so he used a few tactics to even the score and turn it into a 50/50 game at the X which sometimes is the best you can do.
Importance Playing With Your Wings to Win 50/50 Balls
Danny Varello out classed Justin Schwenk and UVA in early march of 2018 winning 16 of 26 face-offs on the afternoon helping Syracuse knock off Virginia on the road 12-11. HOWEVER, when watching the game it felt like the draws were about split, and maybe that’s because Syracuse turned the ball over a couple of times after winning, including Varello taking a shot off a face-off win turned fast break, and Syracuse didn’t have anyone backing up the cage. But this is a great example of how wing play can help clean up where the fogo’s force 50/50 balls and also of how important it is to take care of the ball AFTER THE WIN.
