How Motion Offense is like Chicken Noodle Soup

A great motion offense in lacrosse is like a great bowl of chicken noodle soup: it only works when all three ingredients show up to the party. Not two. Not two and a half. All three.

For chicken noodle soup, those ingredients are chicken, broth, and noodles. If you’ve got chicken and noodles but no broth, that’s not soup,  that’s pasta with protein. If you’ve got noodles and broth but no chicken, congratulations, you’ve made ramen with confidence. Tasty? Maybe. Chicken noodle soup? Nope.

Lacrosse motion offense works the same way. The three ingredients are ball movement, player movement, and confident dodging:

• Ball movement keeps the defense chasing its own shadow.

• Player movement keeps everyone rotating, cutting, floating, and filling space like they actually know where they’re going, and

• Confident dodging is the spark that makes the whole thing dangerous.

Leave one ingredient out, and the whole recipe falls apart. Pass it around without moving? That’s just having a catch. Run around without dodging? That’s recess with helmets. Dodge without moving the ball or the people? That’s a one-man show, and the defense loves to eat those players alive.

A real motion offense is like soup done right: everything is in motion, everybody has a job, and if one ingredient disappears, the whole thing stops making sense.

Pass, Move, Dodge.
Or in soup language: stir, simmer, serve.

• Coach Mike