We ran almose exclusively a zone in H.S. and it had a ton of pressure on the wings, at x, and top center. It tried to force everyone to x. It was tons of fun to play if you were a wing defenseman.

But mostly this article reminds me of the best zone d I have ever seen and that was the one Ward melville was running in the late 90′s. I am not sure if they still run it and if they don’t when they stopped. But they ran a backer zone that pressed out on the adjacents and would double the ball all over the field. I have been told this was adapted from Jack Kaley’s D that he ran at NYIT. It was nearly impossible to beat and some big time defenseman were assigned as the backer throughout the years. Grasso (brown) and Passavia (umd) are two that come to mind. But like you said this was not a junk D that Cuozzo and the fellas threw together. It was something that they tought at a very young age and coached it all the way up throughout the program. Their players knew the ins and outs of it as good as the coaches. The chemistry was almost overshadowed by the aggresivness of it but it sure was something of beauty.

Again excellent points on running a no BS effective zone. What are your thoughts on the new NFHS rules for field ball this spring? http://www.nfhs.org/content.aspx?id=5604

They claim that, “This change
allows teams to run their offense more efficiently and simplifies the
counting
requirements for officials,”. While that may be true, I personally think that what they have done is just allowed the defense to “pack it in” on a tight zone set up thus hoping outside shots that goalies favor to stop. Another way I view this a poor man’s way of implementing a long shot clock as the “stalling” call will be less likely to be called. “Regarding
stalling, the committee revised Rule 6-10-2 to state that the warning
will be
made when, in the judgment of the officials, a team in  possession of the
ball
is keeping the ball from play by not attacking the goal. The phrase “in
the
judgment of the officials” was used to replace the former term
“obvious.”. So by trying to ease the burden on the officials by not having one of them count to ten, they have essentially given them a personal “shot clock” by letting the Refs dictate the pace of the game. Si or No?

How does all of this relate to this article? Ehh, I think that because of these changes, you are going to see a bunch of zone defense being implemented at the high school level this spring and with it more specific set plays on offense. Sounds like just one more step closer to basketball if you ask me… Perhaps a full article on this?

Cherrs Bru,

Kliff

It’s less of a backer actually, and more of a “doubling zone” but the slides or doubles are similar.  In this case though, we weren’t waiting for our men to get beat and then sliding with the backer, we were getting beat on purpose to push guys into takeaway opportunities.

This allignment can be shifted to take on dodgers from anywhere, but the only real change is when a guy dodges from X, and here’s why:
When you double in the front, you leave someone open.  This is usually the X guy.  The pass from up top to X is tough to make, and the X guy isn’t instantly at threat to score, so you get a second to recover.  However, when the dodge comes from X, the skip pass up top can be tough.  Bryan Griffin at Tufts was a MASTER of the floating skip pass to a middie up top as the double came.  And that is where a pure backer gets dicey.  Invert your middies, put your shooters up top and make good passes.  It’s that easy to beat, once another team figures that out.

Also, great job adding more strategy articles to the site.  I’m really liking it. You’re bringing the entire lax community up.

Funny that you would bring this up actually… the first year or two we ran zone at Wesleyan I played the 5 and had a bubble JUST like the one I drew above.  It was a really tough assignment to cover the crease, then get around the goal to cover X as the ball moved.

Eventually we switched to either having a 4 or 6 carry the man to X (instead of passing him off to the 5, and then the 4, 5 and 6 could all flip flop and switch with each other.  It became a much more fluid defense, and harder to predict.

Thanks for the great points!