“Speak softly and carry a big stick”, Teddy Roosevelt said it. And LongStickMiddie.com believes in it to the fullest. Malcolm Chase and Tommy Kehoe cover every check imaginable in this DVD. There are two discs and the first focuses on takeaway checks. All of them. Yes, all of them.
They go from the basics of the poke, slap, etc and go all the way to ding dongs, kayaks, ice picks and rusty gates. Each takeaway check is given a rating for risk and “candy factor”. They give you the best ways to set the check up, where to best throw the check and tons of pointers, all while running through the mechanics of the movement. They always cover risk and reward and how to stay in position correctly.
They will then go through some controlled demonstrations of the move and then show Tommy using the check in a game from college. For the rusty gate, they use the video of Kyle Hartzell making Ryan Boyle look silly. Awesome.
Here’s a quick demo of what they do for each check. This only a portion of the “kayak” video segment:
[fvplayer src=”https://youtube.com/watch?v=iZ3ubFUHHI0?fs=1″ splash=”https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iZ3ubFUHHI0/hqdefault.jpg” caption=”Kayak Check.mov”]
Disc 2 features a ton of drills for longsticks and for any coach or player out there who isn’t not content with their current level of play (this should be everyone!), this DVD has some great drill recommendations. Some of it is simple and some of it is very high level, but working through these drills will definitely whoever does them.
I played LSM for the first half of my freshman year at Wesleyan, then moved to close D. I threw the kayak once in a while (usually picking up a penalty along with the takeaway), loved the back check but was awful at the over the head check, even though I’m pretty tall.
Jeff Jorve, a defender from Mercer Island in Seattle who played at Wesleyan with me, threw the rusty gate regularly. He probably landed it 8 out of 10 times. It was all in the set up, and this video will go over that kind of stuff thoroughly. This is a fantastic resource that I wish had been around when I played in college.
The DVD is $30 and can be purchased through LSM.com’s website. I can’t imagine a better way to learn takeaways and stick work for a longpole than to watch this video and then go out and practice, practice, practice. Tommy Kehoe was the DIII player of the Year in 2009 as a LSM and Malcolm Chase played at OWU and Whittier where he was dominant long stick.
I’ve played with Malcolm a lot and this dude strikes fear in the hearts of all he plays. And then after he takes the ball away from you, he flies down field and zings top cheddar btb with a pole. You can only learn good things from these two, even if a lot of the checks are risky. So it’s best to learn them from the best!