Good drill to get girls to move to the ball faster?

Jon RoyceCoach, England

Hi Brenda,

Rather than suggest any one drill I would suggest you modify the start of every drill in one of the following two ways%3A-

1. Put two corner flags on the pitch one yard apart and start each drill by allowing the receiver to be first through a gate hotly persued by a defender. In this way the receiver has a split second advantage%3A if they delay or the pass is too slow the defender will jump on the interception
2. I did this last night%3A Start the attacker and defender on the dotted line on the edge of the circle (you could use any line or a cone) the receiver has to touch the circle line with the stick, whilst the defender has to put a foot in the circle. Again, a split second advantage. They then play 1 v 1, 2 v 1 or 3 v 2%3A I then made them move even faster by putting a recovery defender in to chase back. The drill was going both ways with the defenders required to carry it past a cone 35 yards from goal.

In both scenarios the receiver has to attack the ball

Hockey CoachCoach

Brenda,

I pinched a very good exercise on this a few years ago. Set out two concentric squares of cones. The one in the middle 'holding pen' about 1metre squre, the larger one on the outside just size it to give a reasonable distance for a player to post up from the pen to take, control and return a pass to a passer standing on the outside cone. The drill has 4 passers and four runners. Each time a player runs to a passer - calling - receives a pass and returns it to the passer before WALKING back to the pen - this encourages them to use full pace as they head to the ball, stops the drill just going at jogging pace throughout. You can then progress it by introducing defenders into the pen to chase the player posting up, which will teach them to run fast or lose the ball.