How to Cradle a Lacrosse Ball

1. Like catching a lacrosse ball, keep your dominant hand near the top of your lacrosse stick and your non-dominant hand near the bottom of your lacrosse shaft.
2. Grip your lacrosse shaft with your non-dominant hand with an overhand grip, like how you grip the handlebars when riding a bicycle.
3. Your primary hand grips the lacrosse shaft with the opposite grip, and your palm should be facing you. This is similar to how you hold a dumbbell when doing curls where the pads of your fingers lay against the back of your lacrosse shaft.
4. In a curling motion with your dominant hand, pretend that you’re working out your biceps and bring your primary hand towards the middle of your chest in a back and forth rhythm. In this motion, allow your elbow, wrist, and fingers to naturally move with the motion of your stick.

One great analogy for learning, or teaching, how to cradle a lacrosse ball is a bucket of water. If you fill up a bucket with water and swing it back and forth in a proper cradling motion, you won’t lose any water. You can even swing the bucket all the way around and not lose a drop if you do it quickly enough; this effect is called centrifugal force. The water (the lacrosse ball) wants to go to the outside of the circle you create when you cradle. When you cradle a lacrosse ball, you’re creating a half-circle motion with your dominant hand; and this motion is where the lacrosse ball (water) wants to go to the outside of the circle. The problem is that the bucket (lacrosse mesh) is in the way and prevents the contents from spilling out. Showing this little science experiment to newer lacrosse players can be a fun way of demonstrating the idea of cradling and how it works. If the motion of the bucket or lacrosse stick is not totally disturbed, you won’t lose what’s inside of it.