Home / Featured / Interviews-Drills / Podcast: Coach Chris Ryan, Mercyhurst (2)

Chris Ryan has been the Head Coach of the Mercyhurst Men’s Lacrosse team since 2001 and a real friend to our site. Coach Ryan led the Lakers to the program’s first national championship in 2011, capping a 14-2 season. He holds a 123-31 career record, ranking him in the top-5 among active coaches in winning percentage. He is not only a great coach, but he is an awesome interview as you will hear. His perspective is relatively basic on fundamentals but delivered with his own special passion and humor.

In 2011, Ryan guided Hurst to 12 regular season victories, good enough to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. In the semifinals, the Lakers beat C.W. Post, 14-4. The win avenged a loss to Post from the regular season. In the finals, Mercyhurst defeated Adelphi 9-8 in Baltimore, Maryland, to capture the national title.

Coach Ryan played two years at Monroe Community College, where he was a two-time Academic All-America, team captain and was selected to play in the Junior College North-South game. After two years at MCC, Ryan moved to Randolph-Macon College where he was a two-time Second Team All-Old Dominion Athletic Conference defenseman and team captain in his senior year. Before assuming the head coaching duties after the 2000 season, Ryan served as Mercyhurst’s assistant coach, working primarily with the defense and serving as the recruiting coordinator.

This is our second interview with this great coach, as he walks us through the practice planning for this national championship team. Premium Members will love this as Coach also shares in the full podcast a number of drills including the ‘Indian Lacrosse Drill’, way to spice up his 6V6, the ‘Grenade Lacrosse Drill’ how and why he uses 7V7 Lacrosse Drills to energize his team, a dialog on their outstanding Man Up and Man Down philosophies, and a great drill for transition and defense, ‘The Counter Attack Drill’ which you can hear, by clicking the ‘Preview Sample’ below as well as read about it in our featured article section.

This preview of this great coach describing this drill in his own words is available for all of our Free Members, just log in and listen then check out the article.

For more on this great coach and the Mercyhurst lacrosse program visit, www.hurstathletics.com and click on the Men’s Lacrosse tab. Coming soon there will be more information on his Day Camps held in Erie PA as well. I hope you enjoy!!

Coach Mike

Send me your emails! mike@laxcoachmike.com

Audio Preview, ‘The Counter Attack Drill from Mercyhurst…

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The full podcast with a ton of ideas and drills is available for our Premium Members…

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