The tricks of the trade in winning face-offs in lacrosse

Playing a position that rarely garners accolades, often face-off midfielders are to lacrosse what middle relievers are to baseball — unnoticed and unheralded, but absolutely essential for a winning squad.

Despite their importance, much of what happens during a face-off remains a mystery to those outside the sport. Occuring at the beginning of each quarter and after each goal, face-offs happen more than twenty times in a typical game.

"To begin with, your typical face-off guy is short, stocky and strong," Princeton senior midfielder and four-year face-off specialist Drew Casino said. Princeton's two primary face-off weapons, Casino and sophomore Ryan Schoenig, are among the strongest players on the team, listed at 235 and 220 pounds, respectively.

"Face-off guys also have quick hands and sturdy balance and do a good job at keeping their feet under them," Casino continued. "Not only do they need to endure the physical face-off itself, but then they need to pick up the ground ball, and that kind of build helps you with that."

As a face-off begins, one player on each team crouches at midfield, facing the ball with their backs to their respective goals. The players place their sticks parallel to one another and to the midfield line, with the heads of their lacrosse sticks upright facing the ball, poised to clamp down when the whistle blows.

The only other players in action during a face-off are two wing men who, at the whistle, sprint toward the midfield in an attempt to snap up the ground ball once it has been drawn out of the center.

The remaining six players on each team are required to remain behind their respective restraining lines, out of the play, until the ball is controlled following the face-off.

Each face-off middie draws from an arsenal of tools and tricks to try to gain control of the ball. The most basic strategy is a simple clamp, immediately slamming your stick downward on top of the ball before your opponent can do so and then raking it between your legs and picking it up yourself or drawing it to the side where an approaching wing man can pick up the ground ball.

In an effort to counter a quick clamp by the opposing middie, players often employ a strategy known as "the plunger" in which they move their stick over the ball, then pop the ball through the opponent's legs, often leading to a fast break.

Success facing off depends not only on well-honed individual skills, but often knowledge and anticipation of the strategy a particular opponent employs.

"We usually watch enough tape and do enough scouting that you have a pretty good idea of what the other teams likes to do [on the face-off]," Schoenig said.

With the physical, fast pace of Division I lacrosse, however, skills and scouting often take backseat to simple speed, timing and anticipation. Possession often comes down to a face-off midfielder's ability to anticipate the ref's whistle.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

"Sometimes you will see a guy get really hot and run off a bunch of [face-off] wins in a row," Casino explained. "What is usually going on is that the official is not varying his timing [between setting the players and blowing the whistle], and the player knows exactly when the play is going to start."

With so much riding on the result of each face-off, and at the speed of the college game, rules are routinely bent and broken in order to gain an advantage.

"One thing that people don't realize about facing off is exactly how much cheating goes on," Casino said.

Some rules are quite general. The two players facing off and the four on the wings cannot begin playing until the whistle is blown. Nearly every time a penalty is called during the face-off, the illegal procedure call is because one of those six players, three from each team, left early.

Other rules surrounding the face-off, however, are sometimes minute and hard to enforce. For example, players must keep both hands closed completely around the shaft of the stick and in contact with the ground, but often players shift one hand up onto the throat of the stick to gain more control, or slip two fingers off the cross and use them to jam or "hook" the other player's stick before he can gain control. These subtle strategies are almost impossible for officials to catch.

"The face-off goes so fast and is so physical that you could almost pick the ball up with your hand and put it in your stick," Casino said.

When the Tigers downed the defending national champion Virginia Cavaliers earlier this year, Schoenig won nine of his twelve face-offs. In losses to Johns Hopkins and Syracuse, however, Princeton won a paltry 14 of 52. Winning face-offs is instrumental to winning lacrosse games.