The Pre-Season Edge: How to Stay Healthy for the 2025 Lacrosse Season

Erin Coykendall, Stadium Performance Skills Coach

Spring is just around the corner. High school lacrosse season is about to kick off, club teams are holding final tryouts, and assistant college coaches are preparing to crowd the high school sidelines. If you've heard it from me once, you've heard it two dozen times – if you're not healthy enough to play, you're not going to attract any attention. With the 2025 season only weeks away, I want to bring you cutting edge tips that will provide a three to five percent edge over your peers. Three percent may not seem like much, but if I told you I can only guarantee you will be injury free for 97% of your high school career, would you listen?

There are three metrics that will highlight the blueprint of your injury preventative outlook for this upcoming Spring and Summer. The first is your willingness to do a little extra. You'll need to strength train more often, warm up a little longer, and stay after practice a bit later. The second is your compliance with professionals who know more than you. Lacrosse coaches will put you in the best position to succeed. Athletic Trainers will put you in the best position to recover, and strength coaches will afford you the opportunity to stay safe. The last, but most frequently disregarded, is your ability to take control of the things you can control. Eat right, sleep well, buy the safest cleats, warm-up properly, play within your abilities, and repeat. That's it. Do you have what it takes to extend your playing career?

Let me help as you prepare for this season.

Over the past twenty-five years, high school lacrosse has expanded by over 800% nationwide. While girls' lacrosse was previously the fastest growing sport, flag football has now taken that position, with girls' lacrosse maintaining strong growth in second place. Looking ahead to the 2025-2026 school year, approximately 15-20% of schools without lacrosse programs are planning to add them. From 2011 to 2018, boys' lacrosse was the fastest growing sport in the country, and though post-pandemic participation patterns have evolved, the sport continues its upward trajectory. Fields that used to be grass are now turf. Tournaments that once had eight teams will host two-hundred this summer. College programs that once had four scholarships now offer up to 12.6 for NCAA Division I men's teams and 12.0 for women's teams. Everything is evolving and so should your practice and game preparation before the season begins.

1. Wear safe cleats. Before the season starts, invest in up to three pairs of cleats and have them ready. Turf cleats, grass cleats, and indoor cleats provide different safety measures for different playing surfaces. Cars have snow tires, performance tires, all-weather tires, and off-road tires. Some do well in specific conditions and others do poorly. Your cleats are your tires. Plan to rotate them often once games begin.

2. Don't breeze through the motions. In these weeks before the season, focus on developing proper warm-up habits. Sport-specific warm-ups are designed to increase blood flow, activate stabilizing muscles, cue performance specific muscle fibers, and prepare your central nervous system for extensive external stimuli. When the season starts, if you are warming up properly, you'll be increasing muscle pliability, raising your heart rate, activating your body's cooling response, and promoting pulmonary adaptations to intensity. Stop talking, start moving, and become increasingly aware of your own body in space. The latest research supports dynamic neuromuscular warm-up protocols that include proprioceptive and balance exercises, which can reduce non-contact ACL injuries by up to 50%. Start practicing these protocols now, before the season begins.

3. I once wrote an article titled, "Beware, Injury Prevention Specialists are Everywhere." It was a snarky reminder that possessing credentials like CSCS, ATC, PES, or CES don't automatically qualify professionals as all-knowing in every domain of sports performance or medicine. As you prepare for this season, understand the difference between "getting warmed-up" and "getting prepared to play." Pliability comes from warming up. Durability comes from preparing to play. In addition to your pre-participation warm-up, plan to incorporate additional acceleration, deceleration, and change of direction drills to prepare your joints for duress. Your central nervous system is solely responsible for recognizing all aspects of the human body in space. Without first introducing your joints to varying torques and forces, your CNS will not recognize the threat and be able to fight it off. Once the season starts, commit to five minutes of high intensity injury prevention before you enter all instances of play. The most current research now emphasizes incorporating neurocognitive elements into warm-ups to enhance reaction time and decision-making under pressure. Start practicing these techniques in the coming weeks.

4. Before the first practice, invest in proper protective equipment. The latest helmet technology, including MIPS (Multi-directional Impact Protection System) and similar innovations, shows a reduction in concussion risk. For girls preparing for the upcoming season, although headgear remains optional in many leagues, studies show that properly fitted headgear can reduce concussion rates. Now is the time to inspect all equipment for wear and ensure proper fitting before the season begins. Don't wait until the night before your first game.

As you look ahead to this season, remember that historically, girls get injured more often in practice scenarios due to a lack of focus, though this gap has narrowed in recent years. Boys get hurt more frequently in game scenarios due to increased aggression. Both males and females are susceptible to injury because of a lack of preparation. Studies indicate that approximately 20-25% of injuries in boys' lacrosse result from blunt-force-trauma or collisions, with a slightly lower percentage in girls' lacrosse. The remainder come from repetitive motion and non-contact mechanisms. Once the season is underway, practices, clinics, and showcases will increase your rate of injury far more often than a single game itself. This season, all leagues will enforce modern concussion protocols requiring immediate removal from play following suspected concussion and a graduated return-to-play process supervised by medical professionals. The weeks before your first practice are your opportunity to prepare. Prepare to prevent or prepare to fail. Your decision.