Hi, my name is Jesse Bray and I'm going to talk about pass anticipation. When you're going to anticipate defensively the other team's pass, you really want to think about where you are positioned on the field and where he's trying to hit the ball. You want to always put yourself in between where he's hitting the ball and where he wants to hit the ball.

What I take into consideration when deciding where I want to be positioning-wise, is where I am on the field. If I'm on my attacking end of the field, but on defense, or inside shooting range, can he shoot to goal from where he is, or is he too far away? That's kind of what I'm thinking about.

You know it's the right time to anticipate a pass when you have the ball and you're looking to pass the ball to somebody and you see them in front of you. Where your teammate is and how far away from the goal you are. So you want to start to think of when I can hit the pass to that player, or if I'm too close to the goal to hit a pass, maybe I need to shoot to goal all those things come into variables at that time.

It's different depending on the location of the field, because if you're really far back on your defensive end in front of your goal that you're defending, you kind of want to get the ball away from the goal as quickly as possible. So you're more thinking of hitting the ball hard and away from the goalmouth.

If you're on, I'd say a midfield, you're kind of trying to hit a pass more towards the center of the goal and towards the center of the field. And then again, if you're inside shooting range, maybe you're looking at hitting a... small pass to a teammate who's close to the goal or just kind of putting the ball in front of the goal and seeing what's going to happen there.

In a game or practice, you're really thinking about how to improve your passing. When you have the ball and you're trying to hit a nice pass, you don't want to hit it too hard because if you hit it too hard, then the player in front of you, or the player defending your teammate might be able to pick that pass up.

If you hit it too soft, then the player who is defending you now might be able to pick that ball up. So it's a really hard pass to hit sometimes. Um, so you kind of really want to focus on hitting a clean pass to where neither of the opponents will be able to get it. And only your teammate will be able to receive that pass.

The key coaching points when they're trying to learn how to defend and anticipate a pass is just being in front of the player that you were with and really focusing on that player. Don't necessarily worry about what happens after he hits the pass, because once he hits the pass, your player and your responsibility is the guy you were just with.

Your responsibility is not to go follow the ball and go chase down that pass. So just really focus on staying with your guy who hit the pass.