HOLIDAY SWEEPSTAKES FOR YOUTH LAXERS!

I decided to set up a sweepstakes to get word out about TIER Lacrosse and all of our camp programs coming up this summer for the holiday season. This is for any player who will be going into grades four through eight next September (we are not allowed to do giveaways for high school players due to NCAA rules). To participate in this sweepstakes, take the following steps :

1. Click the LIKE button on our TIER LACROSSE FACEBOOK PAGE OR follow me on TWITTER at trevor_tierney OR subscribe to my blog on www.tierlacrosse.com by entering your email on the top right corner of this page or below this blog.

2. Tell your friends to do the same because once I get to 1,000 followers on each, I will announce a winner from each service (one from Facebook, one from Twitter and one from TIER Lacrosse). Winners receive one free camp registration of their choice for this summer's programs! If you follow me on all three, you triple your chances of winning! If you are already signed up on any of those services, you are already entered for a chance to win!

3. To see all of our camp information and register, please go to www.denverpioneerslacrosse.com or click on the PROGRAMS tab on the top navigation bar of this page!

If you win and you have already signed up for camp, I will gladly refund your money! I will select anyone that signs up for any of the services and then you will be allowed to choose whomever you like to send to camp, as long as they are in fourth through eight grade going into the 2012-2013 school year. Thanks!

THE GIFT OF NUTRITION FOR ATHLETES

I know this is all going to totally sound like a sales pitch and it is in some ways...but, it is also something that I really believe in. I would not be sharing on this website unless I did not think it was great for youth lacrosse players and their parents to know about. Nutrition and fitness is a huge part of my life, so this is something that I am excited to share with anyone who is interested.

Just in time for Black Friday and the holidays (I would make for a terrible used-car salesman), I am launching my TIER LACROSSE NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM in partnership with one of the top nutritional companies in the world, USANA. I have been taking USANA Nutritionals (shakes, bars, vitamins and energy drinks) for over a year now and have never felt healthier and more fit in my entire life. My energy remains constant throughout my long days filled with working, coaching and exercising. I rarely get sick despite the constant stress that I live through and all the traveling that I am on throughout the year. I have also been providing these nutritional products to other lacrosse players that I work with and they all absolutely love them!

I really can't think of any better gift for an athlete for the holidays than to get them started on a nutritional program that can help them to play their best. I wish that I had known more about nutrition as an athlete growing up. Every day in school, I was completely tired and drained by the afternoon and struggled to get myself going for practice. Furthermore, I had the hardest time putting on good, healthy muscle mass for my contact sports of football, hockey and lacrosse.

NUTRITION IS ANOTHER KEY TO SUCCESS FOR LACROSSE PLAYERS

Lacrosse players play, train and work hard and need proper nutrition to stay at their highest level. Most cafeterias, dining halls and restaraunts cannot provide you with the nutrition you need to stay at your optimal level of performance as an athlete.

Along with USANA and nutritional expert, Carmen Marshall from LIVE WELL INTERNATIONAL, I have come up with a customized selection of nutrition supplements and vitamins for a lacrosse player at any age, called the TIER LACROSSE NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM.

WHY USANA?

Most parents have huge concerns about giving their children nutritional supplements and they are completely justified in these concerns! Most of the supplemental shakes that you see in health food stores or supermarkets contain ingredients that I would not want to put into my body. Plus, you cannot even trust that the good ingredients that they list are actually in there because there is no third party auditing them, like there is for USANA. USANA is consistently one of the top ranked nutritional companies for their consistency and quality of ingredients, each and every year!

If you are a sophisticated consumer, who cares about quality, only buys the best & prioritizes health...USANA is a perfect match. USANA Health Sciences is one of the world's leading companies in the field of health and nutrition. We seek out the finest raw materials available, we maintain the strictest quality standards in the industry, and we have an unshakeable commitment to manufacturing integrity. Add to that our continued commitment to science & cutting-edge technologies and our year-after-year award for one the "Best Places to Work" by Outside Magazine and you start to get a sense of what we're all about.

Trusted by top athletes & recommended by physicians world-wide, USANA Health Sciences develops the highest quality, top-rated, science-based health products on the market. Most supplements out there are either loaded with ingredients that you cannot even pronounce or that you really do not want to put into your body. USANA's vitamins and nutritional shakes are all made from high-end ingredients, are low glycemic and have a nutritionally well-balanced approach. Furthermore, all their products are reviewed by third party auditors to ensure that the listed ingredients are accurate, which is more than can be said for most nutritional companies out there.

WHAT OTHER ATHLETES CURRENTLY USE USANA?

Many athletes that I currently work with in the lacrosse world are already on dietary plans that I set up with them with the help of USANA shakes, bars and vitamins. Everyone that I have come across absolutely loves USANA and has continued to use it year after year.

USANA also sponsors a ton of top Olympic and professional athletes! To check out all the athletes that use USANA, please go to USANA SPONSORED ATHLETES .

WHAT DOES THE TIER LACROSSE NUTRITIONAL SITE OFFER?

1. The TIER LACROSSE NUTRITIONAL PROGRAM for youth and high school players is a selection of products from USANA and a suggested daily diet that is optimal for young athletes. You can either enroll online to receive products on a monthly basis or you can make one-time orders. Either way, you will be buying some of the best nutritional products for yourself or the athletes you care the most about!

2. TEAM FUNDRAISING for team parents or coaches to make money for their programs. I see youth and high school teams selling candy or having bake sales, which in the end, do not really make much money at all for their teams. Instead, through USANA, I will help you set up a website to sell the USANA nutritionals to team members and parents, which can make a significant contribution back to your given program! What better way is there to raise money for your team than this!?

3. A suggested DIET PROGRAM FOR PARENTS. I'm not a parent yet (other than of a funny looking French Bulldog), so I am not quite sure how you guys do it! The non-stop scheduling and transportation for all your kids is a full-time job in itself. There is definitely not a lot of time for parents to eat well throughout the day, so USANA is a great option for them as well. This is a great program for right after Thanksgiving with a FIVE DAY RESET PROGRAM that I take about twice a year myself. It's a great way to detoxify and get nutritionally back on track!

I am really excited to offer this to all of you and make this a part of the TIER Lacrosse website. Please let me know if you have any questions at all. Feel free to email me at trevor.tierney@gmail.com. Thanks!

LOSING SUCKS

One of my first blogs that I wrote on this website was entitled, "Winning Does Not Matter", so the title for this blog might surprise you a bit...or maybe not as we all know this feeling! My point in that first blog was that I do not believe we should put all of our energy into simply trying to win, but more so into trying to be our absolute best. When we do this, many times we will find ourselves in the win column if we have an adequate level of skill and talent. However, there are also a lot of times when we may try our best, but we come up short.

MY LIST OF ATHLETIC FAILURES

No matter how many times you lose in your life and no matter what the level you are playing at, it is never fun and it never gets any easier. For all the big wins I have had in my life, I have also had my share of big losses. I have four championship rings - two NCAA titles with Princeton, one MLL championship with the Baltimore Bayhawks and one ILF world championship with Team USA - but, I also have a lot of losses under my belt as well. My Princeton team also got spanked by Syracuse in the 2000 NCAA National Championship game. My 2006 USA team lost to Canada in the 2006 ILF World Championships for their first win over our country in over 20 years (you think that felt good?)! On my NJ Pride and Denver Outlaws MLL teams, I lost three or four MLL semi-final games, a couple in overtime (ouch). I also lost dozens of regular season college and pro games and MANY high school games as we were not a very talented team back in the day at the Hun School of Princeton.

All athletes get their accomplishments listed after they are done their career, but I think it is just as important to list your failures. In the end, the losses might have been the most important parts of my career because those were the times that motivated me to be work harder and push myself to a higher level. Looking back, I view my failures as stepping stones towards my achievements. 

LOSING HURTS

This is why losing is not meant to be fun. If we felt just as great after losing a game as we do after winning a game, what would be our motivation to work harder? It is good to feel that initial sting after a loss and use it as a wake-up call for what we need to get better at in lacrosse and anything else in life, for that matter. 

However, there is also a line that needs to be drawn in how much stock we should put into losing. When I was young, I made losing out to be an indicator of who I was as a person. So, if I lost, I felt shame and felt bad about myself and who I was. That lead to me being extremely depressed after any losses or setbacks. It is very important for young athletes to understand that being a good lacrosse player and being a good person are very different and distinct characteristics. How we perform on the lacrosse field has nothing to do with who we are off the field. It is just as important not to beat ourselves up or get down on ourselves after a loss, as it is for us not to become egotistical and arrogant and get a "big head" after a win.

From what I observe in youth sports, this also seems like an important lesson for some parents to learn as well. Some parents and youth coaches will develop a win at all costs mentality because their identity is somehow mistakenly tied into their child's identity. Furthermore, their identity is tied falsely to their child winning a sports game. The behaviors and decisions that parents will make for their children with this win at all costs attitude is mind-boggling.

So, even though "losing sucks" seems paradoxical to the idea of "winning doesn't matter", they are actually tied together by the same philosophies that I have preached to the youth, high school and college teams and players that I work with now and will continue to work with. The most important goal in sports should be for us to push ourselves to our highest potential. Winning is sometimes a good indicator that we have done this, but it really depends on the opponent and other factors. Losing though, is an awesome teacher of what we have to do to push ourselves to our highest potential. In the end, we actually learn a lot more from losing than we do from winning as long as we are open to those teachings. 

TAKE YOUR LICKS LIKE A MAN

To summarize, here are the steps that I believe we can take in how to lose with grace :

1. Keep your head high and thank your opponent for giving you the opportunity to play against them. Be grateful for how your opponent is showing where you need to improve as an individual and as a team.

2. Feel the sting of the loss and know that you will use it as motivation. Be wary if you are getting down on yourself or feeling bad about yourself as a person. Those beliefs are not true. Your value as a person is far greater than anything that you can do or prove on an athletic field.

3. Try to look back over the game and learn from your coach what you can do better as a player.

4. Work on those aspects of your game that are weaker and push yourself harder in those areas for the next opponent.

5. Keep pushing yourself to be your best.

Like I said, losing sucks. Make sure you make the most of it.

CHIP BUZZEO : THE GREATEST TEAMMATE OF ALL TIME

This past weekend, while I was back east with our Denver Elite club teams, I also had the chance to go back to the Princeton Lacrosse Team and Alumni Fall Celebration Dinner. At the dinner, we celebrated the 10th year anniversary of our team winning the 2001 NCAA National Championship. 2001 was also my senior year in college, so it was awesome to get to see many of my classmates from that year. We had spent four years together working extremely hard to realize this dream that we all shared from the time we were very young. The highlight video that was put together for the dinner, which I shared above, gives me the chills because it shows how we all made that dream a reality together.

At the dinner, Chip Buzzeo, who was a teammate, classmate and roommate of mine at Princeton gave a speech about what those four years on our team meant to him. It reminded me after all those years, how much goes into a team being successful together. I also realized that Chip was probably the most valuable player on that team and the biggest key to our success. The amazing thing is though, that Chip never really played for us.

"Buzz" was simply the greatest teammate that I have ever had. He was a player who had always wanted to go to Princeton, knowing that he might not ever play there. He took a PG year after high school so he could get his grades up and improve his level of play enough to convince Coach T to take him into the program. From day one, Chip was the type of guy who would do anything for his teammates, whether on the field or in the dorms, locker room or classroom. He played in every practice as hard as he possibly could and never complained that he was not playing in games. His only concern was helping our team to be the best it could be and help us win a national championship. He was also a vocal leader who called out the starters and All-Americans when they were not pulling their weight in practice and raised our level of play on a daily basis.

Due to all of these qualities that Chip emulated, he was highly respected by all of our teammates and voted a captain in his senior year. Like I said before, he never ended up playing much for us, but he achieved his goal of helping us win a NCAA National Championship in 2001. He also became the greatest player and athlete that he was meant to become, just by being the best he could be for his teammates. He did not do it for the awards, or for the recognition of being in the papers and magazines, or to get noticed by the fans or alumni of the program. Simply being his best for his team and teammates was enough for him.

When I think back to all the great players that were on that Princeton team, the most important person on the squad was NOT one of the All-Americans nor one of the guys who scored the big goals on Memorial Day. The most important person to that team's success was Chip, and I will always have the utmost respect and gratuity for him since he helped me reach my ultimate dream in lacrosse and because he was always there for me as a friend.

That highlight video posted at the top of this blog is like 20 minutes long, but if you can watch it for just ten seconds, please notice one thing at the beginning of the video - #26, Chip Buzzeo was the first person that held that 2001 National Championship trophy. That was the way our team wanted it to be because he had earned the right to hold that trophy more than any of us. He had won it in the trenches. He had won it by pushing all of us every day to be our best and by supporting and loving all of his teammates the most he possibly could every day. He had won it because that was his dream and he pursued it whole-heartedly. He had won it because he was selfless. When I watch that video, I tear up when I get to see Buzz hold that trophy because I know he wanted it more and deserved it more than anyone.

I do not ever really wear my National Championship rings, but they are some of my most prized possssions. When I look at them, I remember all my close friends and teammates who had come together for a common goal and pushed themselves and each other to be the best that they possibly could be. There is no one that stands out more in my memory than Chip and I will forever be grateful to him for helping me reach my full potential and my childhood dream as a lacrosse player.

Buzz, you are the man...but I still don't think that's a very good idea. ;-)

KEEPING UP WITH THE CANADIANS

 

Sorry that it has been a few days since my last blog. This past weekend we had our DU Lacrosse Fallball Classic out at Dicks Sporting Goods Park and it was a huge success! However, I have been running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off lately so I have not had much time lately to sit down and write. But, back at it now with box lacrosse!

YOUTH BOX LACROSSE DEVELOPMENT

The other program that we started this weekend was our box (indoor) lacrosse program in Westminster at the Carroll Butts Arena. We have it every Sunday from 6AM to 12PM (What?! Whose idea was that anyway?! I’m gonna blame it on Coach Brown...). Even though it is an early start due to the lack of time slots in indoor facilities (thanks soccer!), the program is completely sold out and our players and families absolutely love it! We have different sessions for 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders and they all have a blast with the game. From this program, we pick DENVER ELITE box teams that we take to indoor tournaments in California in December and Calgary in July. The Calgary tournament is the biggest indoor youth lacrosse tournament in the world and everyone has a great time up there and the level of lacrosse is unreal!

The reason that we love this program so much is that we see our players develop more quickly and noticeably than in anything else that we do. The indoor setting is the absolute best way for youth lacrosse players to get better. There is no question about it. The boards keep the ball in play, in a tighter space with only five players on the field, so all the young players, regardless of skill, get way more touches and repetitions than in field lacrosse. The drills that you can run and just the overall style of the game allow players to develop their stick skills in a way that is impossible to achieve through just playing field lacrosse.

I LOVE PLAYING BOX LACROSSE

For these reasons and more, I wish that I had the opportunity to play box lacrosse when I was a younger. My personal experience with the game was that after I graduated from college, I made the NLL’s Colorado Mammoth as a forward because I did not feel like my field goalie skills would transfer over well to box goalie. I was relegated to the practice squad and I only played in one game and I am quite proud to say that my stats on the NLL website read like this : 1 GP, 0 G, 0 A, 5 PIM. So, despite the fact that I spent more time in the penalty box than I did on the field, playing for the Mammoth up in Toronto in front of 16,000 screaming fans, was one of the coolest athletic experiences of my life!

I also absolutely loved practices with the Mammoth. The training camps and the Friday night practices were the most fun that I had ever had playing the game in my life.  The more confined space, the boards keeping the ball in play, the physical nature, and the overall speed of the game, make it an absolute blast to play. Despite playing the game since I could barely even walk, I was seeing my stick skills improve dramatically and it was helping my game in the summers as a goalie in the MLL. I was in awe of the game and completely fell in love with it. It made me wish that I had been born in the Great White North!

HOW DO WE KEEP UP WITH THE CANADIANS IN THE STATES?

This brings me to my next point of why you are seeing so many great Canadian players in the NCAA and MLL, in the field lacrosse setting. Jason Donville sends out an awesome email blast to all the NCAA coaches, which lists the leading Canadian players on all NCAA teams and the statistics which show how the Canadians are basically dominating the game. The simple explanation to this is due to the fact that these players grew up playing indoor lacrosse as youth. The other factor, that is different from when I was in high school, is that Canadians are also learning the strategy and technique of playing field lacrosse as they get older. So, they start from a very young age playing youth box lacrosse and then as they grow, they continue to play box, but also play and learn the field game at a fairly high level. The combination of the two experiences develop the best lacrosse players in the world.

So, if we want to keep up in the States, we better start providing more opportunities to our youth lacrosse players in indoor lacrosse. The “traditional” lacrosse hot beds will actually fight this idea with all their might. For some reason, many east coast lacrosse traditionalists feel like box lacrosse is some bastardized version of the game. To me though, it’s a different version of the game that I really enjoy watching at the professional level. More importantly though, it is the best way for youth lacrosse players to get better at the game.

If you simply study the two games at the youth level, there is really no comparison. Many youth lacrosse games last about an hour, tops. There are usually running-time halfs, and for a majority of the time, the ball is on the ground. Many times, there will be a couple players out there who are better than the rest, and the ball will end up in their sticks for a lot of the time as well. That means that most of the kids on the field are touching the ball maybe one to three times a game if they are lucky! Sadly, youth lacrosse is starting to turn into baseball with a lot of our young athletes standing around watching from the midline, just as many young baseball players get stuck standing in deep, deep roving right-field.

In the U.S. lacrosse world, we all need to start investing more time, energy and money into the box lacrosse game for our youth lacrosse players. Not only is it the best way for them to improve as lacrosse players, it is also way more fun for them to play! If parents want to hear one of the best kept secrets as to how their son can become a great enough lacrosse player to get recruited or receive a scholarship, then playing some box lacrosse is a great way to try and accomplish those goals. If we keep naysaying the indoor version of the game, the Canadian players will be more than happy to keep taking over the field game, getting those spots in college, taking those scholarships and dominating the leader boards in scoring!

Time for us to get on board and learn from our friendly neighbors of the North. (Next step is health care... just kidding…but not really.)