Aspire Information Pack

ASPIRE INFORMATION PACK

INTRODUCTION

To be the best, we need the best. That’s why we want you.

On the Aspire athlete development programme, you’ll build your ability and resilience and hone your technique as you strive for a spot on the national team. And to help you make it, we’ll deliver topclass holistic training and support covering tactics, technique, strength, conditioning, physiotherapy, nutrition, and more.

If you’re a rising star of England Lacrosse. If you’re an athlete with the speed, power, and agility to take the field by storm. If you’re ready to reach for the top.

It’s time to take flight.

International players thrive under pressure.

They make game-changing decisions in a heartbeat, act with drive and determination, and move with pace and control. And this won’t all come naturally.

You need training and support to become the best you can be — to develop the qualities you need not just to play well, but to manage everything else that comes with playing elitelevel lacrosse.

That’s why Aspire exists. It’s the only athlete development programme for England’s rising lacrosse stars, created to find and develop players that could take us to the top. And with Sixes Lacrosse in the LA 2028 Olympics, the stakes have never been higher.

Through our assessment weekends and training sessions, we aim to:

– Seek out exceptional young athletes of every age and stage

– Offer holistic support, tailored coaching and development

– Give clear, actionable feedback and advice

– Provide the best possible training and playing environments

– Help athletes grow into senior international players

Everything we do on Aspire is led by our ethos, PRIDE. It means we believe in coming together to promote and celebrate excellence. Because we know that’s how we’ll succeed.

95% of current England internationals graduated from the Aspire programme.

Programme structure

Aspire is progressively structured. We find brilliant young athletes as soon as we can, then guide them through the academies until they reach the top. And while there are rough age ranges for each level, they’re flexible — ability is the most important factor when deciding if you should graduate. We’ve included more detail about each level of the programme below.

County Academies

For most young athletes, County Academy assessment weekends are the first step.

At these day-long sessions — usually taking place in April or May in counties across England — we assess nominated 12, 13 and 14-year-old athletes. If we think you have potential, we’ll invite you to join the Aspire programme at Regional Academy level.

Regional Academies

At Regional Academy level, athletes aged 13 to 18 attend training sessions over three weekends in the summer, autumn and winter, plus an April tournament. Training covers tactical understanding and technical skills

along with physical conditioning, nutrition, and mental resilience, and after each weekend you’ll receive coach feedback and a detailed development plan. At the tournament we’ll assess everyone’s progress. If you impress, you’ll move up to the National Academy.

National Academy

Athletes at our National Academy are usually 14 to 20 years old. At this level you’ll attend five residential training weekends in June, September, October, January and March, plus extra training for matches and tours.

You’ll continue to develop the physical and mental skills needed to perform at an elite level across 10v10 and 6v6 formats, and we’ll provide more in-depth training in positionspecific requirements.

Perform

The National Academy is the last step in the Aspire programme. After that, it’s Perform: the programme for our U20, U23 and senior England squads. So if you make it this far? You’re on the team — and the sky’s the limit.

ASPIRE PROGRAMME STRUCTURE

It starts with a nomination.

You understand how Aspire works. And now you want to join the programme. Almost all our athletes are nominated by lacrosse clubs and coaches, schools, or universities, and we accept nominations from coaches of other sports too. Once you’ve been nominated, we’ll invite you to a County, Regional, or National Academy assessment day depending on your age and ability. Here are the details.

Nomination

– For a chance to join the programme, athletes matching our criteria have to be nominated— usually by their lacrosse club, school, or university.

– Athletes are nominated by completing the nomination form englandlacrosse.co.uk/ aspire-nominations, and nominations should include the athlete’s name, school or club, and location.

– Deadlines for nominations are sent out via email. To join the mailing list, contact aspire@englandlacrosse.co.uk

Assessment

– Most nominees aged 14 and under will be invited to their nearest County Academy assessment weekend, while older athletes will go straight to Regional or National Academy assessments.

– If an athlete misses a County Academy assessment, we might invite them to the Regional Academy instead — we don’t want to miss a chance to see a promising athlete play.

– Rather than single assessment days, we run entire weekends for you to show off your skills.

– During assessments, we’ll assess athletes against our scoring criteria, rank performance, and invite standout stars to join at the right level for their age and ability.

Scoring criteria

You don’t have to be a fully fledged lacrosse player to join Aspire. We want power and potential — and that’s reflected in our scoring criteria. Among other things, we look for evidence of strong decision-making in highpressure situations; the ability to influence attack and defence; rapid, controlled and coordinated movement; and persistence. You can find our full scoring criteria here.

Fees

If you’re invited to join Aspire, you’ll need to pay a fee to attend the training weekends. It covers all the costs of training and coaching. There’s a bursary available for those who might need help paying the fees — for more information, visit englandlacrosse.co.uk/aspire or email aspire@englandlacrosse.co.uk.

Gold medals for men and women at most recent U20 championships selected from Pathway athletes

GAME ON

This is about more than techniques and tactics.

Technical and tactical skill Attack

Transition: Clear

Once you’re on the programme, the work begins. At our Regional and National Academy training weekends, we’ll teach you everything you need to know to thrive as an elite player, perform on the world stage, and cope with the lifestyle and pressures that come with the territory. Of course we’ll teach you how to launch a powerful attack and an iron-clad defence. But we’ll also show you how to look after yourself, both physically and mentally, so you can feel and play at your absolute best.

Performance factors

The curriculum is rooted in four interlinking performance factors:

Technical and tactical skill

Combining technical and tactical training in four main areas: attack, transition (clear), defence, transition (ride).

Psychological preparation

Developing a culture of self-reliance and resilience and promoting a safe environment to flourish using personal learning and thinking skills (PLTS).

Game awareness

Helping you perform under pressure in game situations and improve consistency of impact on game.

Physical preparation

Preparing you for elite playing with education around injury reduction, nutrition, and hydration.

Opposite, we’ve broken down what each factor means. These outcomes are the qualities and skills of a future England player — and they’re what you’re striving towards at every training session.

Psychological Preparation

Transition: Ride

• Penetrate defence through 1v1 and 2v1 to exploit player advantage

• Exploit width and depth to make or take depth within defence

• Maintain team possession or initiate team attack from basic information

• Mobility to get free and open in 2v2 and 4v4 situations

• Support by getting free or moving to space to maintain possession

• Penetrate by playing forward, run or a pass

• Run the ball as much as possible to maintain possession

• Support the ball, get free & open, stretch the field to create space

• Play backwards to find support and maintain possession

• Game knowledge to recognise slow/fast break, settled

• Deny space and delay break to prevent 2v1 disadvantage

• Recover: narrow defence/crash to prevent quick penetration

• Support and mobility to recover and even the numerical advantage

• Regain possession in appropriate areas or 2v1 advantage

Defence

• 1v1 close down, challenge and pressure the ball carrier

• Deny space to protect the goal and prevent penetration

• Delay speed of attack to establish even play and challenge for the ball

• Pressure on ball, force errors with support (2v1, slide marking)

• Mobility to prevent off-ball penetration

Develop a culture of self-reliance, resilience through promoting a safe environment top flourish using personal learning & thinking skills (PLTS)

• Self-reliant athletes who work through a process to learn to perform

• Independent Enquirer: evaluate information, plan what to do and how to solve tasks

• Creative Thinkers: explore ideas to try to solve problems; ask questions to extend thinking

• Reflective: evaluate strengths and limitations, accept feedback from others to set realistic goals

• Teamwork: work confidently and effectively with others, adaptive and responsible for own actions

• Self-managed: organised, responsible for actions, shows initiative and commitment to improve

• Effective Participant: engaged, contributes to discussions and suggests improvements

Game Awareness Perform under pressure in game situations and improve consistency of impact on game

Physical Preparation

Prepare athletes through injury reduction, nutrition and hydration

• Be resilient and try to explore ideas to decide effective play

• Ask coaches for advice and identify actions to improve

• Reflect and implement effective improvements and changes in games

• Perform effectively and consistently when playing under pressure

• Follow training plans and workouts offered through the Talent Pathway

• Demonstrate advice through prepared nutritious meals and maintain hydration throughout training

•Manage injuries and do not breakdown during training sessions

This is about more than techniques and tactics.

Example

objectives

Guided by the end-goal performance factors, every Aspire training group will work towards a set of specific end-of-season objectives. Here’s an example overview sheet for entrylevel U14s at a Regional Academy. It gives you an idea of what your coaches hope you’ll achieve through your training, feedback, and action plans.

Attack Skills Transition

• Penetrate defence through 1v1 and 2v1

• Make or take space in defence

• Maintain team possession when appropriate

• Mobility to get free and open in 2v2

• Penetrate by playing forward, run or a pass

• Run the ball as much as possible for possession

Defence Skills Transition

• 1v1 close down, challenge and pressure the ball carrier

• Deny space to protect the goal and prevent penetration

• Delay attack’s speed to establish even play and challenge for the ball

• Deny space and delay break to prevent 2v1 disadvantage

• Recover: narrow defence/crash to prevent quick penetration

Game Sense

• Implement skills developed in 6v6 games

• Try different ideas to improve impact within the game

• Demonstrate confidence to seek advice and guidance

• Identify improvements to perform under pressure

• Implement improved game-play and execute under pressure

Physical Preparation

• Maintain the demands of the training session

• Maintain hydration levels to perform effectively

• Demonstrate understanding of nutrition during training

Independent Enquiry

• Evaluates session objectives and performance

• Plans actions and tactics to improve performance

• Adaptable to change how they are performing

Creative Thinker

• Curious, explores technical and tactical ideas to solve session challenges

• Asks questions within the group and to the coach

• 1v1 defence focus

• 2v1 to 2v2

• Positional Workshop

• 3v2 build into 4v4

• Team Defence (4v4)

• 1v1 to 4v4 (me into we defend)

Teamwork

• Works confidently and effectively with others

• Adaptive and responsible for own actions and performance

Effective Participant

• Positively engaged, contributes to discussions and play, confident to suggest improvements

Self-management

• Organised, responsible for actions and behaviour, shows initiative and commitment to learn and improve

• 6v6 - blue sky rules

• 6v6 World Lacrosse rules

• Build-up practices

• Scenarios

• Warm-up

• Screening

• Lunch and snack

• Regular drinking

Reach for the top.

Feedback, reflection and goal-setting are crucial to your progression through the Aspire programme. Because to reach new heights, you have to understand what you do well — and what you could do better. During and after training sessions, here’s how we’ll help you hone your skills and chart your path to the national team.

Coach feedback

Based on their knowledge and experience, coaches give subjective feedback during sessions — you should take notes or recordings to remember what they say. But they also score your performance objectively according to the Aspire criteria. Within two weeks of a session, you’ll get written feedback highlighting strengths and weaknesses. All of this feeds into your personal action plan. Head coaches also use these scores to see how athletes are progressing and decide who should move onto the next phase.

Goal-setting

If you want to be the best, you have to see what you can do better. That’s why alongside coach feedback, you set your own goals on Aspire. You’ll delve into the themes of each training session to set challenging targets in our online portal. And throughout every session we’ll ask you to reflect on what you’ve done well and how you could improve, then pull those ideas into your action plan.

Action plan

Your action plan is based on your personal goals and reflections and your coach’s feedback. Once your plan’s been agreed by your coach, share it with your school and club so they can support your training between Aspire sessions. And this is where the real work starts. Train hard and act on your feedback to build your score — and increase your chances of taking the next step on the programme.

Moving up

At every level, your Aspire coaches will work with you and your school or club to help you develop between training sessions. Once you meet all the criteria we look for in senior players, you’ll graduate from Aspire and move onto Perform: the elite-level programme for our national squads.

You might move quickly through the Regional Academy, then spend a few years at the national level. Or you might join the programme as an older athlete, starting at the National Academy and progressing rapidly on to Perform. How long you spend at each stage depends on your development and performance.

Moving on At tournaments or assessment weekends at any level, we might decide that you’re not ready — or not the right fit — for Aspire. If that’s the case, our coaches will provide detailed feedback and a tailored action plan before releasing you from the programme. But the journey doesn’t have to end there. Every athlete faces setbacks — work with your school or club, train hard, then try out again.

This is what it’s all about.

FIXTURES

With Sixes Lacrosse set for LA 2028, there’s never been a more exciting time to join. Because you’re not just training to be an elite athlete. If you make it to the top, you could become an Olympian.

EUROLAX SIXES

U20 W WORLDS U20 M WORLDS W EUROS M EUROS

THE FLY THE FLY THE FLY

U20 W EUROS BOX WORLDS SIXES EUROS

M WORLDS U20 M EUROS WORLD GAMES

U20 M EUROS

OLYMPICS

U20 W WORLDS W WORLDS M WORLDS W EUROS

SIXES WORLDS U20 W EUROS THE FLY BOX WORLDS THE FLY THE FLY

EUROLAX SIXES

EUROLAX SIXES

You train hard. You strive for the top. You dream of a place on the national squad. But what happens when you get there? Our men’s and women’s teams compete all over the UK and around the world, playing Box, Sixes, and Field lacrosse at Worlds, Eurolax, The Fly — and now, the Olympics. 2026 2027 2028

EUROLAX SIXES

NEXT STEPS

Are you a rising star?

This could be your route to the England squad. Use the contact details below for more information. And to be the first to hear about assessment weekends and other opportunities for young athletes, follow England Lacrosse on social media.

Get in touch

Rebecca Wood Lead for the National Talent pathway

Jasmine Waite Talent & Performance administrator

aspire@englandlacrosse.co.uk

+44

Join the mailing list

We send information to clubs, schools and universities about nominations, including deadlines, via email. Contact aspire@englandlacrosse.co.uk to join the mailing list and to update your contact details.