If you’ve been following Lacrosse Playground’s relaunch since March 2022, you know there is a Duke/St. Anthony’s slant.
Not going to hide from our Paul Finebaum like affiliation to a certain ACC team and a certain Long Island high school.
However, we are not delusional enough to suggest that a recent grad or current St. Anthony’s athlete invented the fake jump shot. And, we did exercise some strength by not including a certain Durham attackman’s name in the title.
The fact is we’ve seen the fake jump shot before. Typically, a giant wind up and face dodge are deployed near the island and the defender turns because the attackman’s body language suggested a shot and his teammates were delayed in saying, “he still has it.”
In this clip, watch Duke’s Brennan O’Neill use a much more compact version to set up an underneath carry earlier this spring.
Then, watch St. Anthony’s 2024 Tess Calabria use the move near GLE to deceive the goalie.
Without question, we had never seen the fake jump shot used the way Calabria did last weekend at the USA/Canada scrimmage.
She decided to use it again this past weekend.
On the second shot, she ends up finishing stick side high. Without moving the goalie with the fake jump shot, that shot likely gets saved. As it is, you can see the goalie flinch near side high and then lose the race to the far pipe.
Much like many visually stunning skill moves, deploying the fake jump shot is designed to set up the next move not simply to humiliate the defender and draw an audible from the sideline.
Check out our interview with Jack Kensil if you want to hear the 2 Wolves founder discuss Calabria’s game in more detail, as well as his new position coaching for St. Anthony’s varsity girls program, Brennan O’Neill’s chances of making Team USA and more.
Add O’Neill’s and Calabria’s fake jump shot to your game this spring, kids.
Score more goals.
UPDATED:
On Friday, Calabria was training with 2 Wolves and he captured her executing the move again.
This seems like the first time a goalie sees a twister and it completely confounds them.
Add it to your game ASAP.
