Noted defensive guru Gerry Byrne, the head men’s lacrosse coach at Harvard University, will be among the featured speakers at the USA Lacrosse Convention from Jan. 20-22, 2023 in Baltimore. LaxCon, annually the sport’s largest educational and networking event, takes place at the Baltimore Convention Center.
In his first full season as head coach at Harvard after the COVID pandemic upended the 2020 and 2021 seasons, Byrne led one of the youngest teams in the country to the 2022 NCAA tournament. Harvard went 8-5, beating four nationally-ranked teams, and finished the year third in the nation in caused turnovers per game (10.08).
Prior to arriving at Harvard, Byrne was a highly-regarded assistant coach at Notre Dame, helping the Irish reach the NCAA tournament 14 times. Notre Dame’s defense ranked in the top five nationally in scoring defense seven times during his tenure with the Irish.
Byrne’s presentation will focus on developing six tools for defensemen and will include both classroom and on-field demonstration portions. Among the takeaways from the session that attendees can expect to learn:
Let go of control and give more to the players.
The critical element of language and teaching guys to be loud
Every possession is made up a little vignettes and moments. It’s like a play — if you saw one scene of a play, you probably wouldn’t know what the play was about. But if you saw all the scenes, even if they were out of order, you could probably write the play. Byrne will emphasize how those moments come together.
Byrne is well known for his work in the education space, frequently sharing drills and teaching sessions on YouTube both during his time at Notre Dame and now Harvard. It’s all part of being a good citizen in the lacrosse community according to Byrne.
“Nobody gets anywhere by themselves,” Byrne said. “Some people realize it early and some people realize it later, but whenever you learn to embrace the concept that somebody helped me along the way, you want to do it yourself.”
