Vision

[molo]

A couple of years ago I read a piece in The New Yorker about eyesight and baseball. Evidently many hitters have better than 20/20 eyesight. As I am waiting for my new prescription to come in, I began to wonder whether lax players have as a group better than average eyesight or if they are as likely to need prescription lenses as the general population. Contacts are so ubiquitous now--and have been for a while--that I never really knew how many of the players I coached wore glasses or contacts. From those of you who have played or coached DI recently, do a lower percentage of lax players wear corrective lenses than the general population, or do you think in general DI players are less likely to need glasses or lenses than the general population. I can recall the UMBC dman George McGeeney (sp. ?) wearing glasses, and JHU dm Benson Erwin used to wear them in rec ball, but it seems that now those who need to can wear contacts comfortably. I tried them for less than a week in the 80s. They tried to sell me something called rigid gas permeable lenses because I couldn't wear soft lenses then due to astigmatism. They were painful and ineffective.
Anyway, as health issues are likely to dominate the upcoming--if we have one--season, I thought I would throw this one out.

[fatherof2]

let's put anything related to 2020 behind us..

[palaxoff]

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health ... n-the-ball

I remember reading an article similar to this about baseball hitters. I would think Lax players do something similar, you rarely see a player look the ball into their sticks when catching and add the fact they are usually not stationary. Consider this most goalies are being shot on at half the distance of a baseball pitcher and speeds that can be faster then a baseball. So how much is vision versus instinct in lacrosse?

[MDlaxfan76]

I'm a skeptic on lax players having better eyesight than the average athlete (less sure about general pop, but even there I'm not sure that's what matters).

There are a lot of attributes lax athletes need, but just focusing on goalies, let's just say that my dad was a 3X AA, needed glasses, I was a 2X AA needed glasses, son was all Ivy, contacts...3 generations of successful goalies, different athletic attributes (we were quite different in size and speed and different eras) but all needed glasses. Corrected eyesight was just fine.

Hand eye reaction speed is another matter. Concentration under pressure and distraction is another matter. Willingness to endure both physical and emotional pain to stop the next shot is another matter.

I'd say those may have been my only differentiating athletic talents, so perhaps these are the sorts of "eye" related skills that goalies need in our sport. Anything else being gravy.

Seems to me that baseball hitters may need some of those same sorts of attributes (other than the physical pain).

[molo]

I can recall one UVA goalie who told me he had been working as a lifeguard in OC for the better part of a summer with just one contact. I assume he had them both during lax season.