Lacrosse Positions Explained: Every Job on the Field

Men's field lacrosse puts ten players on the field: three attack, three midfield, three defense, one goalie. That's the whole structure. Everything else you'll hear shouted from a sideline is a specialist role that grew out of those four jobs, usually because someone worked out you could win more games by giving one player one thing to do.

I've coached this game for 25 years, from kids who couldn't catch to a national team at a World Cup, and the single most common question I get from parents is some version of "where should they play?" So here's every position, what it actually asks of you, and my honest read on who suits it.

Attack

Three of them, and they live in the offensive half. Under the offside rule, men's field lacrosse keeps four players behind the midline and three in front of it at all times, which is why attackmen mostly stay where they are rather than chasing back.

The job is scoring and creating. An attackman is working in tight space with a defender on their hands and a long pole in their gloves, so what you need is stickwork under pressure and the nerve to hold the ball when three people want it.

Who it suits: the kid with the best hands and the worst patience. Attack rewards creativity and punishes hesitation. If your player is the one trying behind-the-back passes in warmups, they're an attackman whether you like it or not.

Attack splits into its own sub-roles as players get older. One works from X, the space behind the goal, feeding. One or two play up top and finish. Good units rotate all three.

Midfield

Three on the field, and they're the only ones allowed to run the whole thing. Midfielders play offense, play defense, take the ball through the middle, and get substituted constantly because the position is a lung test.

This is the most physically demanding job on the field and it isn't close. A middie covers more ground in a quarter than an attackman covers in a game.

Who it suits: the best athlete you've got. If a kid is quick, fit and coachable but their stickwork is still coming, midfield is where they'll play, and they'll get better faster there than anywhere else because they touch the ball in every phase.

Defense

Three defenders, all carrying long poles, all trying to separate an attackman from the ball without giving away a penalty. Defense is the position that most rewards being taught properly, and the one where bad habits last longest.

Footwork first, stick second. The best defender I ever coached almost never threw a check. He just stayed in front of people until they ran out of ideas.

Who it suits: players who like the physical side and can stay disciplined when someone's trying to make them look silly. There's a specific temperament to it. If your kid gets angry when beaten, defense will teach them or break them, and both are useful information.

We've written a longer piece on the d-pole specifically, because the long stick is a genuinely different tool and takes a season to get comfortable with.

Goalie

One of them, and it's the only position on the field that's a completely different sport. A goalie stands in a crease, wears almost no padding below the chest, and volunteers to step toward hard rubber travelling very fast.

The physical skill is real but the job is 60% communication. A good keeper runs the defense, calls the slides, and tells three long poles where to be. A quiet goalie with great hands loses more games than a loud one with average hands.

Who it suits: the kid who isn't bothered by getting hit and likes being in charge. You'll know within one practice. Goalies are found, not made.

The specialists

Here's where it gets confusing for anyone new, because the sideline vocabulary stops matching the four positions above.

FOGO. "Face-off, get off." A specialist who takes the face-off at the centre X, wins possession, and leaves the field immediately. At the top level this is a full-time trade with its own technique and its own body type.

LSM. Long-stick midfielder. A midfielder carrying a long pole, usually on the field for defensive possessions and face-off wings. Men's field lacrosse caps how many long sticks you can have out at once (four, in the men's field game), and the LSM is how teams use the last one.

SSDM. Short-stick defensive midfielder. A midfielder who only plays defense, with a normal stick. Unglamorous, and the position most likely to get an underrated kid onto a college roster.

Two-way middie. A midfielder who plays both ends without coming off. Increasingly rare, and I'd argue that's a loss.

My actual opinion on specialisation

Full disclosure: I think we've gone too far with this at youth level, and I'll say it plainly. A twelve-year-old does not need to be a FOGO. Turning a kid into a face-off specialist before they've learned to play the game means that if they stop winning face-offs, they've got nothing else, and they will stop winning face-offs at some point because everyone does.

The specialisation makes sense at college and pro level, where a shot clock and a bench of forty players make it efficient. It makes almost no sense at U14, where the kid should be learning to catch with both hands and play defense badly.

Play your kids everywhere until they're about fifteen. They'll be better players and they'll last longer in the sport. That's not a popular position with people selling position-specific training, which is roughly my point.

What about the women's game?

Different sport in a lot of ways that matter. Larger sides — twelve a side, not ten — no offside line in the same form, a draw at the centre instead of a face-off, and different rules on contact and padding. The four broad jobs still map across: someone scores, someone runs, someone defends, someone keeps goal.

I coached the Dutch national women's team through two European championships and a World Cup, so I'll say this with some confidence: the positional discipline in the women's game is generally better taught. Draw specialists in particular are doing something far more technical than most people watching realise.

So where should your kid play?

Wherever they'll touch the ball most this season. That's it. Position at youth level is a temporary label, and the players who end up going furthest are almost always the ones who spent a couple of years somewhere they later left.

If you're new to all this and the sideline vocabulary is still landing like a foreign language, our piece on what a lax bro actually is covers the culture side, and our guide for lacrosse parents covers the rest of it.