From the podcast: Grady Breen on the evolution of film study

Coach Grady Breen (Burlington, Vt.) joined the guys on the "Chasing The Goal" podcast this week.

On this week’s episode of New England Lacrosse Journal’s “Chasing The Goal” podcast, hosts Kyle Devitte and Jack Piatelli talk with Burlington, Vt., native Grady Breen.

Breen is one of the more unique guests on the podcast, as he is currently coaching both football and lacrosse at two different schools in Maryland.

He’s currently the head boys lacrosse coach at South Carroll High School and also the offensive coordinator for the football team at Concordia Prep.

In addition to his coaching duties, Breen has organized an online coach’s clinic to benefit the Noah Homayouni Lacrosse Foundation.

The charity was founded in honor of Homayouni, a lacrosse player at South Carroll who was a victim of gun violence in 2020.

Inspired by the open nature of the football community when it comes to sharing drills and philosophies, the clinic will cover a wide-ranging array of topics for all levels of lacrosse. It starts next week and more information can be found here.

Watch the full podcast below on YouTube. It’s also available on all major podcast platforms. If you enjoy it, please leave a rating and a review. Watch more episodes on the Chasing the Goal podcast channel.

Here are some excerpts from the pod.

Kyle Devitte: How did you come to coach at two different places? Because I think that’s the most natural place to start.

Grady Breen: So it’s not what I envisioned at first. I was coaching football for a little while at South Carroll. I was the varsity assistant and I was the head JV coach. And, honestly, I just kind of started looking for greener pastures. I wanted a little bit of a different vibe. So, I took a year off.

I even didn’t know how I was going to coach this fall. And I’ve gotten to know a guy by the name of Joe Battaglia, who’s the head coach at Concordia through a couple of different events. I had almost worked there a couple of years ago and he just seemed like a guy that I really wanted to work for. He’s a real leader of men, a former Navy staffer who runs a really tight ship, no pun intended. But I felt like my value as a coach was going to increase over there. And, honestly, it was fantastic. We won the MIAA B conference title this year. It felt like a dream.

Is it different not to see your players in class? For sure. Is it different to leave one school, go let the dog out and then go to another school? For sure. But I couldn’t be more happy over there. And it really kind of gave me a level of fulfillment around football that I hadn’t felt in a little while.

Jack Piatelli: The evolution of film has come a long way for the lacrosse community, but football has been watching film from the get-go. Now every high school coach watches film and players watch film. Do you watch film with your players? 

Grady Breen: Yeah, we try to. The real challenge is just what our high school schedules look like here in Maryland, because we tend to not play games on the weekends. So then you’re compiling 2-3 games in a week on just weekdays. So your games are on Tuesday, Thursday and maybe also Friday. And then, at the same time, you’ve got to be off the field at six and you’ve got to do this and kids have to get home, and there is another team that needs the field, etc. So sometimes film does become the casualty of that. we’re going to watch this thing that they do.

With football, it’s kind of culturally accepted that (the film) is up on Saturday night. It’s traded on Sunday morning. Coaches are breaking it down. But there’s no guarantee that the other lacrosse coach might even have the film up in time to exchange. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t. So I absolutely agree that there is a much better understanding of watching film, and on the college level of course they have the Hudl or the ScoreBreak, where you just put it up and take it out at the public high school level, at least for some of us down here in Maryland. You’re communicating with the team parent who runs the Hudl account so they might get back to you. They might not. And if they do, there’s no guarantee you have time for it.

So a lot of times when we’re watching the film, it’s either early in the preseason or at practice, like, “Hey, we’re going to take this shot of six on six. We’re going to take the shot of a fast break and then we’ll watch it tomorrow.” But it’s got to be efficient — again, similar to a football coach. We had a couple of kids and a dad with a trailer move a stand from the football practice field up to our lacrosse practice field at the upper end of the school. Then we had one of our managers basically in this tall deer stand watching it, filming with a camcorder from an elevated view just to get the best shot. This year, we’ll probably go to a drone shot. And again, that’s something that you steal from a football coach. And, of course, kids can learn a lot more clearly like that.

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