Transition rides shotgun, or possession teaches nothing.

P1–P8

That pairing is not taste. Eight rules hold the season.

The order above is an operating directive, not a vibe. These eight rules decide what gets a High tag, what waits, and what the app is forbidden to invent.

1. P1

   Possession before schemes

   ground_balls and faceoffs earn possessions; without them no other game area gets exercised. Confirmed as Week 1–2 anchors. [1]

2. P2

   Extras gate

   man_up / man_down get a full session only after settled_offense and settled_defense have each had 2+ sessions, AND team median passing ≥5 AND catching ≥5. EMO with a team that can't complete 3 passes is a waste of a Saturday.

3. P3

   14U build = transfer, not install

   At 14U, “build” means small-sided, game-situation reps with decision-making baked in (constraints-led). At HS, “build” means installing a named system. Fall Ball at 14U should never look like an HS install. [7]

4. P4

   Game situations > isolated reps

   Wall ball and line drills are fine as warm-up / homework. Ranked session time goes to game-shaped activities. Isolated wall-ball as the main event is the #1 youth coach error. [12]

5. P5

   Transition is the 14U game

   fast_break / unsettled_defense / clearing decide most 14U club games — rank them ahead of settled polish.

6. P6

   Ratings adjust, never replace

   Live player ratings can move a game area up/down one slot; they never reorder the whole sequence. Calendar wins ties.

7. P7

   Every session touches 2–3 game areas max

   A 90-minute session with 10 “High” areas is a demo, not a practice. Cap at 3 Highs per session.

8. P8

   Fall Ball ≠ taper

   No peaking language, no reduction weeks. Load stays developmental. Tournaments are checkpoints, not culminations.

Default rank · 9 weeks

Transition rides shotgun in Week 1, or possession teaches nothing.

P6 says ratings adjust, never replace. So the calendar has to exist first. Six early slots are bolted down. Four later slots can take a one-notch nudge — and two of those sit behind the extras gate. 14U club circuits typically host weekend tournaments throughout the 9-week window, not exclusively in Week 6. Week 6 is a mid-season tournament checkpoint; the same tournament-week logic applies to any tournament weekend.

• Calendar-fixed — will not move
• Proficiency-dependent — ±1 only
• Gated extras — hold until P2

Override logic

Ratings adjust. They never replace.

Six of those slots are bolted to the calendar. The rest can take a one-notch nudge — and only if the roster is actually rated. Mark a skill at median ≤4 and watch: calendar-fixed slots refuse to slide, the extras gate stays shut unless passing and catching are both ≥5, and the third boost hits the cap. Unrated is not weak.

Two instructions sit on settled_offense. The Week 5 slot note says weak dodging/passing → jump to Week 3. The override guardrail says +1 slot only; calendar wins ties. They do not agree. A coach resolves it; the default rank does not pick a winner.

Decision tree

1. Input: team skill ratings Eight skills. No auto-rank off missing data.
2. ≥6 players unrated? Yes → output ask_coach_to_rate. No boost applied.
3. Team median ≤4? No → keep the default sequence.
4. Apply +1 rank boost to mapped game areas Highest-leverage fix only. Never a full reorder.
5. Max 2 boosted areas per week? Yes → stop. No → updated ranked sequence.

All 8 skill → situation mappings validated as written. Hover or focus a skill to light its mapped areas on the timeline. field_vision is the hardest skill to rate reliably; weight it lowest.

Coach rerank · tournament week

A nudge is not a rewrite. Safety does not unlock.

Coaches can pin, demote, hold extras, reorder inside a phase, and compress a washed-out week. They cannot override safety flags, age-band rules, or another coach’s pin. When a week is skipped, the sequence drops the lowest-priority proficiency-dependent slot — never a calendar-fixed one.

Kill list

The same locks that hold the calendar kill these on a Tuesday.

If the app does any of the following, the sequence above is theater. Coach sees a wall, picks nothing, app is dead.

• >10 ranked rows per session

  Cap at 3 Highs. A 90-minute session with 10 Highs is a demo, not a practice.

• “Lacrosse IQ” jargon labels

  14U club coaches say “ground balls” and “4v3,” not “tactical cognition index.”

• Everything High when ratings are missing

  Unrated ≠ weak. Produces noise and destroys trust.

• 20-week HS install compressed into 9 weeks

  Fall Ball is development. A full system install guarantees shallow reps of everything.

• Per-player personalized session plans

  22 players × 8 skills × 10 areas = unusable. Rank at team level; individual notes only.

• Auto-scheduling off exact calendar dates

  Tournaments shift. Fields get rained out. Rank by phase, not date.

• One weak FOGO triggering faceoff clinics every week

  Explicit cap: face_offs boost requires ≥2 players rated ≤4. Overrides are +1 slot, max 2 per week.

• “Championship phase” / taper language in Fall Ball

  Wrong goal for the season type. Violates the stated development objective. P8 stands.

Provenance

How this was built

The sequence is a 14U Fall Ball ranking spec. It is not a high-school install, not a drill library, and not a taper plan. That was a choice: become the expert this calendar actually needs, and rule the others out.

Receipts

Sources

24 sources. The spec’s own list marks 10 as cited in the blueprint and 14 as additional research consulted. A later inventory labels all 24 cited, 0 consulted. The split below follows the spec.