Tuesday, November 26, 2002

I’m on a roll…. and eating a lot of them these days as well.

WE’RE NUMBER TWO! WE’RE NUMBER TWO!

I am a voter in the national USLIA top 25 poll, which comes out every two weeks during the season. Today I voted (on line for the first time) for the USLIA 2003 pre-season top 25 poll, which will be out in the next few days, presumably because they have run out of new stuff to put on the USLIA web site. Anyway, I did not have the cajones to vote us #1, so I voted us #2. Besides, I guess I believe in all that stuff about how you are the king until someone knocks you off. So, I voted Sonoma State #1. The rest of my top 6 includes UC Santa Barbara, Michigan, BYU, and Arizona, not necessarily in that order. Alex always sends me a poll from which I do mine, and he might be surprised by the actual sequence that I put them in. Things (like being #1 in May) seem to be up for grabs. In all, nine or ten teams on our schedule will be in the USLIA pre-season top 25.

The only one of our perceived top six teams that is not on our 2003 spring schedule is UCSB, and that is because they have never made any kind of effort to repay all of our trips to California. Lord knows I would like to play them in Fort Collins, or even at a neutral site, for that matter. The same could almost be said of Stanford and Cal, who are top ten teams every year. We have played both several times in California on our trips out there through the years, and neither has been to Colorado. At the same time, all three of these California schools are ever eager to fly to Provo so they can play BYU on national TV.

I am grateful that Sonoma State and Michigan are coming here this spring. I feel that we finally have good teams scheduled to play in the Fort, and this can possibly help the lacrosse growth here in Fort Collins and Northern Colorado. The game vs. Michigan on April 12, 2003 will be held at French Field at Rocky Mountain High School, which is very close to the CSU campus. They just put in that new artificial turf-that-is-like-grass stuff. It is a nice little high school football stadium. It will be a "lacrosse day", with high school games throughout the day leading up to the CSU Ram vs. Michigan Wolverine contest under the lights. My goal is to fill the place up. I do not know if it is possible to get 5000 fans or whatever for one of our lacrosse games, but boy’s gotta have a dream. Six years ago I really didn’t want anyone to see us play a game. Things have definitely changed.

I am already trying to spread the word about April 12. In our sponsorship efforts we are trying very hard to get the business community involved with and behind us these days. Actually, it seems to be going pretty well. We shall see what will be…

BEAURACRACY IS BEAUTIFUL

Every month or so something happens that makes me want to sit down and write a scathing commentary/ journal entry on the way things work inside the university maxi-structure. Talk about "Big Government" and waste… I never write it, because I guess I would rather figure out how to work around it, and not worry about how much it sometimes pisses me off anymore. Also, there is part of me that knows the system can’t really help itself after all these years of creating a bureaucratic mess that they have confused with some sort of "chain of command" concept. Another reason I don’t write it is because I am glad that I DON’T have to depend on that process for the most part. Since they don’t give us much actual support of any kind, I can do many things without being obstructed by university protocol or whatever. I am thankful for the freedom that I have within Colorado State University to build the CSU lacrosse program in my own way, and with my own vision.

ROCK THE HOUSE

Last year, Alex Smith petitioned to get one of our home games at Hughes Stadium, the CSU football stadium. Somehow he got through all the hoops, and we played BYU there last March. The outcome of the game was unfortunately not the best part, as BYU literally ran us out of there in the second half, and for that day it was their "house". As bad as the "state of the team" was following that game, I still was somewhat upbeat, bolstered by the magnitude of the whole experience. I think it was the largest crowd ever to see a USLIA game. It was exciting to the point where I couldn’t just dwell on how crappy we were as a team at the time, and the fact that our goalie had just broken his hand in the BYU game for the second time in three years.

There were too many dunken "fans" yelling obscenities at the BYU bench that day, but other than that all post game reports were glowing, and the school officials even seemed impressed with how well we (Rec Sports included) had organized the event, etc. Everyone was positive about doing it again in 2003. It was the first "club" sports event ever held there. Apparently it might be the last as well, because they have just told us we cannot play a game there this year. They don’t want us to mess up the field before the spring varsity football game was the official reason, but it was really more like, "Reason! We don’t need no stinking reason!"

Being shut down for Hughes does not bother me. The "can" was opened last year. You can’t reseal it. We have a little "cult following". We already have the Michigan game scheduled at RMHS, so we will still have an "event" game on the schedule. This is hardly a "back-up" site. It is actually closer to campus. I think our potential for community involvement is even greater at this other venue. I have to admit it, though, I would love how it would look and feel to have a few thousand people at a CSU lacrosse event that takes place only a mile from the school, yet got no help or promotion of any kind from the university. I’m also excited because the high school coaches and parents will be helping put the event on this time. If we fill that place up, it could really rock in there.

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