Saturday, December 21, 2002

ALL MY PLAYERS LOVE ME

I got to see many of the players this past week at my house before they all scattered like buckshot fo wherever. Some are off to savor Mom’s home cooking, and sleep in their childhood rooms for most of the next five weeks of break. I’ll bet a few still have posters of M.J. or John Elway safely in tact on the wall. Others will remain in the Fort for most of the break, working or whatever. Many of these CSU players have jobs. This lacrosse team is a diverse society to be sure.

I could say they all just wanted to see me before they left or to say Merry Christmas (is it politically correct to still say that?), but truth is the new sweats came in. Having the beanies and team-only style sweats at your house is a great way to feel loved by your players. They all can’t wait to come over for new stuff. Many of them added items to their Christmas shopping cart from our ever-expanding inventory of CSU Lacrosse stuff. The $10 beanies are a holiday hit this year.

I AM THE POISON PEN OR, YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT

Am I the poison pen? When I first did the journal on line in the spring of 2001, the USLIA site had me linked, and I was thinking, " Boy, isn’t this all pretty cool?" Within days I was history, never to be mentioned again, let alone linked. I think I made some probably not-very-amusing Flippidian metaphor having something to do with our intense rivalry with BYU or something else that might have been more (less) colorful than good taste might have dictated, and boom, I was banished from the kingdom.

Recently, over the last couple of weeks following my unvarnished remarks about the state of bureaucracy in America, and the events to follow, I had recurring thoughts like, "Great. Now no one will ever hire me to be a volunteer coach again because I will be tagged a troublemaker forever (again)." How bad is it when they don’t even want you to do this for free?

THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE - HOW DID I GET HERE?

People ask me how I had come to CSU in the first place. The truth is that I wanted to find someplace where nothing special (lacrosse-wise) was going on, but I wanted a school that had great club potential, and I wanted to go to that place and make something special happen. I believed that I could help build a model of how club sports could be. I had seen the possibilities in Santa Barbara at UCSB and by looking at what other WCLL schools were already doing10-15 years ago. I know my work here is far from done, but this is what I was thinking about when I was still in California in 1996, contemplating a life-altering move to Northern Colorado.

I landed at CSU because I saw potential, and because one CSU student (Will Smitham, ‘97) was clever enough to talk me into it. I second-guessed my decision for two years. That can be reinforced by the fact that I bought a condo in Santa Barbara after I had moved here to Colorado. Like I could just go back next week. I knew I had to scratch that coach-and-build-a-program itch that was inside me, but I dragged my feet and called myself crazy for quite a while. After all, I had pulled up all my roots and left Santa Barbara, where Bouganvillas grow (lots of sun) and winter is a low of 48 degrees one morning.

Selling that same condo two years later made the process become the smartest financial move of my life. That’s what made it possible to buy this nice house I now live in. Who knew?

RAM SALAD, OR I AM THE EGGMAN, KOO KOO CUH CHOO

I have come to love the "typical" CSU student over the years. Actually, what's typical is how much variety there is in a group such as this one lacrosse team. The players here have something special, too. The school pride is intense, because CSU has always had to, and for a variety of reasons, live in the shadow of schools like CU. The very different types of personalities that end up here, mixed with that no-quit mentality that many seem to bring with them would seem to suit my coaching style, if I actually had one.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

I felt, and in spite of all the budget crunches coming to all universities and their sports programs, I still see CSU as a place with a great future for club sports, because it is a school that has a strong club-sports tradition already built. I also see the competition for all dollars forcing all kinds of programs to look in imaginative ways to find their own answers for success, and maybe more importantly longevity. I’m not sure that this is exclusive to club sports. Except for college football and men’s basketball there are very few collegiate sports that actually make money, and they all cost plenty.

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