Wednesday, December 10, 2003

YO YO - WHATEVER WAY THE WIND DOTH BLOW

We have had 4 practices over the past week. It has been almost like being back in season for a minute. We are fam-i-ly and all that. Two sessions were afternoon Box gigs inside the boards at OD’s, and these alternated with two "outdoor" style lacrosse practices that took place on the floor of the old field house on campus at night. We only broke one window.

It is fun and challenging to coach this way, working on two distinct styles of game play, alternating back and forth. The players are having fun with it, too. Neither practice surface is "real" anyway. We do whatever we can, and we do it wherever we can.

I’VE NEVER BEFORE HAD PEPSI ON TAP

We are enjoying working on some new techniques and strategies within the box game. I think that I (and the players) will be able to tap into some of these box lacrosse concepts that we are busy with now at some later date, at a time when the Pepsi "Box" experience will already be a collectors item, an emotional antique.

For example, everyone plays with "shorties" in the box game. The defensemen, in preparation for Pepsi, are playing with much shorter sticks than they are accustomed to. They now know how formidable the length adjustment thing is. In addition they have noticed how good playing with less stick is for their overall footwork on defense. All of a sudden they don’t have that 3-foot extra length that they are used to and cushioned by. Six feet of pole allows a defender to make a small mistake and still recover his position. Having almost three feet less affords no such luxury of laziness. You must move your feet well to play good defense. There is a real urgency to being in good position at all times. This is a very good lunch pail type of lesson.

From a coaching viewpoint, the long pole players, by playing the box game, see first-hand how much more difficult it is to be imposing with only 40-46" inches of stick. They begin to develop an understanding of what it is to be a short stick midfielder on defense. The speculation is that this early investment in empathy will pay us a few team dividends somewhere in the next "quarter" or so.

PEPSI ON HOLD

Hold on to your Pepsi cans. They just got this little growth in the NLL the other day. They grew themselves a strike. I trust they have bigger issues over at the Pepsi Center these days than where we can sell CSU t-shirts during the all-star game in February.

I guess a work stoppage strike thing had to happen. Sooner or later the players were going to notice that, while most of them (players) are making $200 a game or whatever, there are 18,000 crazy people in the arena watching them play sometimes. Somehow that don't add up too good.

LACROSSE ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS

Yesterday I was offered the opportunity to coach the USA West Team on its trip to China and other stops in the Far East in early June, 2004. It is a very exciting thing to just think about, let alone do. My first reaction to the news was to e-mail the CSU lacrosse team and make it clear that I wouldn’t want to go unless a few of them applied to go, too. Well, I will no longer wonder if the team is out there reading the e-coaching spam that I send to them with monotonous regularity. Judging by how many e-plies I got from this little e-memo I’m thinking they are in fact e-reading me.

I am honored by the chance to coach a team that represents our country to a fairly large number of people who live on the other side of the world. That is very cool. I am humbled by the prospect, but also juiced about it.

I feel that I cannot turn this down. Things seem to fit very well for me to go on this trip. We shall see if that remains true. I have mixed emotions about it all on the other hand. I always tend (right or wrong) to look at these types of "all Star" things that include games that don’t really count as a distraction to the things that we (CSU) do that really do count. Also, not everyone can go, and I’m sure most every player at CSU and in pretty much the whole MDIA would like the chance to be part of something like this.

CAN EWE SEE THE STARS FROM HERE?

We don’t have only all-stars here at CSU. We couldn’t do what we do with only all-stars. We need Worker Bees, too, people and players that are just as valuable to this team as your "Golden Rams". We have many players here who want only to contribute to team success in whatever way they can, period, unconditional. Doesn’t this automatically make them stars?

As much as I like having all-stars, I really don’t like glorifying the "all" part all that much. I like all-stars to look at it as if it were their job to do those things that make others perceive their glow as brighter. Being seen as a star doesn’t make them special. It makes them an integral part of our team mission, not more, and not less.

I’m going to assume that I have come far enough as a coach so that I can take on these little psychological maizes well enough now. I can handle another big event that isn't exclusively CSU. I already do it with Vail.

THE GOLDEN RAM

There is a player on this team that the others refer to as my (Flip’s) "Golden Ram". It is widely speculated that I favor this particular player (#17), both on the field and in here (journal) more than all others, and that no matter what they (anyone besides #17) might do, they would never get that kind of adulation/exposure from me. I wonder what could have possibly given them that idea……..

It is true that I will heap praise and pressure on one or two of them. Meanwhile I might be trying to "hide" others, hoping that no one besides Jason Lamb (BYU coach) notices. In my mind, with some bah bahhing about a Plonkey (#17) maybe they (other teams) won’t lose sleep counting our other sheep. Maybe I don’t want a particular other player to feel any of that sort of pressure. Besides, I look at teams worrying about Plonkey as a good thing. It certainly doesn’t seem to bother Mark when teams make a big point of containing him. I think he kind of likes it, so it doesn’t really bother me to coach against it either.

I LOVE EWE ALL

They (most of them) feel my love, but more than that they all understand that I love the team the most. The team must ultimately be the star, and they know it. That's the cornerstone of the pyramid.

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