Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Thursday, July 8, 2004

I apologize for my lack of writing lately. I think I am recharging my batteries. I have also been very busy and not that healthy, too.

NOTES FROM VAIL

We (Team Rock-it Pocket) finished seventh at the 2004 Vail Lacrosse Shootout. That is one place lower than 2003, but in 2003 we lost our last game. This time we won, which leaves a little nicer taste. Both times we finished 2-2, certainly respectable.

I wrote a little about day one of the Elite Tournament for us already. We beat Tri-State, 8-5, nothing to get thrilled about as it turns out, because they won only once, on the final day, and in the "Toilet Bowl" for the 17th place finish. The Tri-Staters beat the Colorado College Tigers (CC had one, that’s right one CC player, and the rest of the team was made up of Vail staff and other waywards).

DAY TWO

We played the eventual finals Victim, the GMH Team from Philadelphia. They beat us easily on the way to a second consecutive final after sort of taking the MAB Paints (Philly) spot in the event last year. The Colorado Mammoth team won the whole thing by beating GMH 9-6 on Sunday..

We did not play well on this day, showing no team energy, and very little Plonk. The GMH team had a lot of great players, and they were not to be confused with "boys". It all added up to GMH 14 and Rock-it Pocket 6. It could have been better, but it could have been worse. I had no coach genius speech (especially as lousy as I felt most of the week) to try to overcome the odds with. The thought that crossed my mind was that yes, it was discouraging. At the same time, Mama said there would be days like this (that), and sometimes you just gotta stand there and take your whoopin’ without crying about it. That’s what I did.

I began to question if we (RP/CSU) belonged in the upper division of this very "Elite" tournament. Even though I was in China at the time (and had nothing to do with seeding this year), we got a sweet match-up in our opener as it turns out. I want to be in the top bracket of this thing (top 8 teams of 18 entered) just to keep the dream alive, but I don’t want no charity either. We must earn what we get. As I said, after day two I began to question if we were good enough to be with the "big boys", and I knew we would have to play at a different level to have a shot of winning one of our last two games. The teams in the 2004 Vail Shootout were as good top to bottom as they have ever been. There was only one really bad team there as I have previously pointed out.

DAY THREE

We played a really good Merrill Lynch team. The winner would play for fifth place. They (ML) had great stars, matching helmets, and other stuff like that. They had their version of Plonkey, too, a long stick midfielder who wore #17 and was great. They had guys who could score all by themselves and with others as well. We led 6-4 at half, but could not hold on, and truthfully I had no adjustments that seemed to help. We lost 13-10, but I was way okay with this game even though they put it to us a little in the second half. We had proven that our little team could play with the top bracket, the really talented teams. After yesterday I questioned that, but no more. In my mind we were again the little team that could, and I was pleased with our effort and the way we competed against and contested a team with much more individual talent or skill or whatever you choose to call it. It was a game that we woulda, coulda, and almost shoulda, and even though we didn’t-a, it was all good-a, because I still thought we had a shot-a at two wins up in Vail. I was re-encouraged.

DAY FOUR

A morning date with Lax-Dot-Com sounded good to me. I wanted us to be seventh, not eighth. Lax.Com has some of the most prodigious party people in Vail annals on its roster. They would arrive late and with nothing to prove. My plan was to keep these sleeping dogs with no reason to stir and no grudge to wake up for. I wanted them to go quietly into defeat. When we had played this team in the past it was like, "You kids are okay, but we can always turn it on and put you away", and they had.

This time was different from the start of the game. We got on top of them, out-hustled them, and for once we matched up pretty well with this group of aging All-Americans. With the exception of perhaps the GMH game we fought and won a lot of the ground ball wars with the teams we were playing this week. We put it to this team pretty good with TEAM.

We ended up playing well, and winning easily 13-6, but not without a few of our own instigating nasty things with the Lax.Com team. When Lax.Com started to lose early on it did not make them happy at all. We couldn’t just feed off of that, though. No, we had to have an individual or two insist on rubbing the other team’s face in it. All this created hostility that was not needed on a lovely Sunday morning in the mountains. At one point I was actually physically holding back a Lax.Com player from going after one Rock-it Pocket player. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I wasn’t sure about my player. I tried to use humor throughout, and at one point offered to strip naked if it would help the cause of peace.

SON, YOU NEED TO SEE THE BIGGER PICTURE

All this leads me back to CSU 2005 where I have a "star". This player is one who constantly provokes the other team, any team that we play. In this process he discourages his own teammates and his coach to no end. He did this again in Vail. This player often acts as if HE can do no wrong, while others are simply not as good as he. This is truly not the case. This player simply has more noticeable talent. It doesn’t mean that he has more talent. His work habits are simply terrible, and this doesn’t help either. Anyway, the way we try to play allows talent to surface, to come from inside a team, and not just from what talents the players bring to the team.

What further complicates this whole thing is that this player I am talking about is perceived more to be a star by outsiders than he is by his own team. The reason is that he has no idea how to be a good teammate because the team has never been the most important thing to this player. With us the team is the thing. That’s the thing. A few do not get this. They must or we will never achieve our true goals.

Now, this has become a very serious coaching problem, one that I have to deal with right now, and truthfully I am not sure what I will do. I am positive that I will try my best to not have poison on this team again, and that if we have to take a step backward (wins and losses) to prove that, then so be it.

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