Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Friday, December 17, Saturday, December 18, 2004

Happy Birthday to my lovely bride.

INHERIT THE WIND or, I AIN’T NO SPENCER TRACY

Lately in here (journal) I have attempted to cryptically crawl my way through this thing I have been referring to as Vangate without saying too much about its specifics. Now that all has been said and done it seems like it is time to explain it better. This is a journal based on actual lacrosse things and events going on in and around my life, and this certainly falls into the event category. I cannot just let this particular affair pass without somewhat deeper documentation. I will try to be as factual as possible. My opinions may shimmy out into the light, but I will try not to be too sanctimonious, or hypocritical.

YOUNG MEN: HERE ARE THE KEYS TO THE CITY

Every October for the last seven years we have gone to Las Vegas to play in The Best of the West Lacrosse Tournament. The group we take is always very large. One might call us a team with an entourage. Other teams hate shaking hands with us after the games because it takes so long to get through.

Vegas would seem to be a great CSU lacrosse team plus entourage kind of town. The competition is usually good and plentiful out there, and the games are fun and done, leaving some town time. Sin City cannot just be an extended "business trip" like our spring trips usually are. I choose to ease the reins for the last day of the fall season, but we try to always keep some Guardian Angels on duty at all times, too. We have done well over the years in the real City of Lights at mixing curricular with extra-curricular activities. Both help with the creating of the bonded players blend so crucial to what we (I) do here.

For me, the Coach, this Vegas trip is the first chance each new school year to familiarize everyone with our family lifestyle. It’s a great opportunity for new players to see if they DON’T fit, too. I suppose it has also always been a journey fraught with lurking danger.

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES

I prefer everyone to fly on all of our trips except the ones we take to Utah, where we travel via a big CSU bus. The trip to Las Vegas has been recently utilizing 2 CSU 12-passenger vans to drive equipment out, and so that we have some mobility while in Las Vegas. We don’t rent any vehicles in Vegas as a way to save money. Our games are played across the street from the Amerisuites Hotel where we always stay, so we can walk there, and then we hotel shuttle our way back to the airport when the time comes on Sunday. The CSU vans have also afforded a cheaper Vegas travel option (12 hour drive) over the years for the fringe players. I try to get all the "starters" to fly, but I am not generally as hard about those type things in the fall as I am in the spring. I try (to a fault sometimes) not to scare people off too quickly.
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There is no way to make this long story short I am afraid.

DEEP THROAT

Although I knew nothing about Vangate events (I am NOT a crook) until we had returned to the CSU campus on Monday, the actuality was that the van part of the Vegas vacation had gotten off to a very inauspicious beginning on Thursday, four days earlier. The van’s chosen driver apparently got a little "yahoo" upon receiving the keys. Stop signs were run even before the tires could tiptoe off campus. It (van) was then pulled over one block from campus on Prospect Avenue by a campus police officer. Remember they were on the way TO Las Vegas. Alcohol was found inside. It is not clear if alcohol containers were opened, but based on the fact that no actual written report was filed at the scene, I am assuming that nothing had been opened.

I had publicly announced to the team NOT to do this specific thing. There were bulletin board memos available for reading. Email directives were coming at them like spam. We (Club President Newell and I) were doing everything we could to get the word out that this team could not afford to have problems in the alcohol or public activities arena. We were already being scrutinized. We had reminded certain individuals of what not to do more than once. The Big People from Rec Sports came out to practice the day before we left to warn us as a group about this specific thing, no alcohol in the vans. This whole when-we-travel-there-is-no-alcohol clause is a big part of the oath that people sign to become part of the Club/Program. School rules as well as team rules were broken here. These rules and their importance had been purposely buried somewhere under a pile of bad traditions, ones that were no longer going to be okay.

THE INQUISITION

When we returned from Las Vegas the lid had already blown off Vangate. Several buildings at the University were already buzzing over this episode, and our "case" had already been referred directly to the Supreme Court of the CSU Student Government. Oh, happy days, thought I.

I'm afraid that I sometimes think that bureaucracy is where democracy goes to die. Our fate was now sadly and surely in someone else’s hands.

Upon our return, I was asked and I wanted very much to come in to talk to the justices about the incident. Everyone who had ridden in the van was also called in. There were 12 total, and for many the biggest crime was that they had gotten in and buckled up. The Student Justices asked me what I thought good punishment would be. I had talked to the team the day before. I told them that I would deliver the team message, not just mine. We all agreed as a team that we first and foremost wanted to pinpoint the individuals who were guilty and punish them. We also wanted to be sure that the team would not be severely punished, because as I stated our laws were broken, too, not just the University’s. I at least partly based this approach on the way Division I teams, military academies, and other organizations tend to handle these kinds of situations. The individuals are always identified and punished as the first order of business.

However it might end up, I saw my role at that moment as that of the team’s messenger, and not as the team’s "boss" or whatever. I decided early on in the proceedings that I would wait to see what would be done by the school before I would do, or God forbid write, much of anything.

HAS THE "JURY" REACHED A VERDICT?

The court gave us a piece of paper way back in October stating that their findings and a judgement would be issued within the next week. Well, it did not surprise me, but that did not happen. More than 6 weeks later, in early December, the court finally found its answer, and they had decided to impose penalties and sanctions ONLY upon the team as a whole, and to hand down absolutely no sentences for individuals. My first reaction to this was a bitter one, "Thanks for listening," I said out loud and to no one in particular.

Nothing that came down in the final decision surprised me, but as things were, it implied (to me) that some bodies out there might think of us as a program out of control, which really doesn’t say much for me either, now does it? Do "they" have any idea of the magnitude of what we do, and the delicate balance that is involved with getting great return from players on the investment they make to be part of this Team? It is a commitment to something that is much bigger than any of its individuals.

Traveling with a bunch of testosterone filled, free spirited twenty-year-olds is not the meek shepherd shifting meadows with his flock, nor is it remotely like moving an army platoon. Nothing we do can be so simple. There is a lot of Murphy’s Law involved with Club sports. I don’t own them (players). They are not paid or on scholarship. People (not just lacrosse players) have been carrying alcohol in CSU school vans since way before my time. Change was not ordained upon my arrival 8 years ago, as much as I would have liked it to have been so. Change in any area of operations has to be achieved, earned. We are always working on it, believe me.

THE PENALTY PHASE – REACTION -

My next thought upon document review was that there were all-of-a-sudden 4 sanctions placed on our program. The second one of those jumped immediately into my face, and my brain reacted just as quickly. I knew I could not live with #2, which said we could not travel for our spring break trip this coming March. My line in the sand had already been drawn for me with this. This would not work for me. We had paid for airline tickets, and it would be one of only two intersectional trips with really big games that we have this year. Whatever "We" had done was not worth ME being humiliated in any kind of national spotlight. Other penalties on the paper were monetary or proprietary, and did not bother me. This one, however, had to be appealed and altered.

BUT DO I HAVE TO WEAR THE ORANGE UNIFORM?

One of the mandates given to the team was to have 65% of the players do a small amount of community service (3 hours). I actually like that idea, but where do they get the 65% number? I do not want 65% of us doing anything, so we expanded the number to 100%, and I think we will plan on doing something like this each year. Hopefully in years to come we will be able to choose where we put that effort. I want us to be involved with the community of Fort Collins, youth lacrosse here in town, lots of things. I have a feeling that this first year, however, "we" will be picking up trash along the side of the highway, or something equally glamorous.

SEARCH THE SOUL

My third and final realization after reading "the judgement" over and over was that, yes, maybe we do need to look at the way we do things and how we police ourselves. Things at the school are getting tighter, with more rules that must be followed and worse possible consequences when they are not. Maybe "they" are right. Maybe anything bad that happens IS all the fault of me. Whatever the case, I would be stupid not to use this as a valuable learning tool for the program and for me. That process has begun. Again.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (refrain)

The bottom line is that even though we wanted the school to point out through their "investigation" whom the guilty parties were, and to punish same, once they did not we first looked at and then went ahead and expanded some of the team sanctions. I and we also took immediate action upon specific individuals, meting out the punishments that I deemed appropriate for the situation. We would file an appeal (with the help of my NM Attorney General's Office brother-in-law) to try and regain our Spring Break trip. It would need to be filed within seven days. I sent emails out to help inform and mobilize our parent and alumni support team.

There were (at least) two people who brought alcohol to the van. One came forward. We still seek the other, and unlike O.J. we will find that person. We fear it might be someone who no longer shows his face to us. The one who came forward I have now dismissed from the team. I have no desire to pin all this on him or any one person. This is not the first crime of its kind, rather just the first one to become a criminal offense because he was the one who got caught.

This player was only the third person I have ever ejected from the team. Suffice it to just say that it was NOT the first time that this player had done something conspicuously NOT good for the team and or its image. This is not a fringe player. He is a senior, and has been a "prime timer" for us.

WILL THE LAST PERSON LEAVING LAS VEGAS PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS

We have reached what I might call a melancholy moment. We will not be going back to Las Vegas next October to defend our self proclaimed "Nothing But Money" title. We will not be allowed to travel out of state (as a team) during the next fall season (’05). This (trading Vegas for Spring Break trip) was part of the peaceful process of compromise, and we have now "avoided" the appeal, and I am grateful.

I don't think we have ever lost on the (lacrosse) playing fields of Las Vegas. We tied BYU once, that first year of 1998. That whole "nothing but money" thing was becoming burdensome and somewhat old baggage. The games don’t mean anything in October, but it (having never lost) was becoming harder to ignore. I have been thinking of trying to do something new in the fall. Staying at home had not occurred to me. I will need to come up with something clever for us to do next year I guess.

I got married at one of those stupid wedding chapels near the Strip. The place reminded me more of the crematorium where they took my grandfather than a place for joyful, wedded celebration. It happened on our first trip to Las Vegas in 1998. It was a "bonding" experience for Ada and me, but it was also one of the first real family deals for the team. Now she (Ada) is calling for a "Do-over". I think I might have to get married again, this time somewhere other than Las Vegas. I digress without deletion.

There will be no do over for the team on this whole van episode. In some ways I am glad that we have had this glimpse of how quickly things can go wrong and how we could find ourselves speeding into "Dead Man’s Curve" without brakes if we are not careful from here on out. Either way, we won’t be going there in a CSU school van as long as I am here, that’s for sure.

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Flip Started Blogging Before it was Cool, Read Over 400 of His Entries Since January 2001
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