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Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
I'm tired. I did not edit this. Later.
PRACTICE GOALS
We finished preparations for the Texas trip with a night practice last night and then we had a lovely day to go outside on our home practice field today. We had a pretty good scrimmage I guess. I'll give it a sevent-five, Dick. It had a pretty good beat, but you really couldn't dance to it. Wait. Sorry.
I set out to do one main coaching thing in these two days before leaving tomorrow morning, Thursday, but that singular thing had a very wide scope. I told myself to get in every single player's "grill" before we left, and to say something meaningful, be it short or way too long, to each and every one. I don't think I got 100% of them, but I got pretty close. I had to wait an extra day to talk to one, a birthday boy from the day before. He showed up at practice last night on his 21st birthday, and I greatly appreciated it, but he really wasn't motivation material for me at that moment if you know what I mean. Today was much a better opportunity for him to see and hear just one of me at a time.
Anyway, overall I'm feeling much better as a coach now and in general too, but getting some messages out face-to-face was really invigorating for me, and something I had been needing and wanting to do.
SPEAKING OF THE WORD
As a coach I try to inspire and motivate by email. This is no longer a revolutionary concept. The other day I sent an attempt at one of these supposedly meaningful mail-outs to my mostly reconstructed, mostly current team email list. The message was along the lines of how important it will be for us to come out and play the game at our tempo this weekend and this and that, and why we must do that, and blah, blah. Later that day I got a reply that was something to the along the lines of, "That's great coach, but what exactly is our tempo?" He went on to write, "You (coach) talk about changing our tempo to something less frantic than how we (CSU) usually approach the game, yet we practice at a pace that is a frenzied, almost break neck pace that you push us toward at times."
SAY WHAT?
My first reaction was somewhat defensive, as in, "How dare you not instinctively understand everything I think all the time!" But after I thought about it for about two seconds, I realized that it was, in fact, a very good and legitimate question.
I addressed the team on this very subject last night, and out of it came a sort of team goal-setting workshop where we began to define just what is important to us collectively, and what kind of characteristics we want to exhibit as a team and to show other teams we play. I thought it was a terrific team session, and an important one for me since I had missed the team cocktail party Saturday night. This was by all accounts one of the events of the season.
JUST ANSWER THE DAMN QUESTION
The reason we practice at high wire pace is for the simple reason that they as players need to constantly read and make decisions. They need to be able to do this quickly inside the game of lacrosse. It's part of preparing to play. It's part of the process of analytical thought that takes place inside the game.
The reason I want us to change our tempo in some "uncharted" ways is because I want us to develop a very high degree of versatility in our overall capabilities to help us handle the rough seas ahead.
SLEEP TIGHT
I am going to bed now, content in the knowledge that yes we have much to learn as "grasshoppers", and all the other learning life forms that make up us, or is it make us up?. Either way I am uplifted by our possibilities. The fruit that might be is beginning to blossom and we now must fertilize our flower forms with this week's games, and generate a good team growth spurt out of the whole deal so we can get to be colorful and ripe real soon.
OLD GUYS (some of them) RULE
I'm sorry, but whether you like The Beatles or not or whatever, it was awesome that Paul McCartney could go out on the stage of the World last Sunday (Super bowl) and kick ass, and do it live. He did not lip sync. His band was not playing "air guitar". I mean they could really perform. What a quaint old thought, actually being able to "do it".
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