Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Thursday, May 19, 2005

IRONY MAN

I don't even know what to say anymore, so I'll just keep on keeping on I guess.

Yesterday I was out on campus working with one of our goalies. This past year this one "red shirted", and he has been the model of what a red shirt should be in many ways. Another school is now "courting" him (recruiting him) to transfer.

This player helped us in many ways off the field with writing articles and statistic keeping to name a couple things he did this whole year. He came out every day and worked hard at his goalie craft, and he got much better during the season with little or no help from me. He did all this and he never even got to put on a CSU game jersey even once.

The offer he is getting to go elsewhere is not to be sneezed at, and all I have to offer him here is family love, because I can’t promise him what we both wish I could, but I can’t because I don’t make those kind of promises. The boy has plenty of the talent necessary to play here, though, and the more I see of what is inside him, the more I believe that.

A RIVER OF GOALIES

We (CSU) were the full-blown goalie delta in ‘05, at times busting the banks of the goalie river, while our "depth" chart at the position never quite got itself clear. We had somewhere more than 3 red shirted goalies to help muddy the waters. I really don’t want this one that I am writing about right here to leave, and my thought and hope is that he will ultimately stay, but I don’t really know. On top of everything else we of course have no scholarship money, and in fact here you pay to play and not the other way around.

In spite of that irony that he might leave, I was having so much fun working with him, because it seems like these days the only time where I feel free from "all this other stuff" is when I am out playing with some of the kids. The fire inside the teaching dynamic always heats me up quickly. Then I am truly and comfortably ablaze in the moment. This particular kid is always eager like a beaver to learn and that motivates me, too. The Kid and I had been out a couple of times already since the season was "over" last week, and we are looking forward to working together regularly over the summer.

PHILIP H. NAUMBURG JR. The "H" stands for Humiliation

Well, yesterday the moment got ugly for me in a hurry despite the good karma thing I was feeling as we started. We were informed soon after our arrival that all the fields at CSU were closed and that we had to go. Couldn’t we just use this tiny 20-yard strip here along side of the practice field so I could work with just one of my players????? No, we couldn’t.

I looked around and all I could see were buildings, blue sky, and all of it seemed like it was surrounded by or accented with beautifully large, green, playing fields and grassy areas. I shrugged.

I was informed that this was all being done for "us" and I should be grateful. Besides, if you let one do it then the worm can flies open and others will also want to play on the sacred grass, and well, we wouldn’t want that. Okeedokee, no problem.

What a year for the "RMLC COACH OF THE YEAR" for 2005 – Yeah for ME!

The campus was almost starkly empty as I again looked around, and there were only a few parked cars anywhere to be seen near the center of campus. I guess the goal is to get it (campus) completely empty. I know "they" have to do what they have to do as Keepers of the Fields, but I am feeling kind of, shall we say, vulnerable these days, and this made me feel even more insignificant than I already was, if that is or was in fact possible.

We will have to once again find another place to park our goal and play.

MURPHY, his law and his legacy, and the separate reality it brings

I think I’m really losing it, and quickly. The logic of things as seen by others is drifting farther and farther away from me anymore. My reality seems to be shifting even more from what might be termed given or normal. I just don’t get the logic in lots of stuff these days. I’m sure the problem is in fact in me, and with a simple lobotomy I might fall into step and be fine in no time.

GIVE ME A BIG MAC – EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING

After our little "game" was abruptly halted there were four of us sitting around and chatting. Two other team members had randomly shown up to also play some of the forbidden on-campus catch. As we talked I brought up some practice possibilities for the fall as well as several other things. I’m kind of beat up on talking about the recent past right now so we were delving more into the mysteries of the future.

One of the kids out there was Ryan MacDonald (#20 M), our very own Mac. I have liked this Smokey Hill Denver product from the minute I first laid eyes on him, but maybe not for just the obvious reasons one might think about when one looks at or for lacrosse players. I feel bad for him about this year, but I am buoyed by the fact that he has just finished his freshman year at CSU, and with any luck he might have another chance to go to Blaine or wherever. His disappointment about this year was mostly concerned with the fact that "when" we go back to nationals he won’t have been already a veteran of that war and one who could help the new ones on the team next year to make an easier transition. What a nice thought, thought I.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. I continued to talk about fall practice and that I want to be sure that I don’t "burn us out" next fall while pursuing my own little personal upcoming spring agenda before we even get cranked up or whatever. I don’t want to force the, er MY passion on to any team. I want to create a scenario where they get excited and bring it (passion) to me and then we all get in a "groove" and create more of it (electricity) together or whatever.

So Mac says to me that the more practice the better as far as he was concerned, like the mission had already begun for him. Then he says something even better, and this comes from a kid that basically does not talk that much, and he never just flaps his lips for no reason. He says to me in a tone that is single minded and sincere that it doesn’t really matter whether "WE" are doing something on a given day or not, because either way he will be working every day all the way from here to there and from now until then. Now that’s what I am talking about! That is definitely coachable.

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