Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Thursday, February 22, 2007

EUGENE. BABY IS THAT YOU?

We are in Eugene, Oregon, and as far as CSU Lacrosse 2007 goes, tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives.  We play the Ducks of Oregon at 6:00 PST on Friday, tomorrow.  I spoke to a friend of mine here who has seen Oregon play, and it was just the other day.  They have 4 games, all wins, under their belts already.  I was told that this team is very good and extremely offensive as well, as in they shoot/score often.  My response to all the talk of Oregon that I have heard lately, and how good they are and all, is that we will just go out and play them anyway and in spite of the fact they are off to such a great start in 2007.  The other thing I would offer up and above water is that I have focused on nothing but the Ducks and that we have anticipated their excellence since we scheduled the game nine months ago or whatever.  I have not talked about the fact that we also play our old friends and rivals Sonoma State two days later on Sunday.  That will be a huge test as well, but I can’t even look at that one until the game with the Oregon Ducks is done.

TRUST IN ALLAH, BUT TIE UP THE CAMEL ANYWAY

We are all very excited about tomorrow and perhaps more so since it has been so long in the coming.  We haven’t had one practice on our field yet, so in essence this will be the first time we have ever played a game in a season before we had a ‘real’ practice.  Is that the cart before the horse? 

Global warming certainly has taken its toll and made its changes in more ways than I could have ever imagined.  Somehow I still feel like we are ready.  I know I will have to live through stuff tomorrow and beyond, but I also have faith in us already.

STICK STEROIDS

We talked about legal sticks quite a bit at our 9:00 meeting tonight.  We did this for good reason because the game and its brass are making a really big deal out of the way sticks are manufactured these days, etc., and they are putting players and teams right up on the rack about it in an effort to evolve the game out of the cheater’s hands as it were.  We have been measuring and poking sticks for weeks and talking about this and what it might mean. 

DEAF DUMB AND BLIND KIDS?

The first random stick I grabbed tonight at the meeting from one of the players I was talking to was clearly illegal.  GREAT!!  “Tommy, can you hear me?”  I hope the referee does not have the same ‘luck’ tomorrow.  If we have to spend all day working to get all the sticks legal, then it is worth it.  If we spend that much time and still get called for one or more infractions, then I won’t know what to say or do.  Part of the problem is the fact that manufacturers MANUFACTURE the heads within millimeters of being legal nowadays, and also with the potential built in the design to ‘trap’ the ball in any pocket the player puts in the stick.  Then, if you go out and face off or whack something once on a hot day, bammo, your stick misshapes and becomes illegal and you didn’t do anything to alter the stick.  There is an awful lot of intrigue going on with the stick dimensions these days.

NETTING GOALS

I did talk about our goals as a team.  I did talk about the fact that if we do certain things then the old scoreboard will take care of itself.  I created a discussion where we defined our emphasis on defensive and offensive philosophies.  We didn’t talk about who was going to play when tomorrow.  We will do that tomorrow.  We didn’t discuss what defensive package we might use if the other team does this or that when they attack our goal.  What we did was define our MA, our method of attacking the opponent.   Our aim is to bring aggressive behavior to all parts of our game and to try to ‘fire’ on as many cylinders as able as quickly as possible.  We are behind others right now because of life’s circumstances.

IT’S JUST BUSINESS

This is a business trip as they all are in my mind, and I think this team gets that pretty well.  Killing time on the road is somewhat of a skill.  You need to combine the act of preparation with the simple act of killing time.  If you overdue one or the other I believe it can work to your detriment.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU RATHER BE?

We were lucky enough to get a two-hour block on the football field yesterday, Saturday afternoon. We were equally fortunate that one of our CSU lax alumni who is still in school here put together a thin, but actually decent Men’s Club team for us to play in a more or less live scrimmage. They had a few really good players and their roster was filled out with some of our "Underdogs". The game was complete with a referee wearing actual stripes, and one who also gave us an illegal stick penalty during the game to prove for us that it will happen in a heartbeat next week if we don’t make sure that it doesn’t. I think that catching and then calling us with an illegal stick was the main thing I was more than willing to pay a referee some $ to come out and do. This legal stick stuff is going to be tricky from a coaching point of view.

I think we learned a lot about ourselves by having this ‘exhibition’ style game. That (having it set itself up at the last minute) was great. We needed to play this 'one' so much. The weather was nicely cooperative, too, not that warm, but bright, and good enough for our purposes.

I am very glad we were able to butt heads with more or less another team before we raise the curtain on 2007 next Friday night. By the way we won with a score of more or less something like 10/11-6. The game was a little short, 48 instead of 60 minutes long. Everything was an attempt to simulate a true game as much as we possible.

We started horribly, and if nothing else I was so glad to have that part of Act I as a ‘do-over’ and that I hopefully won’t have to endure anything similar to those first few minutes this coming weekend in Eugene. They were painful seconds every one of them and I went right into my stressed out ‘we suck’ thing. In retrospect I think we were just having a few of the very necessary team growing pains, but man did they hurt.

GET BACK LORETTA

I’m really satisfied, however, with how they responded to the time out I called very early in the game and the tongue lashing I gave them during that break. They showed the ability to calm down quickly and then to adjust to game conditions as they arose instead of whatever it was they were doing as the game had first unfolded. We picked up some rhythm as the quarter went on, and then we scored a goal just as time expired in that first quarter to make it 3 or maybe 4 to 1.

I’d love to do that 5-4-3-2 (seconds remaining), he shoots he scores thing regularly at the end of quarters, halves and games.

F-TROOPS

From what I saw I became hopeful about what can happen with both our attack and defense units. Both showed the promise of becoming solid four-man regular rotations (instead of 3 main goers for each) that can work to be more beneficial to team while also using larger number of major contributors (2) while we are at it.

PROPOGANDA TIME

Usually I am thrilled to write down a nice ‘scouting report’ for anyone (other teams and coaches) who cares to use it by me opening up about probably too much in here (journal) sometimes about our team and what we do and who we are. Of course that assumes that someone reads. I have heard that it is a rather small number, but that would also mean that pretty many people might be lying to me when they meet me and tell me they read the journal or whatever. I digress.

NEED TO KNOW BASIS

This year I feel like I don’t want to give up as much easy information, that I do care how much I print about our innermost team selves for nothing. In the past I have felt like either way we were going to do whatever we were going to do and it was up to "you" to stop it. I 'gave away' as much as I could as freely as I could. Now it is much more like I have no clue what I am about to do next, so why should I give you potential insight into something about what it might be. You might get to know me better than I know me. That wouldn't be good. Let’s all become surprised together.

SMILE, YOU’RE ON……

I also have never been a tape watcher guy, at least in a real coach way. Well, I do like to watch lacrosse tapes, but not usually CSU or our future opponents. I am more apt to watch Hopkins or D.U. play on one of the tapes in my "collection", and I'm always looking for stuff to ‘steal’. This year that immediate scouting tape/video thing intrigues me much more than it has before as well. I want to get tapes of teams we will play and actually begin to do something with what I see. I’ve never done it. Why not try?

YESTERDAY

So, to get back to the scrimmage, it worked well for its exact purpose, which was pretty much to be a dress rehearsal where everything is positive, as in no injuries and to see problems with box and substituting realities and things like that. We also had fun. It was just good to really play, and since red shirts, etc. played with the other team our greater group of about 50 mostly all saw some action of some kind.

We exhibited certain things on offense that were things I want to become traits, part of our predictability and or scouting report, but I'm not saying what they are.

I saw where our defensive stability will come from, at least in the early season, and my feeling there is that as long as we have some defensive reliability we will be able to compete. At least that is my ongoing theory.

The goalie situation (as in we have Too Many) also went far in solving itself during the ‘game’. That whole thing is going okay by the way, unless there is something I am totally missing, but since I have been nothing but completely honest with everyone (best as I can) since we started I don’t think I am in fact overlooking anything huge. Yes, all of their (6) feelings can’t be completely unhurt, but they are all showing as individuals to be great teammates and hard workers. What more can a coach want?

We need to get in better running condition, but we are on the come in that area as well. We need to be better at our personnel decisions and the right times to put them in while working as coaches and directors, too, but that is always a work in progress. As I get older I like to really pre-plan before each game who it is we want to use where and how much. I want to do this in a way more spot lit than in the years gone by. I even look at certain players nowadays and I will try to limit minutes for them because I might think they are more effective for us when they play a few less minutes or whatever. I am trying to improve that part of my overall coaching game in general.

NOTES IN A SOCK

I did something I never have done before. Well, I often go around during pre-game warm-ups and say little but very specific, bird-on-the-shoulder kinds of things to individuals. I did that yesterday, but I prepared for it this time in a way I had not previously. What I did was I thought of each of them by number the night before. I made a simple notation for each numbered player of what I thought was the shortest, most crucial statement I could make to each. I folded up the small piece of yellow legal paper with the jagged, hand written stuff on it, and I put it neatly in between sock layer #1 and sock layer #2. When pre-game came I actually pulled it out and although I didn’t get to all of them, I went around and got a lot of messages delivered. They were perhaps even better informed reminders or motivating slivers because I took my time to think about what they should be the night before.

It worked well for me, and it actually made the words more inspired and convincing when they left my mouth, or at least that's my take on it.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

THE TURNING POINT?

We had practice tonight very much out of doors on a field that was all freshly coated in white (again) by Mother Nature.  She was yet adding to her big season snow booty as we arrived and then she kept going and snowing on into the after-we-left.  The football field lines were nowhere to be found when we got there, but we were sanctioned for use of the place, so that’s good. 

And so there we were inside a bowl made of snow, a topless igloo the size of a football field.  Each step on the field made a print in the snow, but the traction on that artificial surface is just amazing and footing or lack of it was not a problem.  Just the same each movement of body also had a crunchy sound. It just didn’t sound right.  I had never heard that kind of crunchy lacrosse before.

Flakes (snowflakes that is) fell throughout practice.  The temperature started in the teens and the mercury dipped quickly from there.  It was one of those “On the whole I’d rather be in Philadelphia” kinds of nights.  It was absolutely frigid.  The goalies occasionally stepped out and ‘drew’ a new crease ‘line’ around the goal to try and maintain some or any semblance of reality or at least lacrosse.  Within minutes there was no line left. We had exactly one orange ball to use and that disappeared before minutes had passed.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND

So, we came out and had a practice that had great team spirit, remarkably so I would say.  Lots of them brought with them great weather attitudes in spite of the fact that it has become clear to me now that where I live has somehow turned into Alaska in less than one year.  It is nothing if not a ‘winter wonderland’ around these here parts.  Maybe this is what North Dakota is like, I don’t know because I never wanted to go there and find out.

We managed to make practice fun, thank you very much, on a night and field fit only for the ice fishing lovers of the world.  We had fun with it, really.  One fool wore only his shorts.  Hey, they better not have been game shorts.  We had fun with it.  Some bystander mentioned that it was too bad our football team at the U. wasn’t this dedicated as to work out in this.  After all, the field had been plowed for them, not us, but as it is we seem to be the only large group to handle the weather enough to have a practice outside.

I’m not kidding when I say that, on the whole, this one in particular was a very positive, very good team-building experience.  We got to our goal of getting better, and did it in spite of very difficult circumstances, and for the most part not a discouraging word was heard during the procedure.  It wasn’t just playing.  It was playing with a purpose. Big deal, right? Well, to me it was.

JUST WHAT WE NEEDED (more snow? No, a good practice) 

They played very hard in those very cold conditions.  They didn’t give an inch on the whole, and a feeling emerged for me that might have been the twinge of a beginning of that exact thing that I have been in search of but have not yet been able to find. Well, let's just say I haven't encountered that IT thing I've been looking for to any large degree of satisfaction.  I went home from this practice all pumped up for the first time in some time. It felt good.

To tell the truth, and to tell it a little late, I have been somewhat distraught about how things were progressing, and it wasn’t limited to my usual line of fretting.  It ALL just didn’t look right or feel right out there, wherever out there has been. I wondered a little about how far my message was reaching.

JUST DO IT COACH

Tonight I challenged them on issues like to not get bogged down by our own arrogance, that useless and ugly thing that sometimes finds itself loitering around. It can come from having experience and or in some way having been there before, and that somehow means you know everything there is to know, which of course is THE BIG LIE.

Remember, we have ‘won’ four times and we have never repeated.  This team must be its own pioneer.  I want each and every team to be a totally new trip, a new journey that we all take together.  You can take that particular trip only once, not four times, and only with this very specific group of people.  There is a certain amount of wonder and excitement that comes with the new challenge and with each new year.  When I approach it like this I also will often have a big learning curve for me to use later and to carry on with. 

I certainly hope that I can continue to learn stuff anyway, and maybe more importantly I want to be able to better comprehend the things I might think I already know. 

I was not doing a good enough job of conveying some good and fresh messages we can use.  I think I can do better now, and especially since there is a game time on the horizon.

WHAT ABOUT THE PROGRAM, JAKE?

Yes, of course I want the older ones to be good and get better at passing ‘team’ things and traditions along to the new players, and ditto with wanting new players to pick it all up quicker than realistically they can, but there has to be a learning curve for all of us while living this shared experience. We want to always go to that place where we are finding some or just a little of that which is familiar to mix with whatever is now on the unknown road ahead. 

The ability to combine and achieve balance in the process comes from really opening up to one another, to the situation, and to what works best for the bigger machine, that is the team as a whole unit.   The team brain can’t be thinking just about the successes and cool stuff.  The way to opening new doors is to go out and search for them, using work and logic to get your global positioning somewhere close to where you want it and then attacking your goals both literally and figuratively. With a little luck you can knock down big doors once in a while.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

GOOD VIBRATIONS (as in nothing but)

So, all that good stuff that got started Wednesday. I don’t really mean to be melodramatic and it was great to get THAT under our belt, but it didn’t even approach what that session in turn allowed to happen tonight, the very next practice and on the very next day.

Tonight we were back indoors and warm, but with less than half the allotted time and space to use.  We had a very nice looking recruit there at the Edge to take in our practice vibe and vision.  It is that time of the year when kids are making their final approaches to college landing choices. He had looked at CSU earlier in the day.   The young man is from Florida.  His top two choices are Florida State (For I’m sure much less $) and our own CSU (probably similar educational value).  I’m looking inside my mind at the snow everywhere just outside, not to mention single digit numbers in the air, and I am saying to myself, “Great, this should make it an easy choice”, but hey, who knows, he might just be crazy enough to come all the way out and Dad said he was all about it, so, why not hope for one here and there.  Why am I, Mr. No Recruit, interested in this particular one?  I’ll tell you why.  I got an email from his current coach, and yes, I am sure Coach has prejudice for one of his own, but what he wrote to me was that the kid runs like a deer and hits like a truck.  I’m sorry, but this got my attention more than the old, “You are going to love coaching this kid, Coach” kind of thing I usually get.  When they say something like the deer/truck thing, there is a chance that not only will I enjoy coaching him, but he might have a little more, and I might even be able to just stand back and enjoy watching him just play at times as well, or, dare I dream, use him as my personal game changing tool. I haven't had a 'Plonkey' lately and they are so handy.

ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL

I didn’t mean to jump off the track, because tonight’s practice somehow changed everything for me, and I would say just in the nick of time.  There were moments of just good lacrosse, and briefly I could forget that the time is in fact too short and the field is, well, too small, and I got too many guys, and I don’t got enough ways to keep them all busy in a tight, constant, and team way through as many of those 55 minutes as I can.  I felt no bad practice vibes, and I could sense the potential again.  I was undeterred by any of my limitations, if only for that brief spell.  We did improve without a doubt tonight. 

GOAL STANDARDS

Tonight as a practice stands tall.  For one of the two hours we spend at the Edge I do dry erase board things while our trainer works out one half of the team. We are basically split into offense and defense.  At 7:30 we trade groups for another thirty minutes.  I talk to the new group while he ‘trains’ the ones I just had.  Tonight I used very little board for either session.  I did a lot of orating, however.  One might say I was in preaching mode.  I think we have seen enough of the X’s and the O’s for a while.  It was time to get down to the nitty gritty of it all, so I did some challenging and some cheering.  

HOLD THAT TIGER

On defense I called for them to be more scientific and predictable in the way they communicate, and to be pro-active and positive while at it.  I talked about exactly how we might do that in a very sober and serious, yet still fun way.  It is a work in progress.

DON’T JUST STICK IT ANYWHERE

On offense (the other half hour) I challenged them to take responsibility for things like tempo and how they can help our defense work better.  Yes, that is correct.  Attack men and their units totally have the ability to affect how well the defense can work, and often do not take the responsibility that goes with that, much to my dismay, as in, for example, you might hear or overhear something akin to, “But he was wide open Coach”, or the ever popular, “My Bad” after a failed scoring attempt.  What the boy may not realize is that the “My bad” part of the play which didn’t allow the goal to score for him or us was so bad that it actually almost dictated that the other team would have an easy time creating an easy goal scoring opportunity way back down in our end because of the way transition works, and believe me, momentum-wise, that whole little sequence is a big pain in my rear end.

HEY YOGI, WHAT IS FOR BREAKFAST

I feel like a bear coming out of hibernation.  I have been stirred and the awakening process has begun, finally, and even though it is still too damn cold to live.

We all can’t wait to play a game.

Which is better do you suppose, a ‘recruit’ who starts his first email to me with a, “Dear Coach Naumburg”, or the modern, ever popular, “Hey”?  Each one has a side to consider, but all in all I will take the Dear Coach Naumburg kid any day.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

DATELINE

Today was the first time that I could get up my driveway without 4-wheel drive since mid-December. 

PROGRESS REPORT

It is pretty hard to do an evaluation or progress report on the state of our team.  We are still having 'sort of practices' and chalk talks more than anything else which make it seem almost like the off season.  Then I wake up and realize that we are very close to tip/blast/face off.

One thing for sure is that the 4 new hours a week that we have been granted on the full sized football field is a blessing.  These two practices do have constant frigid possibilities because of the winter that it is and the fact that they are at night, but I hate to think of not having them just now, that is for sure.

I am trying to prevail through this winter and to right now get a real feel for where we are and what it is we are trying to do in any given situation.  I am trying to squeeze an identity out of us despite the, shall we say, inconveniences of the times, and that includes most recently almost getting blamed the other night for something that we clearly did not do, a thing that was offensive to the ATHLETIC Department, which is where we go to get use of this field.  We did get yelled at and publicly ridiculed just the same and just for being there, but fortunately we were later exonerated and for now we keep our turf field privileges.  I guess the point is that I still went home and stressed.  If I am going to fret I want it to be about things that might be about coaching, and not if someone on the team ran a proverbial red light or whatever.  Will it ever stop?  Am I too paranoid?

IN SPITE OF ALL THE SNOW, SOMEWHERE A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT

The focus on the role-playing aspect of this team has started to allow team traits to somewhat emerge.  Guys are finding out what things they do best and therefore so are we as coaches.  Many players are working hard.  An almost equal number of them seem to be really flu-ridden or whatever. There seems to be so little that is under my control right now, but I try to grab on to as much as I can get my hands on.  I must roll with the punches. We work day by day and I try to be as positive as I can when whoever is there is bringing their best and they are.  The effort and the love are there.  The rest will come.

I am all over the place with different individuals.  Some I just want for their arm or whatever to heal.  Others I want to get healthy from bugs and viruses that are the plague for them and us right now. Then there are even one or two that I just want to see a smile put back on the face where it has been missing.  Yup, lots of stuff going on these days.

MORE THAN COMPOST

I very much want this to be a team of no waste.  By that I mean I want the right people in the game for particular situations at all times when those situations occur.  I want to have a sort of 'depth chart' too, where it is never just anyone with a long or short stick that we want in the game, and that it is always someone specific for some particular reason that many understand.  If this makes me a coach using a system that makes us more predictable I don't care.  I want us to know and feel why we do what we do.

JUST A LITTLE OFF BROADWAY 

We have been trying to rehearse the role-playing in practice the best we can.  It is quickly becoming much easier because some individuals have been obviously focusing on those things that best serve this team and so now when we get all the right pieces playing together and working close to right it actually looks pretty good however brief those times might have to be right now.  We are trying to make it real but because of all the practice limitations that I constantly whine about, it is never easy that is for sure.  Sometimes I just wish I were smarter and I could make up drills that accomplish seven different things at once and things like that.  Oh well…..

TWO STEPS – TWO FACES

After saying all this about having us specialize as much as possible in order to get every drop of juice from the jar, I continue to 'encourage' players to improve their two-way capabilities and the versatility that comes with working and thinking that way.  I do believe that range and durability are attributes that add to overall team toughness, and the ability to give and take a punch is another of my areas of special interest this year.  What this means for me is having individuals with the energy to run up and down the field three times strong, and not to run to the substitution box when they are done with offense or whatever. 

Does all this put together make me perhaps somewhat schizophrenic? 

OH CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN

We will elect one more captain next week to round out/square up our leadership box of fruits and nuts.  I am more than a little interested in who their selection might be.  I take all this leadership stuff pretty seriously.  Internal leadership means everything to a team.  This is no secret, but I think it is important to create the right atmosphere for that to become fact. 

I will not politic.  I will not politic.  They will make a good choice.  That is what they are trained to do.

IS IT GOALIE TIME YET?

I have still not tipped my hat as far as my choice for opening day goalie goes.  I am comfortable with the two from which I will choose one.  I do not feel like I am harming the situation by not having made a public declaration.  I'm sure there are dissenters, but then I would invite them over to my place to see what I see. 

We have about six goalies still, but they all know that for this trip at least, it will be Lance (#45 G. So.) and Garrett (#8 G. Jr.) that will get the bulk of the time in these first two games.  I have been encouraging the fact that we will be using a two-goalie (or more) sort of system as it is, and I want our defense to be comfortable with whoever is minding the nets.  I also have always believed that it is the job of the defense to help make any goalie look good, and I'm really going to put that on them this season.

RAM RIDERS

Our players all have to do penance this semester where they are on call as the sober ride for anyone on campus who might need a ride home because they are drunk.  These are long shifts and each player has to do three nights.  It seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me for the crime we didn't actually commit, but I will say it has given them something to talk about because I overhear a conversation about their Ram Ride experiences most every day.  I guess it's just another one of those family things we do, sort of like dinner at Panino's, only different.

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