Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Saturday, July 16, 2005

IN MEMORY OF GREG WINTER

I received a group email today from the bride/widow of the guy who was the goalie during my two years at Pepperdine with the "Waves" in the early nineties. He succumbed to cancer this past winter after a long bout with the beast. He was so young! She (Nicole) is putting a Greg Winter memorial bench overlooking the Pacific in Northern (Marin) California. It is to be in a spot where Greg loved most to be. Anyway, it all got me to thinking about those days back in Malibu, and how that partly pathetic little team gave me supreme confidence in my ability to coach, a belief that I sometimes have today. Ha, ha.

Maybe it all means more to me at this time in my life when I have just become executor to my mother’s will and cancer has entered her picture with a capital C over the last few months. Anyway, as I was writing to Nicole it seemed like I was writing a journal entry, and this (written in journal) was something I hadn’t done in almost 10 days. So here it is:

FOREVER YOUNG

Dear Nicole:

My name is Flip Naumburg. I have never met you. I last saw Greg in Vail at a lacrosse tournament a few years ago, and I cannot tell you how much I regret the fact that I never talked with him again.

What you are doing keeps Greg alive in a really good way. I admire your courage and your conviction. I would like to donate something, but that is not why I write.

I coached Greg at Pepperdine for two years in 1990 and 1991(?). Greg was special for many reasons, but basically my relationships with goalies have often been somehow deeper and more concentrated. I guess you could say that is part of my coaching style. With me and goalies it can’t be just business. It has to be personal, and with Greg in my mind’s eye I am fortunate enough to have some very vivid personal memories.

Remember the actual phone answering machines that sat in your living room with tapes and buttons and stuff? Everyone had one for a while in the nineties. They were novel at the time and fun to use. Well, I used to "coach" Greg sometimes by leaving little thought messages and "anchors" for him to think about on his machine. He got real joy from that technological method, and the many other creative ways we communicated as coach to player and vice versa. Greg was not easily converted to believer, but once done, his loyalty stood like a giant boulder with a flat bottom. He valued his teammates, and they him. I think that is fairly clear by the Pepperdine people that attended his memorial several months ago. I’m sorry I couldn’t have been there for that as well.

Greg was not physically gifted as a goalie, but in many ways he was as good as I have had because he used all his power to make himself a better player and maybe more importantly, a better teammate. I think the one thing that really bothered him the most was others who were not good teammates or did not care enough about the team in his estimation, the takers. Well, Greg was a giver, a great teammate, and if all players were him, I’d be a happy coach.

I do not mean to just rave on. I hope that at least some of this is interesting.

Greg and I had a great moment together in an all-star game once, in 1991 I think. Pepperdine was Division 2 in lacrosse, but the all-stars were made up of Division 1 and Division 2 put together. We were pumped up because Paul (Mellinger) and Crash (Ridgeway) had also been chosen from Pepperdine and were playing. Greg played the second half (might have gotten MVP, don’t remember) and was spectacular for the winning team. I was not coaching, but rather I was standing near Greg, behind the goal. We had a very powerful moment out there on the field that day. I looked at him at one point and he looked at me while the ball was at the other end, and we both knew just then how far we had come and it felt good. Nothing had to be said. We had gotten from our time together a feeling that we (he himself and me myself) could really do this (succeed). Above and beyond that, and as sort of "the little team that could", we had built something very powerful with very limited resources and in a very short period of time, and that we now really belonged in the DIVISION 1’s of the world. It was a special day and a gratifying moment that I will not soon forget (obviously).

I still coach at what I consider to be a very high level, although the IRS probably wouldn’t see it that way. I often think back to then and our little core of people and how much we did with so little and it gives me strength. So, as disconnected and convoluted as I am and this might seem, I want you to know that Greg is a little part of my life almost daily. I don’t really have to miss him because he is there for me, a symbol of possibility that I carry as a beacon in my life.

Sincerely,

Flip Naumburg

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