Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Sunday, October 16, 2005

LOST AND FOUND

LOST: That indefinable magical thing that expresses you as a team every time you play. Goes by the name of "IT". When encountered IT can be intoxicating, contagious, and motivating to a large group of people. Approach with caution, as there are powerful and long lasting implications upon direct contact. If found please bring immediately to our practice field. Cash reward offered, no questions asked.

ARE THEY HEARING MY MESSAGE?

I have a way I want my teams to play. It is more than the style of movement on the field by the players playing the game. It is more than our aggressive and calculating defense. It is more than just them having the freedom on offense to create their own lacrosse movie as long as certain rules and do’s and don’ts are adhered to. It is more than changing gears instantly, and always riding the other team hard, with heart, and as a unit. It is more than making the supreme effort to catch the ball as an individual, and as a team to generally do everything possible to keep the ball off the ground and in our possession. It is more than any single aspect of lacrosse play, and it is manifested in an image that is hopefully something much more than a Polaroid snapshot of a team can reveal. The sum is more than the parts and all that.

The style of "me" is also defined by a player’s personal passion for the (whole) game as well as for the team. It is etched onto the team stone by hustle, and the bottom line must be read by all that can see as a refusal to quit on anything, EVER. These words of playing "law" are ultimately punctuated with me trying to make the making of good team decisions easy for our players and therefore contagious, or should I say "catching".

OY VAY

How to make the above paragraphs into a quick reality is beyond me. My custom needed answer seems to have possibly temporarily mutated itself off and away, into a larger pool of muddy water and algae, one puddled somewhere in the darkness, and somewhere east of Eden and perhaps a little west of Freud.

I’m currently in the process of boiling the goo down to its bare basics so I can turn the slippery slime into its more beautiful blue-green dried form that we can later use as ready made fuel for the team motor.

HURRY UP AND CALM DOWN ALREADY or A MISSION FROM GOD

Part of what I preach and coach is intensity and urgency when we play. In my opinion we are not playing as if we are doing anything important right now. Ah, but we are. Further, you must combine urgency with expertise and control in order to create the Mission that we need as our steering wheel. There must be a mission, a theme, and we need reason to WANT to do push-ups in the freezing rain in February as if there were nowhere else any of us would rather be.

RECYCLED ANGER IS BORING

I feel like the only way that I can get everyone’s attention at once these days is to blow a Naumburg gasket. If I don’t get livid they don’t seem to focus together, and I mean that a lot. I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck of training lacrosse players for battle, so I feel at least partially qualified to insert a deficiency diagnosis here and before a real game is ever played. That was likely what I did wrong last week at our tournament. I didn’t get crazy mad and stomping, and likely I needed to. It’s as if this team always needs a good slap in the face to get it going. I don’t really want it to be this way, but if it must then it must.

19TH NERVOUS BREAKDOWN

Anyway, last Saturday I was having my own problems dealing with the reality of where we currently are as a team. Therefore I didn’t do a coaching job that pleased me. I wasn’t supposed to flinch, but I did. Plus, I was assessed my first penalty as a coach since I’ve been here (10 years), so we know my attitude wasn’t where it needed to be to help my team the best I could.

A GOLD PLATED BRICK

I have been hearing a few subtle comments too regularly these days from players that are not music to my ears, ones like, "We’ll get it, Coach, no problem." Then there is the one we coaches most hate, the "My bad" which is often said after making a bad pass to a teammate or whatever, as if the mistake in question is no big deal and will fix itself next time. That is not the case. YOU must work to repair the problem, and you must come at those things from more than the playing angle. You certainly shouldn’t sweep screw ups under the rug and expect a clean bill for your effort.

Saying, "my bad" as an apology, for example, makes things worse for me because saying it almost makes that error okay. You can not wash away mistakes with excuses. Excuses make things dirtier, not cleaner.

ACCOUNTABILITY COUNTS

I think we live in a society that thinks by saying you are sorry that it makes everything automatically good and clean again. That wouldn’t seem like something that leads to good numbers in overall human accountability. If you can’t have accountability within a team that shares a goal, then where can you have it? This is not expressed to suggest forgetting forgiveness. That is not remotely what I mean.

THE COACHING MATRIX

If you have even a few players, say older players (and I might) that act at times as if they don’t need coaching, and that they have all the answers for the coaches, then you have problems. I never want to go near or, God forbid, be there. It complicates the beauty of simple and good communication within a team.

Also, I don’t want any of them to miss the coaching boat, because allowing one’s self to be coached is an extremely empowering experience. I’ve seen it be that many times.

I always want to have the "right" plan, and 100% of them believing in it. It is never that simple, and it never can be. Hopefully I am smart enough to NOT make those things my main goal. I prefer to get things right. I personally don’t have to always be right for that to happen.

GIVE PEACE A CHANCE

I am getting responses and explanations from one or two of them at times lately when all I really wanted to hear was an, "OK Coach". I didn’t want an explanation, I wanted a nod and an acknowledgement, no more, no less. This type of moment is, of course, an age-old coaching challenge. When the (my) family is really working, however, this problem doesn’t exist at all, because we are too busy trying to help everyone and or get help from anyone all the time.

We have to all be listening and understanding to improve as a team or to play well and tightly. If only one of them doesn’t get "it", then it might cause us to appear as if no one gets it. That’s what team sports are all about. It is such a fine line between order and chaos. That is the excitement, yes, but it is also the art, because there are no clear cut scientific answers about how to get the team thing done (be successful).

COACH ME MY WAY, PLEASE

Some players don’t like for me to yell at them while they are actually playing. That could be a problem for me. From the time I began to coach, one of my major unchanged melodies of thought and philosophy is that I try to put more pressure on the players and the team in practice, both mentally and physically, than they will have to experience in the games. It is hard to match the intensity of a game, but that doesn’t keep me from trying.

WALK/TALK, AND DON’T LOOK BACK

All I can say is that right now it seems (to me in my own little mind) that if I turn my back for a second bad things take place. I feel like if I am not yelling at them to talk to each other on the field, then it often doesn’t happen. Believe me, I would love to just shut up on the sidelines and watch contentedly while the players echo calls and information to each other on the field, but that is not where we are right now.

I don’t feel like we have any huge problems. I do feel like we have a very long way to go. I always want to jump on all things as quickly as possible so that none of our potential monkey wrenches get to monkeying around with our machine.

I really do believe that if every one of them gets a little bit better every day, then our improvement rate multiplies like we were a bunch of bunnies. They have to do that work, though, and the motivation must come from love or some equally powerful emotion. I want to inspire more of that.

TO GET THE SHINE YOU MUST POLISH

Yes, we have no BIG STARS right now. When I hear the players talk about that fact, though, it sounds a bit like an excuse instead of a reason to work/try harder. I still believe that stars emerge from teams that are playing well. It is not exclusively the other way around, where stars make the team, and if you don’t have enough of them you will fail. I say that if you make the team a star the individual awards will trickle down. If I didn’t believe that and that I have the ability to make that happen I would be coaching a lot less and playing much more golf or taking more trips to the Caribbean.

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