Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Sunday, November 27, 2005

THE NUMBERS GAME

Players here at CSU Lacrosse traditionally do care a lot about jersey numbers they wear. I suppose this is not rare. They often try to have some say in who will wear that number when they graduate and leave. To me, that is a much better honoring concept than "retiring" a number so that no one will wear it again. I like the Syracuse Philosophy. Where the heck would the Orange Lacrosse Men be without the number 22? They hand it down like an heirloom, carefully passed from one generation to the next.

For our program the number 13 comes immediately to mind, starting with Roth, on to Sir Timmy, and now it looks like the torch has been passed to a new generation of RAMerican, one Campbell Diebolt (pronounced duh-BOLT (A). I will be interested to see what this young man can or will do. Campbell actually comes from the town in Bucks County, Pennsylvania where I went to primary school and hail from. I find this coincidence much cooler than I am sure he does, but that’s probably because it is such incredibly ancient (1950's) history for me.

Some of the visions dated by the place I was at the time are still so vivid and sharp. I like to ask Campbell if things like Boswell’s Hamburger Stand still exists, even though there is likely no way it could exist anywhere except in my memory. It’s not just because of the McDonalds invasion either. I think they put a highway through right about where it used to be about 30 or 40 years ago. I grew up in a rural place that used to be all dairy farms and everyone rode horses around the "neighborhood". Now it is urban style condos lined up on cute little lanes with names like "Fox Hound Circle", and everyone commutes to lord knows where.

EVOLUTION #9

A speedster here has sported the number nine- (9) jersey at CSU for quite sometime. The "Rabbit", Jared Katz wore it (9) for four years until 2003, and now Captain Michael Murphy wears the Number Nine into his senior season. Murph is not called the Rabbit, but he does have hare style and the speed to match. It’s hard to believe that he is a senior already. How quickly they grow up and the time nears when they must leave the family and go out on their own.

It seems like only yesterday that I first met him. Murph came in for a recruiting visit and to see one of the few night games we have ever played on campus. We played Utah that Friday night and killed them. It was a time when the Ute’s would have needed an act of God to beat us, but that is another story. That guaranteed CSU victory is no longer in place, no longer the foregone case. With lacrosse growth in Utah, great coaching, and the word getting out the Utes made it all the way to Blaine, Minnesota last May, and that is of course more than we can say. I absolutely expect the Utah game to be as tough this year as any game we will play. They want very much to beat us and get over the next hump. Their team continues its rise to higher MDIA heights. Everyone can rest assured that this game will not be overlooked by me because I certainly do not want that rise have anything to do with us.

ISN’T HE CUTE?

I remember when I met Murph that night 4 years ago. I remember thinking, "He’s cute but he likely won’t get many playing minutes here." I once again couldn’t have been more wrong with my first impression. To my own defense I come in and say that I really don’t think about much of anything until I actually see them play lacrosse. I probably felt somewhat smug and arrogant about where we were as a program back then as well. This is a mistake I am no longer making, or at least trying not to make. I will no longer purposely ever take anything for granted.

Michael seemed to gain a little much needed height and weight during that first year. I had first thought him to be too diminutive to be a galactic type of force for us no matter what his level of dedication might be. Wrong again, coach. He really got into conditioning and began to gradually bulk himself up over that first year, and by the end of it he was playing significant minutes as a freshman midfielder on our 2003 National Championship team. Now look at him. He is a captain and works very hard to make himself all he can be all on his own. In fact his future looks to be one of Personal Trainer/entrepreneur. His awareness of personal preparation is acute and it is also what he studies in school and hopes to pursue.

4 DAYS IN VAIL

Last summer in Vail with Team Rock-it Pocket I got to a degree see the boy Murphy become man Murphy. I love the Vail tournament and our Rock-it Pocket place in it for this reason. Players from our CSU team have often not played much against full teams of older more experienced Club men players, guys that are all capable of doing "more" than what most of these "boys" are used to seeing. They get that chance in Vail. It is often a great growing up time for players on our team. This was indeed the case for Murph this past summer. At first in the first game and early into the second one it seemed like he was a bit overwhelmed by it all, and he was making mistakes and simultaneously NOT elevating his play. We were doing okay as a team, but Murph was not really adding much of an early tournament contribution. This fact was disturbing me, partly because while looking at him I knew I was also looking at CSU 2006 and beyond.

I am grateful to have Team Rock-it Pocket. I like going to Vail every summer and trying to compete "our" way if you will. For simplicity of explanation we take that whole team/family thing up there and try to use that together-we-are-stronger belief all the way and as much as possible. We try to compete with a whole bunch of other predominantly star-studded teams doing predominantly star-studded things. Most of our Rock-it Pocket Team players could not even make the roster of any of these other teams competing in Vail, but sometimes, if we work as one and fight like hell together, we can hang pretty good anyway.

WHY DO I HAVE TO YELL AT THE ONES I LOVE?

I feel very close to Michael Murphy. It goes far beyond a coach and player in the family thing and almost like a real family thing. By that I also mean I really make an effort to tune in to how he feels as much and often as possible. I questioned myself if he had prepared for this tournament in the right way. He didn’t look ready, and this surprised me because I have faith in, maybe even depend on the way that he prepares himself.

I hate to yell at the ones I love, and I really don’t think I had ever done that (yell or scold Mike) before, but desperate times call for desperate measures. To my way of thinking Murphy needed to play a particular and significantly vital part on and for our team if we were going to be successful in Vail in 2005.

So anyway at one point I just got in Michael’s face real civil like, a conversation heard by only he and I. I basically challenged him, got myself going a bit more, and then yelled (quietly) at him. I explained something about how his performance and my expectation weren’t within margins I had hoped for, and I’m not saying that one thing had anything to do with the other, I do not presume such things to ever be more than coincidence, but everything changed after that little conversation.

I cannot say how pleased I ultimately was with the contributions he made to our team on that Saturday and Sunday, the last two days. Murph was actually one of the very few members of our team who looked good and NOT intimidated in our humiliating loss to that GMH team from Philadelphia.

He was terrific in our final game, a THIRD PLACE clinching victory over the Cornell team on that final Sunday, July 4 morning.

DON’T LET THE FRECKLES FOOL YOU

I guess nothing that Murphy might do would surprise me at this point. I should have always known. He has that mom and apple pie face complete with freckles and a "perfect" girlfriend, but don’t let all that fool you. Within weeks of arrival here as a freshman he was taking on the Trash Talker of all Trash Talkers, Mark Plonkey (CSU – LSM -2004) in a game of major trash talking. Mark had the experience and the instinct, but nothing seems to deter this one. Perhaps Murph is more shrew than hare. He certainly uses shrewdness to his advantage when he plays.

I EXPLAIN THAT I TRULY HAVE NO SHAME

I fear I might have anchored myself somewhat for it to be a good thing to scream at Mikey now and then from here to there, but if the results are good, I would like to ask for his forgiveness now for whatever I might say later on.

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