Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Wednesday, April 5, 2006

MANTRA # 1 – GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS

I have perhaps peculiar ideas about conditioning, practicing, and rehearsing. For example I have often blown the whistle for ‘optional’ sprints in practice. What? What use is an optional sprint? Answer: I do not wish for players to hurt themselves while trying to become more. That makes no sense. Injuries make you less. Period. Players that can run strong always do these optional sprints. That is 100% the truth.

WHAM CRAACK, THANK YOU JACK

I also do NOT think of players that have injuries as ‘pussies’, even if they might in fact be. I am almost always the nurturing motherly type, and I animatedly hate trainers (ankle tapers) who don’t show compassion for players they work on, and we have had several in our history. When you are hurt or injured (not sure which is which) I believe it is very important to have someone helping and rooting for you. This works in the Psychology department as well.

We are fortunate to have the good Doctor Ron, who helps us immensely with his chiropractic wizadry at times. He also gets to know their (players) bodies and how they respond to injury and lots of other things. Do I think this kind of thing helps us to be a better team? You bet your ass. When they see the Doc show up on Thursday they run to get a chance to jump on his portable adjusting table and get worked on.

We have a physical type trainer, too, from time to time, Brian, and when some of the boys see him show up to to work their tails off, I sometimes see a few heads drop and the body language of one would make you think we had a chain gang going out there. I also think that when they see Brian they all know it will help the bigger cause and they reluctantly or otherwise get on that bus, too.

MANTRA # 2 - GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS

In terms of practice, I do not take attendance. I know who is there and who is not. I like it very much when I know in advance if a player can’t make it. I also like to be told the reason why, but more or less practice is a go-about-your-business proposition with me. Long ago I learned that you can’t let it ruin your practice plan if so-and-so isn’t there that day. You can’t take it personally and you can’t pretend that you have the power over players that you do at a Division I program. This is Club. I don’t want that kind of responsibility anyway.

I never aspired to be a nursemaid to the student athlete. I do like to be helpful to them on multiple levels, your full service coach as it were. I've helped write a paper or two in my time. On the other hand, I want the players to be responsible for themselves, and to learn how to budget time and all that while they are here. Very few of them come in to (this) college with those kinds of skills already in place.

I guess that with rehearsal for games I think in similar fashion. If I want our Extra Man Offense to work better, I don’t necessarily have us practice it more. I tend to break it down more instead. I have run a lot of skeleton drills without defense this year. Then I try to primarily practice the situations of EMO vs. Man Down Defense (penalty kills) in ‘real’ full field scrimmage conditions. They don’t get multiple chances to work on the play if they don’t execute the first time or whatever. Sometimes the players might have complained about this 'lack' of practice reps, too, but I pretty much stick to my guns because they need to understand the value of every single EMO chance they get.

Practice and rehearsal are indeed different aspects of game preparation to me, make no mistake, and we spend plenty of time on situation rehearsal.

WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU RATHER BE?

It’s an old concept in this program, but my plan really is to make it so that all present at practice have nowhere else they would rather (or should) be. Ultimately that is what it is all about for me.

I feel like we can do a lot of our overall work within the framework of drills and scrimmages with this 2006 bunch. This is opposed to my possible reaction to things as they might be or have been at a particular moment. That situation would find me saying something like, "We suck! Screw it, this is a waste of time. let’s just run.". I haven’t had many of those moments this year. That is not to be confused with none, which brings me to my next point.

YOU ALWAYS HATE ON THE ONES YOU LOVE

I like the team this year both collectively as well as individually, yet I feel like I have to rage at them more often than this mellow old coach would like. If I don’t torment and humiliate it seems like we have a tendency to ‘chill’ more than I would like.

It’s not hard to keep it all straight however. When they piss me off, they really piss me off. My main concern is that I don’t do irreparable damage when I yell at one of them while in the moment.

Next Entry | Previous Entry


Flip Started Blogging Before it was Cool, Read Over 400 of His Entries Since January 2001
Jump to a Period:
2006: Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov
2005: Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
2004: Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
2003: Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
2002: Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec
2001: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Sept Oct Nov Dec