Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Saturday, May 6, 2006

PILLOW FIGHT

The week was a strange and winding one.  It began most inauspiciously with a pillow fight gone awry.  I got so involved in the action that I knocked my six-year old off of his 4-legged galloping stride and into the door jam head first with a direct and high velocity pillow body hit.  The result was, first of all, Mother Ada extremely mad at you know who.  She left me alone with my thoughts while she took Jordan to emergency for 3 staples to be put in his six-year old head.  Then there were the black and blue bruises on his arm, and that had the people at the 'ER' asking about how these injuries might have come about.  Great, they think I beat my children.  I am an idiot, but I try not to beat the little darlings unless it is absolutely necessary.  Needless to say I felt sheepish toward the wife and guilty about the accident and that lasted for most of the next day I would say.

ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG

Fortunately in the end there was no real harm to the boy and life does go on, but I need to get the tempo straight with the younger set of kids that I deal with daily.

The week was hard on everyone who is part of the CSU lacrosse team.  School is twist-tying itself into a tight and quickly sealed finish as always.  Recent times (last few days) have included the fickled frustration of cleated shoes needed for Dallas that were not coming in the mail.  Long faces told me of final exams that were crowding into piles along with papers due on politics in Tibet or whatever.  There was the moving out of and consequent moving into new living situations.  I think we might be looking at some summer school for one or two, but hey, hey what can I say? Most will indeed graduate some day. 

I definitely head butted a few already sensitive feelings this week, too, and I'm not sure what to say about why I did all that.

I do know that I don't want to go to Dallas with anything festering.  That's the way I am in my 'family way'.  I purged any little item of sourness that I could find and or that was left to squeeze out of our family sponge this past week.  I feel somehow like at least some of all this was needed, and now we can get on with it.  In theory we have no maverick items and no smoldering issues left to deal with.

STUDENT ATHLETE – THE REAL DEAL

We have more or less made it to the school finish line.  Now comes the really big lacrosse final.

I finally am beginning to see our immediate future in a positively hued light and in a glass half full.  For some strange or warped reason I feel like we are right or at least close to where we need to be as a team going into this next very important business trip. 

Several days ago we were teetering on feeling half empty, but it was an expected tilt of the glass.  It happens every spring.  We have endured I hope.

TEACHER TEACH ME

In the last few days we've also had our on-field tantrums.  These are at least partly due to the almost hidden personal frustrations that often surface and are magnified by the end of the school year.  Then of course there is the toll of the studying all-nighters that are taking place around now because of the end of year project enormity or procrastination or both.  We had one less than gracious professor, and we've also had a few of the very helpful ones, too.

TESTING 1-2-3-4

I think I will be proctoring about 8 exams while we are in Dallas.  I am more nervous about screwing this part up than I am about the other 'important' game stuff.  I feel like the other 'stuff' will take care of itself in some ways because we have been building a bridge towards Dallas ever since we knew the place to be was Dallas.  We have been growing this team for some time.  They are close to ripe, and whether I am ready for it to be so or not, the time to 'just do it' has arrived.

SO WHERE ELSE WOULD YOU RATHER BE?

Lately things were and life has in fact been all over the place.  It wasn't an all together and pretty set of recent days in the world of CSU lacrosse, but I think in many ways we now stand more ready and stronger than ever.

Now that the time is actually coming upon us, I am relishing the moments that lead up to that first game Tuesday.  I do not fear the moments of truth that are to come.  We have been preparing to cross that bridge when we got to it.  There it is on the horizon. Head 'em up and move 'em out.

PERFECT PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT. I COULDN'T HAVE THOSE, SO WE JUST DID THE BEST WE COULD

I pushed them during these last practices, but not like a military disciplinarian.  I worked at trying to prepare one single group, and I did it that way even though the faces at and of practice were quite different each day.  Some got more work than others that is for sure. 

Many players were missing because they were either taking or studying for the exams that they will not be here for next week.

We need to pick up our team discipline RIGHT NOW, however. It had to go somewhat south for a while this week, and we are a near the time when we will need some team tightness very much.

I MAY NOT BE WEARING ANY PANTS

I went to my walk-in closet to find some pants to wear on the plane Monday morning.  I'm lucky I can walk in there at all. My 2006 personal fitness program has apparently been less successful than I had hoped as I could only find one pair of long pants that I am not too fat to get into.

THE EYES OF TEXAS

My only coaching-this-team thoughts have been about preparing them to play the University of Texas Tuesday.  This is a good sign as far as I am concerned, because nothing really does exist presently anywhere beyond that time or that game. That is fact for both lax and life, and to my way of thinking the only way we will get to move onward and upward toward that ultimate landing place is to be focused toward and balanced upon that one Texas step that we now stand on.

We leave in about 40 hours.  We will scrimmage tomorrow one last time as a team.  Whatever happens in Dallas this 2006 has been a journey of inspiration for me.  So, now that I have used every cliché' in the book, let's go do this.

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