Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Friday, July 7, 2006

LIFE IS A MALL

Flip to wife Ada: "Honey, next time you go to the mall let me know because I want to go with you. I need a few things."
Ada response: "What time do you want to go?"
If only I could get this kind of active/submissive response for all of my suggestions and or requests. Then I really would be the King. Since I basically hate the mall, what is the significance of this? I know the answer. It mall means nothing.

MY THREE KINGS

I have no idea why I thought about this either, other than Vail makes me wax.

3 people taught me the way to love the game of lacrosse and in my own less than dignified way I hope I have honored these three in some small manner during my lacrosse life. I know I have embarrassed at least two of them.

DOC STABLER – Limericks were his favorite
My first lacrosse coach at C.C., and not the greatest coach, but pretty much no one ever gave more of his heart, soul, money, and time to the game and to a single team and program. I have written about him before. His wooden stick collection would be worthy of museum status nowadays. He used to have Jim (Soran) and me come up to his house at Venom Valley Ranch outside of town every other day to talk about our Tiger lacrosse team. I just wanted to look at and play with all his lax sticks. I probably didn’t learn my best lessons from him until years later.

He cut oranges and fixed helmets at C.C. pretty much until the day he died in the mid-eighties.

EARL BILL – "My way or the highway" Bill
The Sultan of Vail Lacrosse is Earl Bill. He taught me to love the traditions of the game, my own tournament, and the players who played in it, although I’m still not worth a damn with names and the remembering thereof. Until he stopped coming a few years ago, Earl was the spewing fountain of our tournament history. He was one of the first lacrosse people to bring a team to Colorado from ‘elsewhere’, in his case Texas. Vail and its lacrosse became known for a long time as simply "Earl Bill Nirvana". Unfortunately most of the players who play in Vail now have never heard of him. Earl went to Deerfield, played lacrosse mostly in the late ‘50’s and ‘60’s and ended up in the United States Air Force. Those two things alone (Deerfield/Air Force) make him fascinating. He eventually landed in San Antonio, Texas and coached more than one state Champion high school lax team before retiring recently.

JAMES JOSEPH SORAN III – Oh Captain, My Captain
We met, fittingly, on the lacrosse field at C.C in the fall of 1971. We were contemporaries, peers, but "that is all" when it came to recent similarities. He came from The Naval Academy. I came from God-knows-where, but I can assure you no one was wearing stripes with a straight face wherever I was (UNM). We both appeared at fall ball wearing our 1970’s somewhat shorter shorts and some much longer sideburns. We both had some (longer) hair those 36 years ago, too. I am lucky to have one so reputable as he is for a best friend. It has definitely and automatically improved my perceived public image more than once. He must have had some use for me to have kept me around this lacrosse tournament and therefore him for the last 35 years. He certainly could have joined the country club and left me in his social wake long ago, but then I suppose ours is not always to question why.

Together we have picked up many bottles with used Skoal spit in them in Vail over the years. That is a bond that has bind, believe me.

Colorado has led much of the sport’s overall nationwide explosion during the last 15 years. If you trace the roots of that giant and still growing Colorado lacrosse tree, the one that goes back over 35 years, you will likely find their beginnings somewhere very close to where Jimmy Soran was or still is standing.

No one in the history of lacrosse has ever given MORE back to the game for less than this guy. Take a look at what has happened in Colorado lacrosse over the last 30+ years. He is deservedly in the Colorado Lacrosse Hall of Fame. I could suggest another lacrosse Hall of Fame where he might belong inside, the one on University Parkway in Baltimore, but no one ever asks me.

By the way, the introduction of the plastic lacrosse head and the first Vail Lacrosse Shootout are right next to each other on the Lacrosse Hall of Fame time line in Baltimore at the museum. I always liked that fact.

I am proud to know him, Jim, and I’m glad that he sold me long ago on the reality that lacrosse was to be part of our life forever. It would serve as a symbol of our planned life long friendship, and that it (lacrosse) had earned and would forever receive our collaborative devotion, the kind that is unconditional.

We both knew, almost at once, that as two, we were always better and more than the simple 1 + 1 = 2 thing. The rest he taught me. Profit and fame were never to be the object. It always has to be about the game and our love for it. He taught me team, too, and he is my coaching guru, but those are subjects for another time me thinks.

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