Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Friday, August 18, 2006

THEY RECRUIT WHILE I HIBERNATE or....

THE FOOL ON THE HILL

It is amazing how quickly May becomes August in my life.  We start the next week looking to have an actual practice before it is over.

I have been poking around lately, lacrosse wise, on the internet that is, and it seems that many of my coaching ‘peers' have reported having had extraordinary or special recruiting seasons and are expecting a great deal of the new kids on their block for their immediate future.  This doesn't surprise me.  So many kids now know what many of us have known for years, that this USLIA ‘club' thing is pretty cool, has many special elements, and might even allow a student/athlete to play "big time" though not varsity lacrosse at a college or university of his choice. It sounds healthy, almost refreshing. Everyone is aware that if and when you sign up for Michigan, BYU, UCSB, C.U., or Sonoma State to name just a few, you can have a chance to win a national championship in men's lacrosse, a special opportunity not often readily available in life.  These names also happen to represent a cross section of schools that offer quite a wide variety of educational choices to say the least. Many schools are in the west, but the east is probably where our greatest USLMDIA expansion is now taking place.  Currently there are almost 200 teams in the MDIA.  Many are larger universities, but not all of them.

SON, ALL THIS COULD BE YOURS!

So these types of things (watching other teams loading up with better players than ever) always make me nervous (after it is too late).  So then I begin to evaluate what I have done to compete.  Have I ‘sent' my assistant coaches out on the scout and recruit trail looking to fill our little wish list?  No, and it even cracks me a smile just to think about as a concept, but it could happen I suppose.  Alex Smith (assistant coach) has the type of brain you need to be to do that type of recruiting (Type A I think).  It's just that we have always pretty much conducted ourselves as NOT that, so that's what is funny.

I will say (in my defense?) I have probably answered almost every email I have gotten, and besides that I'm positive that I must return somewhere way over 50% of the calls I get from and about players wanting to come and play at CSU.

I don't chase kids, and therefore always end up wondering who will show up in the fall.  It's often kind of exciting that way, believe it or not, kind of like Christmas morning used to be a long, long time ago.  Often the ‘recruits' that end up being the most impressive are the ones that never called me at all.  Others (players and coaches) may or may not know ‘he' was coming, and what he brings, but rarely have I ever seen a player actually play before he comes out for his first practice. 

I guess when all is said and done I am okay with the direction it (recruiting trail) tends to take us.  Somehow in spite of myself I turn around and often find I am lucky enough to have talented players to well, play with.  They are also exclusively ones that I never even had to beg to come play for me or whatever.  I like this very much and I use it for leverage a great deal.  What I am talking about is personal freedom (mine) to make good choices (as coach) during a season.  Somehow I feel like if I make no promises then I will not be capable of breaking any.

MONEY! WE DON'T HAVE NO STINKING MONEY! –

or SEVEN BRIDES FOR SEVEN BROTHERS

I also reply to and quickly shut down those eager high schoolers that write and send DVD's seeking scholarship offers, because we definitely ain't that, and I don't pretend to anyone that it is free to play here, let alone that we can help pay for you to go to school.  I suppose I might have done it once upon a time (smoke-screened that it wasn't expensive to play here), but the truth is now that I want the entire family commitment, and part of it is the monetary investment for the player to travel, etc.  The kid isn't enough for me anymore anyway.  I want the parents, the aunts, and the cousins, too, if I can get them hooked.  Careful what you wish for I guess.  Can you say Befus?  I digress, but suffice it to say I perennially and desperately seek high-level functioning family stuff each and every year, and there is no doubt that some years have been bigger love fests than others. Ultimately, though, I figure there are no limits to what family can achieve, and I am content with the way ours sort of builds its own self.

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

The truth is I do want players that fit in well here and, yes, I hope they are great on the field, too, but that alone is never all that I look for.  He has to blend with the program, such as it is.  He will need to like to live among the familiar unit that he will be spending at least four years and hopefully the rest of his life as a part of.  This is cliché talk I know, but I have a lot of trouble with force fitting in general.  I like tweaking things that already semi-work, and maybe already connect in one or hopefully many more ways than one before I even start them up in search of a well-oiled team machine.

Once they are actually here my aim is to try to mix equal amounts of THEM coming together and me (coaches) putting IT together.

FRATERNIZE THIS

By the way, I don't think you can play lacrosse for me and be in a campus fraternity as well.  I feel no urge to elaborate on this too much right now.  I only want to proclaim my hate for this sort of double life, because that is invariable what it becomes.  The boy must choose, it's them or me.

See you all next Wednesday.  I don't know where, but I'm thinking that's when.

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