Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Saturday, October 14, 2006

NOT THE HAPPIEST DAY

We played three games on the day. The temperature was never too warm, but not too cold either. It hovered near, but like the lacrosse for me on the day, it never quite reached a true comfort zone.

SPOT 10 CSU 9 OVERTIME

Talk about your sudden death. Josh Simms of the Denver Outlaws sprinted directly at our goal from mid-field, and even though we had the man advantage at the time, it was over just seconds after the OT began.

I was not upset. I was disappointed of course that I hadn’t done something to stop it (Josh Simms dagger) from happening. I was stupid. I was too much reactive today in general, not pro active enough. I did some of this on purpose, and I guess that’s how things got to some of the places that they got to.

There were a few things I needed to find out about, pre-ordained decisions about how we would work this or that, or who would play when. Then, I also went against my instincts several times and let ‘other’ things happen just to see how it would play out. I did this all day, for three games.

Whatever, and overall I know in my heart that I could have done more to help our team today. My hope is that ‘they’ also feel that they each could have done more, too.

Anyway, I was practically thrilled after the first game, even though we lost. We had played strong and held our own against a Men’s team made up of really good players including a few current pros. On top of that we had scored a goal to tie the game with only 8 seconds left in the game. I was stoked that we showed that toughness to do that.

Somehow we received a Man Up opportunity on top of that. I think a Spot player might have used some ‘spotty’ language and the ref was not amused. We actually had a chance to start overtime with the ball and with an extra man to use on offense. Alas, perhaps I didn’t direct the subsequent sequence thoroughly or well enough as we could have and should have retained possession for those eight seconds, but we could not. Therefore overtime started with a face-off, which is never the way I would want that situation to play out. They got the face off ball, called time out, and gave it to Josh.

Oh well, good morning, good afternoon, good night, and thanks for coming. Josh Simms scored 5 of their 10 goals for the game.

Still, we held our own against the men. It didn’t occur to me that this good outing wouldn’t help us get ‘up’ and ready for C.U. That game would come quite a bit later at 2:30 in the afternoon.

CSU 9 MINES 2 - NOONER

This was basically a J.V. game for us. Lots of players played. The Stone goalie for Mines vs. the newly almost platinum blond dewed Stone, who is a SHOOTER for us, was the highlight of this one.

Our untrained extra man team was far more successful than our seasoned practiced one was in the games that sandwiched this one. The kids did all right. I would be an absolute liar if I said this game was not ugly to watch.

Many goalies got to play for us, but none of them had much action. I don’t know how to fix all that. We could have two or forty goalies, but I will never do exactly what I did today again.

C.U. 6 CSU 5

These were short games today, and we built ourselves a mountain to climb when we fell behind 5-2 after giving up 4 goals in just over two minutes with half of the first half still left. However, that left us plenty of time, and in a challenge sort of way I liked the idea of finding out how we would respond. We did regroup, and we clawed away at the lead we gave them, but ultimately we didn’t do enough to deserve the victory and we never got over the hump.

I think I did a pretty good job of preparing us for the first game this morning. I liked the way we played. I had talked about that game only all week. Therefore I surmise that my preparation of the team for the third game against C.U. was horrible. I didn’t do a lot of the things I usually do at tournaments in terms of talking to individuals between games and stuff like that. I didn’t re-direct the energy to C.U. effectively at all.

We lost the look of passion during this game, and even though we were behind, we were trying not to lose instead of going after the victory calmly and progressively.

We let the Buffs have momentum just after we had begun to take control of the proceedings early on. We did this (gave up momentum) in a painful way. You could see it happening. Maybe we lost some fight after that 4-goal run. Maybe that is my fault, too, because it is my perception that we aren’t in very good shape as a team. Yet, when the chips were down I didn’t dig into our depth. I shied away from putting in so and so, freshman boy. Shame on me. We more or less stayed with all our ‘best’ and more experienced players all game long (or short) and sometimes those guys might have looked tired or they made too many mistakes. I need to trust the depth and swim farther into our team. I needed to be more creative.

CHECKING EGOS AT THE DOOR

As for the tournament schedule goes I liked it on paper but I’m not the happiest camper right now. This is not the autumn of ‘05, however, because last year at this time certain dark realities appeared. There wasn’t much light in the old barn the last time we lost to the Buffaloes. Now I feel like we have the ponies in the stable but I’m a little behind on the handling of them and getting them strapped together to pull the load as a working team at all times.

I need for the team group to work harder. I need for every one of them to feel pain from this loss and have it motivate them, even if it is ‘only fall’. I don’t need or want them to hate C.U. or whomever we might play more than we already do. No, I want them as teammates to love, trust, and root for one another unconditionally. I want them and us to work on these skills every single day. I want to build a mountain of trust. We don’t have it.

Finally, I need more continuity in practice to be able to hope for more cohesiveness in the game situations. I just don’t like it (practice) now, and if we can’t get some consistent practices soon, I’m thinking Vegas may not be as much fun as we would all like.

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