Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

EUREKA! I REMEMBERED IT.

One of the coaching pits I have fallen into from time to time over the years is the hole filled with too much passion. Too much passion, how can that possibly be a not-good element in the team equation? Well, it is not a problem if properly placed and tempered with patience. On the other hand, misguided emotion can often lead to some kind of train wreck.

Whatever the level I have coached over the last 20 years I have had these lapses. I will tend to fall in love with the moments and the visions of the best players playing at their best, and like the good junkie that I am I always want more of those good, no, those special things that I see happen on the field. Herein lies the multiplicity of problems.

The best players don’t always play their best. This can be true individually and from time to time. This can also be the collective situation as well, as was more or less the case last Saturday against C.U. Some good things happened in the game to be sure, but the lessons are not to be found with what we did right or well on this one. The elementary answers are in what we did wrong or badly, and what we need to improve on.

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

I have done research with all my teams dating back to the J.V. high school days in California, and one of the earliest lessons for me was, "Do not fall in love with players, period". That means to not just play only your best players all the time. I still do (fall in love) anyway from time to time, but the point is that we (my teams) will only ever be as strong as our proverbial weakest link. I want us to play as the team that we are no matter whom is in the game for our side at any given moment.

The problem begins when I let it get to a point where the poor play of one or two affects the way the team functions on the field. I cannot allow this to happen. I can only create what I want with trust, preparation, and a giant HOOK. That hook part means that I must have no fear to pull anyone out of the game. On top of that I must also have no fear to put anyone in. I am not there yet with this team, that is for sure. I do not trust this team yet.

SHUT UP OLD MAN AND GET TO WORK

There is no doubt in my mind that we won in St. Louis in 2003, not because we were better or more talented, but because we were steady and prepared for when things didn’t go so good. Among other "issues", we had two huge injuries to two of our best Defensemen during that national final tournament. We plugged in the "understudies". We did not blink an eye or utter a moan of despair. We played on. They did fine, and we won the title like it was our job. There was no lesson to be learned because we had already learned it. That was our mind set all year, the last team standing, do not flinch, whatever.

METAPHORICAL NONSENSE

So, it is okay to court, to flirt, and to feel passion for your best players playing their best. However, do not get married to the vision of beauty and perfection, for she is just that, a vision and nothing more. The one I need to actually marry is the 13th midfielder, the not so pretty one, that one that we will need when wunderkind Bird boy gets shut off by the other team or has a bad day.

The player I need to nurture is that fifth defense man that we will need when Mr. Solid-and-in-control Defense man is losing his temper and cool and I need to ‘bring him over’ for a minute with me on the sidelines.

I MODEL – THAT’S WHAT I DO

I/we have one player who brings the same thing every single day, practice and games. He has done it for almost 4 years now, and he really communicates well with me nowadays. It never takes us an hour-long meeting to get it done. He is the type of player that has always done the solid, basic non-statistical things that I as a coach ask, and then on top of that he still managed to find the time to become a star through hard work and the love of the game. He is the type of player that makes good choices almost all the time, and when he makes a couple ‘wrong’ choices or whatever, he will come to me and say something like, "That’s it. I’m not doing that anymore", and that will be that, as if saying it to me was his trigger, his hammer to get it right. One might call it self-coaching. If I had twenty more like this one I could sit back and watch all the pretty play happen, but that is not the non task I face. I got work to do.

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Flip Started Blogging Before it was Cool, Read Over 400 of His Entries Since January 2001
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