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Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
IF IT WAS (WERE?) A SNAKE IT WOULD HAVE BITTEN ME IN THE FACE
Instead it was a tic, and he/she bit me on the inner thigh, but I digress….
Next week will mark the 8th anniversary of my marriage to the most beautiful
and wonderful wife that a man could possibly want. At least that is my take on the
lovely Ada Luz Naumburg. When I first met her she started my heart up with her combined
innocence and the matching exuberance and gratefulness, and that particular part of her
overall package was so refreshing for me. She knew the importance that her dreams
had in and for her life. I admire that in her, and I think our wedding day was one
check off of her list of things to do and American dreams to realize while actually in America.
She first came to the U.S.A. from Peru while still in her twenties. I don't mean to
infer that I was her dream come true. I am no one's dream, and some people's nightmare,
that is for absolutely sure.
Her radiant smile on her 'very special' wedding day would bare out the fact that it was
a pretty cool day for her.
YOU PUT THE LYME IN THE COCONUT
For the ceremony Ada wore a full white wedding dress and I wore a tux. I'm not crazy
about the pictures from the wedding. I was recovering from Lyme disease at the time,
and my face pretty much looked as if it had been run over by a truck and then dragged on
down the road a ways. It was all very surreal somehow. I think I was on steroids at
the time as part of my Lyme Disease 'cure'.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING, BUT THAT'S OKAY, LET'S ….GET
READY TO RUMBLLLLLLLLLLLLE!
I never meant to make a mockery of Ada's "dream wedding", but somehow it became
almost that. For starters we got married in the city of sin, Las Vegas. On top
of that it took place in a 'chapel' with no windows. The ambience was somewhere in
between the crematorium where they made my grandfather into ashes when I was 17, and an
Elvis-will-be-out-soon-to-perform the ceremony feeling to it. "So, let's have a big
round of applause for this really, really BIG American and Las Vegas Idol…….."
WHAT HAPPENS HERE STAYS HERE - Man what a mantra to use to start our lives out together.
If that place (wacky tacky chapel) within the place (Las Vegas strip) wasn't wild and crazy
enough, then add the fact that the whole 1998-1999 CSU lacrosse team was there right down
to its Napi's. They were there to hear my pledges of monogamy and other stuff.
They added a riotous ( and I don't mean just ha ha) flare to the post wedding atmosphere.
It was already a bizarre scene that we had going on even if it were happening without them.
For one thing, the fact that no one from my immediate family was there makes it a little
strange by itself.
I am also saying we wayyy got our money's worth out of that little dump, so that's good,
right?
SOMETIMES YOU FEEL LIKE A NUT
Sometimes I feel like I have some limited control of the behavior of these college students
I coach and travel with, and sometimes I don't feel like I do. My hope is to always
have at least some. Any way that you look at it I pretty much had no power to monitor
the off-field behavior of the team I coached when I first arrived in Fort Fun ten years
ago, and the bunch that went on that first fall trip to Vegas was 'mature beyond its years'
in terms of being older but still acting like adolescent juvenile delinquents through both
word and deed.
THE JAMES DEAN SYNDROME
By the way, I almost "put the car in reverse" to 'head back' to the California
coast after that first fall of 1996. Life here for college students was indeed the
party, the verb, when I started here. Some things just make it hard to coach.
This placed seemed mountainous in its scope of the task before me. I thought I was "Too
hip for the room" here in the middle part of America, so that attitude didn't help
things either. Not to worry, I was humbled quickly and often out of thinking that.
I have warned and at times raged against the uncontrolled and the outrageous types of the
college behavior syndrome best as I personally have been able. Year-by-year I have tried
to steer them towards the doing of things right, together like Musketeers, and in positive
as well as moderating ways. It is what I view as us being in the family way.
I do like for them to spend lots of time together.
AND THE WEINER/WHINER IS….ME
And if that weren't enough, the team in general back in the day was not buying into my
new 'political' and philosophical platform of, well, of the concept of family and working
as a team in order to accomplish anything. Meanwhile I felt at times like I was there
interfering with practice as they had known it before me. I got over and past (passed?)
it all for the most part, but I still think about starting up the Tundra and heading west
from time to time.
TEEMING UP TO BE BETTER
Being better together always works for more or less any team and more or less at any time.
Such a simple word, TEAM, but the getting of it to work just a little bit better can be
quite the challenge with each step no matter how much I might think I know about coaching,
kids, and or lacrosse.
For the record we did not get better this fall, but now we might be. I say that after
two nights at the Edge. You gotta start somewhere.
MAMA ALWAYS SAID, "STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES". OR WAS THAT…?
Marrying Ada wasn't perhaps my idea. I had already failed once at marriage, and I
did in fact lose a bit of my groove in the wake of that. It was a bit of a personal
problem I had with the concept of marriage in general. This was a personal challenge
for me, though, because there was no knock down drag out part of divorce for me to have
to recover from. It was all very civilized, my divorce, almost too much so.
So, I think it MIGHT have been her idea to get hitched. I might have said, "How
about we get married in Vegas" at some point. Anyway, and in retrospect the whole
thing (marrying Ada) is by far the smartest thing I have ever done. Go figure.
My best idea wasn't even my own. I wonder what that says about me. Wait, no,
I know.
LAX BLUES
Wedded bliss is great. I still have some of that from time to time. I am grateful,
and I am indeed lucky to be with Ada. Many have pointed out that I might have married
out of by league, and that is likely true, but I really do feel that I am the fortunate
one on this deal.
Ada has always supported me in what I do, and beyond that she offers me the freedom to
work at my own dreams. Well, being the mother of two little boys has made her postpone
some of her agenda. I feel bad about this, and my solutions about how to help her
get 'there' apparently won't due.
LAXIMIZED
The problem that worries me for now at home is that I am afraid that this Mrs. Naumburg
has seen enough lacrosse to last her just fine for the rest of her life. Now, this
is a foray into the fear factor RED zone for me. I can see how anyone spending too
much time around me might get enough lacrosse, but I don't want her to not be there, on
the sidelines, and rooting from her heart and soul for us to win. Presumably this
Ram passion in the past has at least partly been a result of the if-we-win-honey-will-be-in-a-better-mood
survival mechanism at work, but I don't care, it's a whatever-it-takes thing in my mind.
I do not want her to ever feel obligated to go to all the games and travel with the team
as she always has. I want her to be there with me every time we play a game, but only
if that truly is the place she would most want to be.
I listen to her and her thoughts when I bring mine home and or talk to her about my team,
its successes and its problems. I don't want to lose that input either. It is
very valuable to me in very subtle yet very fundamentally sound ways.
I also know it is not her dream, that lacrosse orgy fish bowl thing that I live in, the
one that never stops moving. No, it is my dream that I live, not hers. I really
do want her to get on with a few of those ones she has for herself, the visions of life
that she has put on the side so she could live the bringing-up-baby life with passion. I
want to soon somehow become some part of the solution here. I have a bunch of solutions
to get to and that I'm working on getting ready to work on during sabbatical.
CHANGE THE MOVIE?
I also don't ever want for Ada girl to come to hate lacrosse either. That would
be acrimonious to what is going on in my life just now, and also over the last twenty years.
It would not lead me toward the heavenly harmony that I want to seek for just a little while
longer.
Can I win her back? Will she ever again be so involved as to live and die with us
and with each goal scored or given up? I guess I will need to stay tuned and with
both hands firmly on the wheel to find out. It's going to be a bumpy ride this year.
I think I see the dirt road we will have to take.
FILIBUSTER TIME
I had several topics I wanted to touch on tonight while I was (for once lately) excited
to write, and they were mostly about lacrosse and the team, but I guess I got stuck in the
middle or carried away with this one subject.
It's a good thing no one will ever be reading this. I trust it is far too candid
and personal to interest anyone other than me.
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