Monday, September 10, 2007

I apologize if this is disjointed.  I have sort of been forced to worked on this entry a few different times over the week, and outside of lacrosse it was a pretty dramatic/busy week for me at home.

STAR WARS GONE WILD, or one sit up at a time

I think I used to be flatteringly called “OBEWON” by some players.  Then I /it became “YOTA” as I aged and wore the hooded sweatshirt with the hood up all the time, not to mention the fact that I was rapidly becoming quite a bit older than my so-called 'peers'.  What we are talking about now is JABBA THE HUT and there ain’t no hiding the fat, I mean fact.  I have been headed in the wrong direction with this Star Warian progression for about three years, and there seems to be only one or two not always fun ways to get back from the edge of that particular expanding universe, but I am working on it, finally.

THIS ISN’T LEAVE IT TO BEAVER

My seven year-old son Jordan will ask me some personal and profound questions from time to time.  For example, he asked me several times why sports are so important to me.  He doesn't get my Broncomania for example. By the by, he might pose this question while he is actually playing X Box video games for about the 18^th straight hour, but that is beside the point.  He is a great negotiator and argues that he is learning great skills from the mojo button pushing or whatever the hell it is he does to make his cars crash better or whatever.  I digress again. The answer is that I don’t really know (why sports mean so much to me), but they have always been my best metaphor.

DR. LIVINGSTONED I PRESUME

So, therefore my brain probably isn’t divided into Type A and Type B characteristics.  It’s more like it is Sports/No Sports split.  I guess I’m just a ‘guy’ in so many ways.  I try to be real, but it is so boring for me sometimes to do that.  I so prefer my little fantasies to many of my ‘other’ real life tasks, especially some of my current ones like dealing with probate and a will for example.  I will say, however, that Kinko’s fits ‘my’ modern lifestyle by always having a notary on hand to notarize documents.  You used to have to hunt those people (notaries) down and they were often tucked in some alley somewhere.  Now, it’s a higher pay scale job or whatever at Kinko’s on every other block.  Who knew?

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH

Currently the station of the CSU Lacrosse Nation is that it is in its Autumnal state of flux, or should I say Flax?  The flux part is semi-normal.  I further feel like many things are getting back to something resembling normal through our ongoing team evolutionary process, if that makes any sense.  Movement and change is what we have always been about, and if that is true then we are a bunch of swirling electrons now.

It’s things like stagnancy that scare me.  Any kind of feeling of entitlement that I sense from returning players also will tend to send up red flags.  I am having very little of that kind of stress, although I do have one who can dredge it up for me quite easily and any time if he wants, but I don’t think he really wants to, so that’s good.

FAMILY FASHION

To get the pure passion from a player they not only need to love playing the game of lacrosse, but they need to love their roles just as much, and as I get older, or perhaps as the game and humans that play it evolve, I see more clearly just how important it is that they cherish their own special or individual position within the team.  Perhaps we have brought the "family" a little farther along as well on that particular plane of team existence after all the years of preaching and talking about its importance.  I hope that is so.

WHERE ARE WE NOW, SKIPPER? – Well, Little buddy…..

The first week:

Attack – It now looks like we have one returning ‘starter’ on attack, although I still think I see that one as a midfielder anyway, but the blue chips will fall wherever they may.  I try not to force all that too much, and besides I wasn’t sure if we would have any returnees (starters) on attack three weeks ago. Anyway I'm just happy to see a familiar face or two here and there.

Last year I was never happy with our full field scrimmages and the value they held for that particular team.  We never had two solid attack units for one thing.  I couldn’t ‘keep it real’.  It was frustrating for me as a coach. We didn’t even have anyone last year other than Danny Stevens who had before that played attack for us at all.  We have already had some very nice scrimmages thus far, and it is at least partly due to the abilities that we are ‘sporting’ on attack.  We have at least 4 groups worth (12), and that is even after some of the ones that put “attack” down for position on the form they filled out have been unceremonious escorted and introduced to the midfield lines in drills and scrimmages.  Most of these faces are new, too, and I know we won’t have 12 solid attackmen on the real team for the real season in February, but I wouldn’t mind a bit if we did.  I am looking particularly hard at the individuals in this group as we scrimmage this fall.

Midfield – We probably return two ‘starters’, or maybe you could look at it as if we will have 4 or 5 back from last year’s ‘top ten’ middies, the ones that played the most.  Whatever depth we might have will, however, be on the extremely young side and in some cases still in the class of shall we say ‘raw’ materials.  We got work to do here.

Long pole – We will have to develop the long stick midfielder as a position.  I steadfastly remain committed to having that specialized spot do more, be more.  If it also takes more than one or two players to make that so, then so be it, but nothing has yet really caught my eye. This might take some ongoing 'tactical analysis'.  We have some decent long poles running around out there, so I am confident of being able to make a two or three-headed long stick middie monster of some sort. 

Defense – LP -  I think I can clearly see the current top two Defensemen on our depth chart.  Number three is certainly a mystery to me at this point in time.  That’s okay because I tend to like the ‘waiting for someone to emerge’ part of things, and I do think someone will.  We have enough players that can play with long poles.

We really only return one actual starter on close defense, and he was red shirt freshman last year, but nonetheless I feel confident that we can build a fine defense from what I see, and that is even though so much of what I do see is people I have never seen play before three weeks ago.

Oh, by the way, for right now I am the designated “defensive coordinator” so to speak. I am having a lot of fun getting back to my defensive coaching 'roots' as we teach and they play.

Defense – SS – Short stick defenders have made it to full position status for me.  I want players that love to do all the unglamorous things that those guys need to be able to do.  This position is crucial if you want to be at all creative on defense.  They (SSM’s) are getting easier (thankfully) to find or get because it is so obvious to everyone what they mean to a (our) team nowadays.  We have a few, and I don’t think any one of them that might get one of those roles on this team will NOT feel like he had been demoted.  In the past that has been the case once or twice.  

Goalie – We have had too many of them for several years and this one is no exception.  What strikes me as odd is NOT the fact that we have seven goalies.  That seems like ‘old hat’, whatever that old saying is supposed to mean.  No, the surprising factor is that six, count them, 6 of them are returning from last year’s team, including the one who started almost every game.  Yes, I try to make practice fun, but Kelly the Clown couldn’t make it fun enough every day for seven goalies, yet there they all pretty much are, and that’s day in and day out.  I admire them all.   I just pity the fool who has to get them all in games.  Wait, that’s me, good old Mr. No Cut ‘em.  I do enjoy having them all, though, really I do.  They all are great kids, at least as far as I can tell, and hey, we never have any kind of a drill where there aren’t plenty of goalies ready to jump in and get pummeled, with or without a defense and looking at/taking shots from near or from afar.  They are just hungry to get in the cage.

Coaching – I get older.  That can’t help that much, but I get better at surrounding myself with good people to cover for me, so hopefully that is a wash.  I am quite sure that my particular Alex Smith will continue to become a better and better coach, and luckily for me he is already saddled with about half of my lacrosse brain, which keeps my stress level down, at least a little, much better than someone who did not have that impairment.  Since we work together daily as it is, Alex and I have ample opportunity to “talk shop” coaching wise.  It almost seems like cheating, and if we did not take advantage of this more and more as time continues to go on then we would be remiss. 

Coaches don’t just blow whistles and yell out cliché fundamental answers in practice. They don’t just fill out line-up cards or whatever for games.  If they pay close enough attention to the right things coaches can help to change the outcome of a game in my mind.  Two can do that better than one if they do it right.  I feel good as we enter a new “season”.

Fogo – All I can say is that I see a face-off or two for us out there somewhere in my 2008 stars.  Hopefully it will be sooner. There is passion at the face-off X for a change.

Manager – We got one – We are well endowed for once.  She just popped up out of nowhere, ready to help.  How did I/we get so lucky?  I can barely think of things for her to do fast enough.

Trainers – We got two – Both women worked with us last year – This will have to be a plus for our overall stability.  I also think both of these two have seen enough of me not only to understand me a little, but I think they help to look after me and us as well as other internal workings that must be paid attention to. 

So the family is starting to take shape.  As soon as we get our chiropractor, Dr. Ron Krugman, back from his little mid-life flirtation with the Evil Kanevil lifestyle (13 broken ribs) all will be well with the brood, at least for now.

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