Tuesday, Rocktober 16, 2007

THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WASN’T

I tried to put the hammer down a little last week by ‘encouraging’ them to come to practice every single day (4 days) to prepare to play this mammoth of a team we scheduled for  Saturday.  Actually we were expecting a gang of Outlaws (Denver) to show up and we needed to prepare our little posse of 65 hard this week (my mind).  Anyway, I wanted to see what would happen if I ‘put the hammer down’ on the intensity pedal.  

PREMATURE LACROSSETURBATION

 On Friday at the beginning of practice I asked all those who had not been late to practice or absent at any time during the week to step forward.  I am afraid, but hardly ashamed to say that well less than a third of the team could take that very important step.  That is the state of things.  I did learn that some of them were unclear about where they stood if they had a good excuse like say class, for example.  No, I lumped the ‘good’ excuses with the ‘bad’.  It wasn’t for me to determine who wished he could have been there.  I just wanted the facts.  Know the truth and the truth shall set you free.

I had stated that a player would not play unless he could come to the three consecutive practices preceding the ‘game’ Saturday.  Keeping that promise would have left us thin in ranks to be sure.  It wasn’t my intention to punish or “teach lessons” to individuals with this.  I was testing things, though, because I want answers, or at least I seek the right questions to ask.  I am trying to define our team, and I am also searching for the road and the way to have many valuable team practices with everyone there at full salute, something that is always difficult with Club and with several ‘star’ players that work as well as go to school.

The truth is that I believe that almost all of these kids look at our time together as a team as the best part of their day.  Conflicts with practice abound.  My question became, “How do we fix this in the spring?”  We need to have quality practice time as often as possible.  There will be difficult all around weeks upcoming for student athletes.  There will be times, if we are to be successful, when lacrosse will need a large amount of their full and collective attention.  I believe practice, and specifically quality practice is the only way to bridge the ‘gaps’ that I am always trying to cover.

SNAP, CRACKLE, POP

On Saturday we were out there ready for gaming way ahead of time, just as I had asked. We had a nice warm-up as the other ‘team’ sort of straggled in along the far sideline.

They had some good players, one or two new ones they hadn’t had two weeks ago at our tournament, but they would not have the numbers to deal with us.  They barely had enough to field a team.

WHY I PREFER AWAY GAMES

Within a very short time it all became irrelevant because our little lightning machine on top of the Rec. Center came on about 5 minutes into the game.  The sky had us socked in, not with rain yet, but with clouds and some sky clamor.  All predictions were for conditions to worsen and after only about 30 minutes it started to rain harder and the clouds kept rumbling so we decided to pack in the game and let people go about their weekends.

I like away games because then field use is never my problem.  It is no consolation, but I was pleased with the first minutes that we played as we got up 2-0 quickly, and we competed well on those face-offs that we had.  We possessed the ball well.

Now we begin to prepare for Vegas and the “Best of the West” tournament.

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