November 18, 2001
The first snow is falling. Actually it's coming in sideways..
Mike Napolilli was just chosen as the USLIA preseason "Player of the Year", and will be featured in the upcoming issue of Lacrosse Magazine. Congratulations, Mike, and I apologize ahead of time to you and your mother for whatever I "say" in the article. I knew the guy was going to interview me, but I still forgot to say all those, "Mike's the best I've ever coached" comments that I know I should graciously say. Mike is pretty much all the superlatives (Who ever saw a better left handed cannon?), but I focused on how much he cares about the team, and how much the team looks to him to be great, as if that were his job. I know I talked about "us" when I should have been talking about Mike.
Plus, the last thing I want him (or any player) to do is to sit around and think about how great others think he is, even if he can handle it. It's a lot of pressure to put on a kid (but hopefully I didn't say that). I still want him to think about getting better, not "owning people" or whatever. All I know is that there is no limit to improvement, and I want that to be his focus now, as a senior, which is not much different from what I wanted when he was a freshman.
One story I didn't tell Paul Krome, the "beat writer" for Lacrosse Magazine was something that happened during a tense moment of a game last year (must have been BYU). Mike came to me and he was very emotional, and he shouted, "They are just looking to me! They're waiting for me to do something." My response to him was pretty much, "Yes, and?" (as in what's the problem?), because this was the moment he had always wanted, and then there he was in that moment, no longer hidden from expectation in the shadow of Roth, and far removed from that comfort zone under the wing of Ferrin. It became his team to drive at that instant when he was elevated to that new place by his team. Mike got through the moment, and he proceeded to take the helm in 2001, and ultimately he did achieve lofty point totals despite often being keyed on by opponents.
The truth is that he and others like him (our whole team in 2001) stayed focused on the team goals. Let the individual honors surface wherever they surface, but always in the wake of the churning waters of the USS Team Success. As much as Mike is driven to personal goals, I think he has really learned how to pinpoint keys to "family goals" in stuff that he does every day.
November 16, 2001
I feel very good about the six week season recently completed. It became a nice appetizer for the almost 4 month season ahead. The early trip to Logan (Bus ride and a spanking) was tough to swallow at the time, but served us well in the end, cooking up a lot of positive changes. The practices and games over the 4 weeks thereafter had more heat (and good weather), creating a swift period of evolution and evaluation for this team's ingredients. In the end fall 2001 turned out to be a tasy little apertif after all.
Ultimately it was fall ball, and not to be taken too seriously (by me). If I get too serious in the fall, I fear the spring can get long. If I think too much about what the fall will give us in the spring, I am usually disappointed.
How much to try to do in the fall is a measure that I try to define as we go, because I must also let fall ball define itself. To keep the "kitchen" metaphor going, the fall is actually "simmer time", a time for stirring and tasting often, being careful not to let it burn......
TO FALL OR NOT TO FALL
On the USLIA home page they always have these interactive questions for people who have the compulsion to vote on completely meaningless considerations. One such question was, "Is fall (lacrosse) ball beneficial?" There were 5 multiple choice answers or whatever. I think the question came about because most people think that fall ball is useless for the most part, and "let's get on with it" is more the prevalent attitude. I might normally agree, but this fall brought in a completely new team dynamic at CSU. Fall ball helped us off to a better start than we might have otherwise had.
For us fall ball does need to be a powerful bonding experience, so that we can get on with it after Christmas break. New players need to get a peek at who we are and what we do in different situations, both on and off the field.
We handled one off the field, fairly serious disciplinary problem that we had this fall in a very together, although perhaps unique way. We arrived at the final decision as a completely unified group, and therefore we can move on cleanly. This will have meaning for our family dynamic, because as we figured out how to "fix" a very delicate problem together, it gave me faith in our ability to handle other types of situations that we will face as a team.
We have lots of question marks, like people coming back, and people leaving school, and injury ?'s of course, but fortunately it looks like we will once again have some depth, a crucial ingredient for team success. This is something that had me worried at times during the fall.
November 17, 2001
Even though we haven't been formally practicng for almost three weeks, there is still plenty going on "behind the scenes". I am eagerly using my new coaching tool (having everyone's e-mail address) and I am becoming "e-coach" as I write. I can e-mail them all at once. I can e-mail them individually, and I can torture them in small groups. There, of course, are ones who don't get to the computer "very often", but we are connected well enough as a team where they all know what's going on within 24 hours of a team e-mail. As an example of how well it can work, one player put out a team e-mail one morning (yesterday) and 20-25 people showed up to play at or around 3:00 in the afternoon.
WHO IS #1?
The new meaningless question on the USLIA page is, "Who will be #1 in the USLIA top 25 preseason poll when it is released in early December?" We were the "default" choice. It made me smile. There were 10 choices. The poll will probably tab either us or BYU as the pre season choice for #1, and of course that and a quarter will get you one of those giant gum balls at the mall.. Everyone is unbeaten in December and everyone has the potential to step up (or down) during the off season.
There are other teams that have a good chance, and there is no doubt that Michigan, Stanford, Sonoma, Virginia Tech, and a few more all will eventually have their shot at the prize. This monaker (#1 in the preseason poll) is meaningless to me unless we were to stay there every day THROUGH May 11, 2002.
Four of the teams mentioned are on our regular season schedule, and only BYU is at home, so we are certainly not "ducking" anyone. The San Diego trip in early March will be tough with Stanford on Friday night and Sonoma the following afternoon. They both, as always, will have had many more practices than us, because we don't start as early. It is just one of many challenges ahead for us.
I know in my heart that if we just focus on and actually get a little better every day, then everything else will take care of itself.