Friday, October 31, 2003 – ALL HALLOWS DAY -

SAM WITCHES FOR BREAKFAST

I go to Sam’s a lot, especially when I need to buy stuff for our team banquet, which will take place tomorrow night. I went today, Halloween. They (Sam’s Club) would seem to be an "equal opportunity employer," employing what I would consider a very wide variety of humans. I have always been semi-fascinated by the somehow eclectic nature and dynamic of the Sam’s employee group. I guess it is because I am at heart a simple people-watcher-person. It might just be our little Fort Collins Sam’s, but I’m thinking there must be a trend in there somewhere.

Anyway, they (Sam’s employees) all got to dress up and come to work today as whoever they wanted, and suddenly I thought I had taken a left turn somewhere and now I was taking a "walk on the wild side", complete with Witches, Greek Gods and He-Shes. To borrow a phrase from the seventies, "I wasn’t ready". This was all much more entertaining than I could have expected from an early morning excursion to get paper plates, Pepsi, and most of a cow. No wonder they call it a club.

MISBESPOKEN

Some kid wrote an internet article about our Las Vegas game with BYU. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mention it, but this guy made me look like an idiot, so it made me do a little introspecting. I preach to this team from time to time to be careful what you do in public, as well as what you say to the press. We are hardly the defending World Champions or anything, but we do get microphones attached to us from time to time, and we are somewhat high profile in our own little world.

I still wasn’t feeling that great in Vegas, and once again I was not heeding my own advice, which in this case was to always think, and be careful before you say something that might be quoted in some shape or form. I didn’t do this, so my "quotes" ended up making me look somehow other than I would have liked.

The writer of the article got most all of his facts wrong anyway, including the Gary Gait sighting that he reported. It was actually Paul Gait, but since they are twins, what’s the difference, right? Anyway, he asked me how I felt about the return of Bird (#1), Harper (#2), and Farquhar (#13) (Much of the offense on that particular night), and I said flippantly, "What do you think?" I was way pleased to have the three of them back. In the article it said, "What do you think?" was my response to the question of how I felt about the recently completed BYU game. That was NOT how I felt about the game, but because I did not think before I spoke, I opened the door to looking like an arrogant idiot (more than usual) and he (writer) walked right in.

He also said I referred to the team as, "My men". I have never referred to any team that I have ever coached as, "My men". I don’t know how that got there. To me, this would be classified as a condescending, traditional, military sort of thing to say, and as we all know I am so NOT that (traditional or military). He must have confused me with whoever coaches that team that was watching the BYU/CSU game all dressed up in matching ties.

We all want TO BE (and look) LIKE NICK

A few years ago one of ours went on an internet message board and "said" something that ended up on the back of a University of Arizona t-shirt that all their players wore under their game jerseys. The quote was put there because the Laxcats had taken exception to the remarks, and the t-shirt was their particular, albeit peculiar form of motivation.

Before the t-shirt had even existed I had gone to this CSU player and explained how there were many teams out there who "hated" us as it all was, and were not only highly motivated to beat us, but also just to see us lose. I went on to say to him that I never wanted to give an opponent added motivation by the things we said, or by how we acted. It was and is hard enough to get an edge as it is, and blah, blah, blah. This particular person has learned his lesson quite well. Apparently I am having some "senior moments" with it.

It would be great if we all could be like Nick Stanitz-Harper (#2). He is tall, dark, handsome, charming, and he has girl friends all over the world. His laugh is so infectious that I only need hear it in my head for a smile to find my face. His quote after the BYU game was almost perfect, sounding both enthusiastic and gracious. He had just scored 4 goals and, metaphorically speaking, not a hair was out of place. Harper could fit in easily anywhere.

Then there is the other thing, the thing where, for example, you would never give a power drill to Harper, because he (we) would end up at the hospital with a hole in him somewhere (Already proven fact). He needs us to change out the handles on his stick and stuff like that, and we need him to show the rest of us how we could only hope to be. That’s the way a real family works, all symbiotic-like.

BACK TO BUSINESS – UPSIDEDOWNANDONWARD

It’s not a perfect world, and we get all kinds of crazies here at CSU, but I really do care a lot about our so-called "image", and I am not always pleased at the way some of us act sometimes. This will be another major area for my off-season work.

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