Coach Flip Naumburg's Journal

Monday, November 7, 2005

ONE-TWO-THREE

The History of the Goalie Men on our lacrosse teams here can be traced fairly easily by tracking our three CSU USLIA National Championships. In 1999 we won our first title by riding a tandem of two goalies all year long. At the National Tournament we mixed and matched both goalies as key and specific individual ingredients for our three-day trek. We opened as a high (#3) seed with a victory over Tennessee, and our cage was well covered by Tyler Wilson, the first goalie I coached here.

One might say that Ty and I got "national" together, having appeared live in St. Louis first the year before, only to lose to BYU in the semi-finals. That particular game was played amid weather delays and other natural acts that came in message form, and were apparently sent from God and to the Cougars rather than us. After the lightning delay that night in 1998 the field became seriously tilted the wrong way. I wasn’t young but in retrospect I was indeed less than experienced then.

OUT OF THE DARKNESS, INTO THE LIGHT

The following game in 1999 was a night challenge against Sonoma State, a team that had felt like they had deserved the coveted (in those days especially) at large bid that had gotten us to the tournament the year before in 1998. Meanwhile it had left them at home. There were only 12 teams playing in St. Louis in the tournament format back then.

The lights "under" which we played SSU in 1999 were so bad that I’m not sure that any tournament games were played at night on that field after that. The game itself was a thriller, but I don't think we ever trailed, and we prevailed, 12-11 in one of the most exciting games I have ever been personally a part of. It was the beginning of a rivalry that I consider as one of the most excellent kind. I remember not being able to sleep that night after the game because I was so pumped up to be in our first final the next day.

I have always felt that a big part of that Sonoma semi-final game, without a doubt one of the biggest victories in our program history, was the eagle eye excellence and courageous play of our other goalie of the time, Cale Van Velkinburgh. He was our young buck then, and that game was the National semi-final. The next day we completed our tans-continental sweep to that "National" championship with a fairly convincing 15-11 win over a heavily favored Simon Fraser University from British Columbia. We had trailed 4-1 after one quarter of that one by the way. Ty Wilson was back in the nets and was the one who carried us home. Harmony reigned for a time in the CSU goalie kingdom.

TURN THE CENTURY, then TURN THE PAGE

The 2001 Championship team went about winning that one like it was their job and that nothing less would do. We didn’t win our league Championship in Durango in late April, however, losing to BYU, but in a classic, somewhat titanic struggle we beat those same Cougars in St. Louis in the semi-final two weeks later. That BYU semi-final game was 10-9 good guys, and that was also probably the best Cougar team I have seen them put on the field. What a game and what a day that was! The next day we won the championship fairly easily over Stanford.

By 2001, young Cale was now the savvy senior, an All America in goal, and playing as a part of perhaps the best team we have ever had here, at least in my time. Like Sonoma State we were beginning to gain a "good goalie" reputation, as in we always had one.

Cale left campus with his journalism degree and two championships almost immediately after that 2001 St. Louis, and I have not seen hide nor hair of the boy since. I assume he is off in the Colorado wild lands, scouting for and guiding fisherman in the quest to catch and likely releasing precious native trout. I am fairly certain that he is busy growing his face and searching for the soul of Ernest Hemmingway as well. I still have one of his certificates of accomplishments from college and both of his championship rings sitting here in my office, waiting for his return, which never comes.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

In 2003 Alex Smith became our senior goalie leader on a National Champion. His accolades came somewhat later in his career, but I think the legacy he left was much more than the awards that ultimately came his way. Part of his legacy was our first quenelle, the one where we won league and National titles the same year. We had won two National Championships prior to that without having won the conference Championship in the same year. That year of 2003 was special for many reasons, but one of those reasons was that the team in many ways over-achieved as a team, and not just at the very end of the season. They did it all year long, and they did it in spite of injury and adversity.

We were hardly undefeated in 2003, but we were very difficult to beat, and did only lose two games. More than anything else we remained true to our yearlong pledge to one another be the "Last team standing". We were the last team standing, too. We won a lot of games, yet we blew no one out. We did "what it took", start to finish, and that is how we approached every day. We as a team were reflected in many ways in the personality of our goalie, Alex Smith. Alex spent the entire year sort of coming-into-his-own as a player as well as a person, and in a very special way that was a joy for me to watch as a coach.

PEAKS AND VALLEYS – are part of it -

The weather sucked (for lax) that year. We had the blizzard of the century and very little practice. We had a lot of "journal" coaching going on. We had other barricades to scramble over as a team right from the beginning. Those things have been previously documented back in the old 2003 blog.

Alex as a player had hardly had the easy path to his "greatness" and that place where lots of people interested in the USLIA came to know of him. He had broken his hand as a junior and tried to play through it. In the process of playing through it, he acquired so many bad habits that I almost benched him at one point during a game with the University of Buffalo played in Michigan and in favor of one that I might call a totally inexperienced geek of a goalie that we had "backing him up" at the time. That is just the top line in the story of Alex’s trials and tribulations on his way "up". Anyway, he had begged me for no change at that halftime moment. I relented, let him play the game out, and the truth is that everything rather than nothing is what really changed right then, and things for Alex shifted finally into an ongoing higher gear.

The point of all this background is that following Alex and his Championship we started to have a bunny-like expansive or expanding goalie population experience that peaked at the lofty number of 8 in 2005, and would seem to be far from over. We still have a half dozen goalies hanging around.

I have always felt that the small legend that Alex built for himself here during that well documented 2003 Championship season has a lot to do with our recent times of goalie glut. They (multiple goalies) certainly didn’t all come here to CSU to play for "Yota the goalie coach" (me). The family thing is great and all, but eight is too many goalies no matter how much you are like brothers.

FOR PETE’S SAKE, or THIS IS NO JOKISCH

Now we are in the Petey (Pete Jokisch – Captain – 2006) goaltending era. It is an exciting time for us. He is a three-year starter, which is a great common denominator for a college lacrosse team of any kind to begin with. The story of our goalies is not yet up to date. Nor is it anywhere near finished. I know before it even starts that this year of 2006 will have some very interesting goalie moments on the schedule, but more on that next time.

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