Thoughts on having a sense of pride. New  uniform pictures. New banger from Mr. Hudson.

Just because there are only 40 people watching, doesn’t mean its not important

This weekend, we attended a local college’s girl’s soccer team game. The  beautiful game times two.

We have several friends on the team and when you go watch your friends compete you want them to do well. You expect to watch them work hard and care about winning. You also expect the coach who is being paid to work hard and care about winning.

It’s important to consider that schools place less pressure on their non revenue sports to win because there’s no money coming in from success. In all likelihood, a successful non revenue sport probably costs even more money with travel to post season tournaments etc.

A very cynical statement would be, as long as the guy’s volleyball team doesn’t draw negative media attention to the school thanks to a hazing incident the school doesn’t care if they lose 230 games a season.

Another statement would be, schools that have a chance to win a title every year do care about the success of that particular non revenue sport because boosters (alumni) care about their alma mater and will pull their funds out if they don’t see results.

And yet another statement would be, if you are a head coach of a non revenue sport and you should miraculously take your team the post season when the AD never thought it possible, you’ll have that job for life.

At this particular school, the girl’s soccer team is the very definition of a non-revenue sport. Attendance is free. Parents bring post game snacks. The head athletic director  has attended maybe two of the five games we’ve been to this season. The third assistant coach wears a player’s jacket on the sideline and has to give it back to the player after games. (Made that up).

Last year the team finished two games above .500. This year they are one game above .500 with  3 conference games to go.

They are a middle of the road team with an above average defense but no midfielders can hold the ball to develop quality build ups and only one of the two strikers has elite break away speed to threaten defenses in the final third of the field.

No matter how talented a defense is if they are playing defense too much they will tire and goals will happen. Not world beating insight right there.

Regardless of their talent level, the players come to practice everyday despite irregular practices times (thanks to facility issues of an urban campus, where have we heard that before), they pay private school tuition, and they play with a lot of heart.

They deserve a coach who cares as much as they do. The problem for this team is they don’t have such a coach. Watching a disinterested coach for an NCAA team work, or not work in this case, a sideline is one the most disheartening things I’ve experienced in my sports career. Derek Jeter could tell me he took steroids tomorrow and the agony would be marginal compared to watching this person do their job.

I can understand it might be difficult to recruit players to an expensive school that offers no athletic scholarships.

I don’t understand why you break a ten minute silence with the inspirational “come on, white” cheer.

I can understand if the team gives up a goal on what may or may not have been off sides.

I don’t understand why you didn’t go to bat for your team and try to carve the refs to earn the next questionable call. I mean when the other team is standing around after the goal, not celebrating because they think they were off sides…maybe they were off sides. Maybe you should say something. Maybe it shouldn’t be the fans trying to ask for off sides.

I can understand if you were missing starters early in the season because of swine flu and you might need to sub a little more freely.

First of all, its now October. No one in Pittsburgh died from swine flu. Get a grip. If the players are sluggish on the field it’s because your conditioning regiment is garbage which is your fault. There is no excuse for your best offensive threat to be on the bench for one second of a tie ball game against a conference opponent.

I can’t understand why two marking backs are sent up into the box on every corner kick because they are taller players but are not involved on free kicks. Don’t they have to run farther to get back into position after a corner kick? Rhetorical question.

I can’t understand why the starting center mid and starting right mid are constantly subbed out at the same time. Coach, you already have a weak midfield.

If the subbing wasn’t bad enough, the lengths of these substitutions are atrocious. If it was basketball and you wanted to steal some minutes to rest a starter for the final push fine. But this is soccer. They are supposed to be in shape to run for ninety minutes. The subs are getting ten to fifteen minutes of playing time. Why are inept players in for that long?

This is not an isolated incident of a coach shutting it down because players weren’t listening or playing well. I’ve followed this team since the coach begin her tenure. I’m not even going to mention the practice I watched while I was filming the flow mystery video because this Dennis Miller rant has gone on too long.

This may be a non revenue sport at a D3 school but, you play to win the game. This isn’t rec league where everyone needs playing time and every player gets a game ball at least once during the season. These girls sacrifice a lot to play. A lot. I can’t even go out to dinner with one of them until the season is over because she doesn’t have time outside of practice and school.

Some people just expect more of themselves when no one is watching. This soccer coach is not one of them.

But such is the scenario for non revenue coaches. Athletic directors and schools are hands off as long as the status quo is maintained.

As the lacrosse world grows, the need for quality coaching increases exponentially. Here’s the point. If your an alum who isn’t satisfied with the coaching staff, do something about it. If you are a player who isn’t satisfied with the coaching staff, do something about it. Understand it might not be feasible overnight. Understand that its going to take a lot of money to hire Petro away from Hopkins, after you convince to coach your MCLA team in Utah. Is it worth it?

Are you kidding me?

Five of our starters were going to quit if we didn’t make a coaching change this summer. Alumni told us they would support a change and that this program deserved better.

We laugh at coaching outburst videos but those guys care. I’ll never watch a video of that soccer coach screaming “you play to win the game.”

I truly feel for those girls. They deserve better, too.

Lax.com THANK YOU

Briefly, the people on staff at Lacrosse All Stars and 412 Lax love lacrosse. Sub categories of lacrosse love from the 412 staff:

1) We love design team gear, team clothing, team uniforms

2) We love watching lacrosse on tape or looking at pictures of lacrosse as if it was 1954

Lax.com is our favorite site not named http://412.laxallstars.com They post crystal clear video that was shot from respectable angles so you can properly watch them. There are no 1998 Toyota commercials on their videos. The post 23950 of pictures from events that you can download. Every college game picture we use on 412 Lax is from Lax.com. We play on their fantasy lacrosse league. We track game schedules. We watch the Bryant documentary video once a week. Favorite lacrosse website. Best lacrosse website not on the Lax All Stars Network.

I guess Under Armour was out of white, navy, and red shirts. Don’t agree with that fashion choice at all. Is it a “look at me” attitude or am I still bitter from writing about the worst head coach of ALL TIME?

Being short sticked by a college team. That’s rough.

Woooooooooooooow. I kind of want to move to Annapolis right now.

Click here for more photos

Apparently the folks at Teamwork decided they hated our school colors also.

Under Armour uniforms are now available from Wave One Sports

For some reason those are called the Burnett Jersey/Burnett Shorts

Censoring message boards has always been a freedom of speech issue for me but is any one paying attention at E-Lacrosse?

Here are the ten most recent posts, which is viewable on their homepage.

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Anybody from North Carolina care to defend this shirt?

Notes:

• Lacrosse Magazine with great coverage of the USA scrimmages this weekend
• More USA team coverage from Lacrosse Magazine
• Ballon Boy was a fake!
• Chad Johnson writes bad checks for his chicks
• Huge equipment news coming this week
• TWITTER, follow 412