What Do You Do When....
Posted: Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:30 am*Warning be prepared for a short life story and sob tale, but I would greatly appreciate feedback and thoughts*
What do you do when the life has been taken out of a club program? I am a senior at a small college where the lacrosse spirit has been slowly draining from the campus here.
When I first came to the college the lacrosse program was only a year old but rapidly growing with more incoming freshman, such as myself in 02/03. The team and program seemed to be growing and building, with more players, more exposure, and more money. To state right here and now, our team has never had an official coach, we are isolated and cannot afford/find a coach, so our team has always been player run, which may have been the eventual downfall of our program. By the end of my freshman year the team had finished with an above .500 record, made our conference playoffs and lost by a narrow margin to the best team in the conference.
My sophmore year was much more promising with more players and talent coming and the same returning players as last year (much like my freshman year the team looked promising and expansive). At the end of my sophmore year the team had to say goodbye to of a few the most influential players on the team, players that had built the program and helped it grow, but we had high expectations that the "torch could be passed on".
The onset of my junior year showed the most promising class of talent coming into our school with high hopes of playoffs and maybe even a national bid. But after fall ball our team had lost its drive and expansion, inner squad fighting from larger than life egos plagued the team, and with no coach to help squash these issues the team began falling apart. By the end of the spring season what had looked promising, had now become a twisted downfall of fighting, bickering, and headbutting. The ego's of players began to clash, drama unfolded, and players lost the will/want to play the game.
Now here I am, in my senior year of lacrosse trying to figure out what went wrong with the team and where to go. Our team has now lost half of its members from last year, new freshman coming in have been turned off by the ego's of last years players and this fall's display of "team disunity". With no coach and no players able to be in role model/leader positions (due to the aforementioned egos) what is a team/player to do? We are a team that is solely funded by team dues and this year with only 14 players, we do not have enough money to buy balls for practice let alone travel to play games.
Sorry for this long rant but I am just curious what other people would do in this situation or what could be done? Do I just play out my senior year being happy that I can still play the game I love, or do I try and fix these things and stick around next year to help?
What do you do when the life has been taken out of a club program? I am a senior at a small college where the lacrosse spirit has been slowly draining from the campus here.
When I first came to the college the lacrosse program was only a year old but rapidly growing with more incoming freshman, such as myself in 02/03. The team and program seemed to be growing and building, with more players, more exposure, and more money. To state right here and now, our team has never had an official coach, we are isolated and cannot afford/find a coach, so our team has always been player run, which may have been the eventual downfall of our program. By the end of my freshman year the team had finished with an above .500 record, made our conference playoffs and lost by a narrow margin to the best team in the conference.
My sophmore year was much more promising with more players and talent coming and the same returning players as last year (much like my freshman year the team looked promising and expansive). At the end of my sophmore year the team had to say goodbye to of a few the most influential players on the team, players that had built the program and helped it grow, but we had high expectations that the "torch could be passed on".
The onset of my junior year showed the most promising class of talent coming into our school with high hopes of playoffs and maybe even a national bid. But after fall ball our team had lost its drive and expansion, inner squad fighting from larger than life egos plagued the team, and with no coach to help squash these issues the team began falling apart. By the end of the spring season what had looked promising, had now become a twisted downfall of fighting, bickering, and headbutting. The ego's of players began to clash, drama unfolded, and players lost the will/want to play the game.
Now here I am, in my senior year of lacrosse trying to figure out what went wrong with the team and where to go. Our team has now lost half of its members from last year, new freshman coming in have been turned off by the ego's of last years players and this fall's display of "team disunity". With no coach and no players able to be in role model/leader positions (due to the aforementioned egos) what is a team/player to do? We are a team that is solely funded by team dues and this year with only 14 players, we do not have enough money to buy balls for practice let alone travel to play games.
Sorry for this long rant but I am just curious what other people would do in this situation or what could be done? Do I just play out my senior year being happy that I can still play the game I love, or do I try and fix these things and stick around next year to help?