HealthyDebate wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2019 2:32 pm
Sorry been a while, the sand and ocean have kept me away. I saw a letter from Wellner to the Navy Community. I don’t have it but I’m sure someone does and I’d love for it to be shared. It was very heartfelt. I also know he reached out to the team and sent a letter as well.
I’m excited for next year. I’m going to miss seeing some familiar faces but change is sometimes good and I’m embracing that. I believe the team is as well. Let’s support them and the new staff. OJF it’s time to move on. We can not change what has happened so why continue to debate it. It is what it is.
If someone has Wellner’s letter please post. At the very least we can root for ND when we don’t play them.
A total class act in every sense of the word :
Fore
“T”
Message From Ryan Wellner
Please see below message from Ryan Wellner:
Navy Lax Brotherhood,
I hope this email finds you well and enjoying the summer months. I wanted to take a moment of your time to thank you for the support, dedication and sacrifice you have shown not just me, my family but most importantly the men of Navy Lacrosse.
As I set upon the beginning of a new chapter in my personal and professional life I will always remember fondly my days at the Naval Academy. It has profoundly shaped me and has made me a better man, husband, father and friend, not to mention, a better coach. While I am sad to leave the men in the lockerroom and the recruits in the pipe line, I am confident they are all there for the right reasons and their journey will be one of selflessness and great success.
It goes without saying, I will forever love the Naval Academy and Navy Lacrosse and most importantly the bonds we have formed with the players and some of you. On behalf of my family- THANK YOU. It has been a great honor to work at a place that is far greater than any one person and stands for something far bigger. I am humbled to have worn the Navy Blue and Gold and I am a better man for it.
Sincerely Yours,
Ryan Wellner
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
OCanada wrote: ↑Mon Jul 29, 2019 7:05 am
The answer to your question is after dismissing RM the way Chet did and getting rejected by numerous coaches they had to pay more than the market to sign RS and get a coach. Comparison not conflation; the difference between how the FB team did it and the lax team back then. Illustrative. I could day the same about volleyball and water polo or....
Amplo is doing everything right from what I hear.
Winning...Amplo was 4th choice(that we know of); did he back up the truck for Amplo, probably. Best of luck Navy---you're gonna need it! OBJ, out.
PS GREAT career move by RW, best of luck to him and his family. RS's assistants turn out ok(Lars, Chemotti, etc...)
Seahawk wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:18 am
IL reporting that a Napster Lamond #61 recruit has chosen to go to Jacksonville. Any other losses/transfers for incoming class?
Peace out.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
Seahawk wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 8:18 am
IL reporting that a Napster Lamond #61 recruit has chosen to go to Jacksonville. Any other losses/transfers for incoming class?
Peace out.
If there are, you won't see it here...doesn't fit the Nirvana narrative.
Here we go again?! I guess Navy fans have to wait 5 years until Amplo gets his recruits to run his offense before success? His record suggests otherwise but losing a top 100 recruit doesn’t help.
Seahawk wrote: ↑Tue Jul 30, 2019 12:24 pm
Here we go again?! I guess Navy fans have to wait 5 years until Amplo gets his recruits to run his offense before success? His record suggests otherwise but losing a top 100 recruit doesn’t help.
Not the first year that a couple of recruits haven't made it through NAPS. Last academic year was devastating and they lost a few earlier this NAPS academic year, including one during Indoc and one to Coach Tillman. This top 100 departure was late in the game and he didn't make it to I-Day for the Class of 2023 for some reason. Same with another from PA who ended up at a local school. Better now than later at USNA when the spot can't be filled.
Big question for Coach Amplo will be NAPS and how does it fit with his strategy, whatever it is. Does it work for his vision and/or what changes will he make?
Nice words out of Coach Wellner. In the final analysis, he is probably a big, if not the biggest, winner in the coaching musical chairs v.2019.
Over/under is still six.
Go Navy Lacrosse v.2020!
Last edited by laxpere on Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“The greatest accomplishment is not in never falling, but in rising again after you fall.” Vince Lombardi
"Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are...." John Wooden
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.
Hello fellow Navy MLax fans! Emerging from a period of lax hibernation, including on this board. A few thoughts:
1. Welcome to Coach Joe Amplo! He seems like a great fit for the unique demands of the Navy job and he’s assembled a great coaching staff. He’s known as “one of the good guys” in college lacrosse and has had plenty of challenges at Marquette such that he not only should be able to deal with the constraints of service academy athletics but might be excited about some of the real advantages (e.g. geography, history) of coaching at Navy. I’m looking forward to seeing the product on the field in the Amplo era.
2. My suggestion for “if the coaching staff reads FanLax” (which they almost assuredly do not!): If it is not already under way, undertake a serious re-evaluation of the pros and cons of NAPS for MLax. Perhaps there is no way of truly measuring if a kid who pulls the ripcord from NAPS would do the same from USNA itself, but living a year in a sort of limbo while other college programs’ coaches “check to see how you are doing” (looking at you, John Tillman) seems like it makes the off ramp awfully easy. If they have the academic chops (and maybe that’s the sticking point), I’d like to see Navy go with the direct admit model more of the time. Get ‘em on the Yard, get them part of the brotherhood/sisterhood, get them playing big time lacrosse right away instead of the truncated schedule with a jury-rigged squad at NAPS, and wouldn’t more of them stay? I would think a fair amount of the lax recruits could hack it academically and would stick with Navy. Maybe that’s way off base but it’s a thought.
3. Fair winds and following seas to the prior coaching staff. Good luck to Coach Wellner in his new job (Notre Dame is getting a good one) and best of luck to Coach Sowell and his family. There’s been a lot of well-deserved love on this forum for Coach Wellner, but it also speaks well of Coach Sowell that he identified Coach Wellner as a coaching talent and that he and Wellner worked together for 11 years at two programs. The coaching staff did an excellent job recruiting and both the HC and the assistants out on the trail should get credit for that. Coach Sowell was candid that the dismissal came as a shock to him and it’s not surprising he felt somewhat salty about it — even Starsia, one of the nicest guys around, struggled with a goodbye not on his own terms. Sowell and his staff delivered an exciting NCAA appearance that was a credit to them as well as to the players, and will be a good highlight of his tenure for him to remember proudly.
4. I think Coach Sowell had a fair chance in terms of time — 8 years is a good chance to show your stuff — and I ultimately felt that he was hamstrung by not being willing to allow more autonomy to an offensive coordinator. As many discussed, most eloquently youthathletics, the team did not innovate over the course of a season and was awfully predictable. It’s not a good sign when a team habitually has less success as a season wears on. Style-wise, Coach Sowell has a laser focus on lacrosse and a “just the facts” persona that ultimately probably wasn’t quite right for a service academy where it’s important for successful coaches to openly embrace the service academy mission and the culture that goes with it. In part because of that style, but also because of anger over the ousting of Richie Meade, Sowell took a lot of hits, at least in the online world. Some justified (on field tactics/practice plan stagnancy), some unjustified in my view: Sowell did not fire Richie Meade and the schadenfreude occasionally on display when the on-field results weren’t there was disappointing.
5. For the Oldjays of the world, who believe “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”: on the one hand, people on old LaxPower and then here relitigated the Meade firing/Sowell hiring for 8 years (and beyond). So the “move on already” message might seem a little forced or even hypocritical. However, I’d say now as I said then: this new coach did not fire anybody. He’s coming in and he’s doing his best for Navy lacrosse. The more we can celebrate the successes of the Navy players, the worse for the page count, maybe, but the better for this program we support.
The Orfling wrote: ↑Thu Aug 01, 2019 4:40 pm
Hello fellow Navy MLax fans! Emerging from a period of lax hibernation, including on this board. A few thoughts:
1. Welcome to Coach Joe Amplo! He seems like a great fit for the unique demands of the Navy job and he’s assembled a great coaching staff. He’s known as “one of the good guys” in college lacrosse and has had plenty of challenges at Marquette such that he not only should be able to deal with the constraints of service academy athletics but might be excited about some of the real advantages (e.g. geography, history) of coaching at Navy. I’m looking forward to seeing the product on the field in the Amplo era.
2. My suggestion for “if the coaching staff reads FanLax” (which they almost assuredly do not!): If it is not already under way, undertake a serious re-evaluation of the pros and cons of NAPS for MLax. Perhaps there is no way of truly measuring if a kid who pulls the ripcord from NAPS would do the same from USNA itself, but living a year in a sort of limbo while other college programs’ coaches “check to see how you are doing” (looking at you, John Tillman) seems like it makes the off ramp awfully easy. If they have the academic chops (and maybe that’s the sticking point), I’d like to see Navy go with the direct admit model more of the time. Get ‘em on the Yard, get them part of the brotherhood/sisterhood, get them playing big time lacrosse right away instead of the truncated schedule with a jury-rigged squad at NAPS, and wouldn’t more of them stay? I would think a fair amount of the lax recruits could hack it academically and would stick with Navy. Maybe that’s way off base but it’s a thought.
3. Fair winds and following seas to the prior coaching staff. Good luck to Coach Wellner in his new job (Notre Dame is getting a good one) and best of luck to Coach Sowell and his family. There’s been a lot of well-deserved love on this forum for Coach Wellner, but it also speaks well of Coach Sowell that he identified Coach Wellner as a coaching talent and that he and Wellner worked together for 11 years at two programs. The coaching staff did an excellent job recruiting and both the HC and the assistants out on the trail should get credit for that. Coach Sowell was candid that the dismissal came as a shock to him and it’s not surprising he felt somewhat salty about it — even Starsia, one of the nicest guys around, struggled with a goodbye not on his own terms. Sowell and his staff delivered an exciting NCAA appearance that was a credit to them as well as to the players, and will be a good highlight of his tenure for him to remember proudly.
4. I think Coach Sowell had a fair chance in terms of time — 8 years is a good chance to show your stuff — and I ultimately felt that he was hamstrung by not being willing to allow more autonomy to an offensive coordinator. As many discussed, most eloquently youthathletics, the team did not innovate over the course of a season and was awfully predictable. It’s not a good sign when a team habitually has less success as a season wears on. Style-wise, Coach Sowell has a laser focus on lacrosse and a “just the facts” persona that ultimately probably wasn’t quite right for a service academy where it’s important for successful coaches to openly embrace the service academy mission and the culture that goes with it. In part because of that style, but also because of anger over the ousting of Richie Meade, Sowell took a lot of hits, at least in the online world. Some justified (on field tactics/practice plan stagnancy), some unjustified in my view: Sowell did not fire Richie Meade and the schadenfreude occasionally on display when the on-field results weren’t there was disappointing.
5. For the Oldjays of the world, who believe “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”: on the one hand, people on old LaxPower and then here relitigated the Meade firing/Sowell hiring for 8 years (and beyond). So the “move on already” message might seem a little forced or even hypocritical. However, I’d say now as I said then: this new coach did not fire anybody. He’s coming in and he’s doing his best for Navy lacrosse. The more we can celebrate the successes of the Navy players, the worse for the page count, maybe, but the better for this program we support.
Best post I've ever read on either LP or this site. A fair analysis of Sowell's tenure without the vitriol. A perfect time for me to exit this space now that someone has brought some reasonable discourse. Go Navy, OBJ out
