MSU Golf Coach Joins the U.S. Navy
By Tom Lang
Casey Lubahn joined the U.S. Navy this summer – for 27 hours.
The head men’s golf coach planned the trip at the invitation of the Navy and took along 7-to-8 additional coaches, including Michigan State basketball’s Tom Izzo and football’s Mel Tucker.
It was familiar territory for Izzo, who took his team to San Diego 12 years ago to play hoops on a temporary basketball court on the same deck of the USS Carl Vinson, resulting in a two-point loss to North Carolina. This time, the ship and the experience took place at sea – more than 200 miles offshore according to Tucker.
“I stood there on the deck and I remembered back when we played there in 2011,” Izzo told the Lansing State Journal. “And I thought of the veterans we recognized before our games and how much hearing the national anthem means in those moments. But to get the opportunity to see these guys work, to be in their environment and then to spend the night on the carrier, it took on a whole different meaning. It was just the experience of a lifetime.”
Lubahn felt a similar vibe.
“Easily this was the coolest event I have done in life, no offense to James Piot (MSU’s 2021 U.S. Amateur Champion) or the Big Ten Championships or all the things we get to do in this profession. It’s the coolest thing I have ever done,” Lubahn told me in his only media interview on the topic.
Lubahn said within the first 20 minutes of landing on the ship via helicopter, the first F-18 super hornet landed 30 feet from their group. He said the sights and sounds cannot be appropriately explained. What impressed him more was the ship’s personnel.
“The core of the ship are people the same age as those we coach… and when they make mistakes, people (can) die. So, everything they do in life is calculated, it’s very disciplined, they are incredible about instruction and learning lessons.”
When touring the bridge, Lubahn said he was very focused on a young man who was steering the ship: “This kid is at the helm, and I’m thinking in my head that if this 18-year-old that just got into the Navy is steering the ship, steering must not be one of the hardest jobs. But then you think about a plane coming in at 150-160 mph; if the boat moves one or two degrees one direction, then that airplane is not going to land.
“So, his job for the next three hours was to make sure those pilots had a stable runway. Everyone on that ship has a job that could have catastrophic circumstances if they don’t do that job. So, we as coaches talked about how all that accountability between 5,200 people on that ship was incredibly important. And we should be able to have that accountability across our programs, whether 8-to-10 (players) or over 100 people, everyone needs to do their job.”
Tucker echoed some of Lubahn’s thoughts about the people on board, but also talked more about the sheer size of the sea-going vessel.
“The carrier looked like a postage stamp when we were in the air, but we (land) on the thing and it’s massive,” Tucker said at Big Ten media days. “It’s like three football fields long, it’s more than a football field wide.
“Yet the most remarkable thing is that the sailors were the same age of our football players, they are 18-to-22 year olds… the men and women doing all the heavy lifting on that ship. And it was serious, serious business.”
Tucker joked about how he and Izzo shared a room and slept – well, they tried to sleep but had a hard time doing so with jets taking off as late as 2:00 a.m. – in bunked quarters right below the flight deck.
“You know Tom, he’s just a salt of the earth type guy, and we walk in and he says (demandingly) ‘I’ve got the top bunk.’” according to Tucker. “I said ‘come on coach, let me go up there.’ He says, ‘no, no, I got it. You’re a bigger guy, I got it.’
“I don’t know how he got up there or how he got down, but he got it done.”
Lubahn was anticipating a dictatorial environment of a Navy leader barking orders and then they get done. But he witnessed a much more collaborative working environment than he expected.
“Very much more Ted Lasso, than maybe compared to Bobby Knight,” said Lubahn. “Just different leadership styles, but what I got to see was a bunch of young people who had input into the process and when you gave them the chance to be normal and be themselves, and have input, they were much more adaptive to changes.”
That realization carved out a strong impression for Lubahn that he has already begun discussing this summer with his golf team: “Don’t just do something because I say so, do it because we all believe in what’s going on.
“In athletics of course we talk about sports performance …. And the precision, the care, and just the quality of work that these young people do in the Navy was exceptional to see. What they do is truly inspirational and makes you proud to be an American.”
