o matter what, keep them moving. Any coach will tell you that. It’s a lacrosse truism: The only bad drill is a slow drill. It goes double for the tiny attention spans of middle school boys. By that measure, the drill that opened a recent joint practice with Harlem’s Promise Academy II Titans and the Raleigh Mavericks on Duke’s campus was a total disaster. Fifty players
formed six lines, far too few, and passed a single ball in a big circle. When two players completed a pass, the other 48 had nothing to do. Their attention drifted. That’s when what should have been the worst possible drill for middle school boys turned out to be the perfect one. They started talking. The Mavericks asked the Titans about the long bus ride
from Harlem to Durham, and the Titans asked the Mavericks about their league. With mismatched donated equipment and uniforms, the mostly black Promise Academy II team, or “PA2”, looked nothing like the overwhelmingly white Mavericks, who arrived at Duke in matching jerseys, shirts and shorts. But as they waited in lines, the teams compared equipment, taking off helmets and gloves for a better look. “What time do y’all get out of school?” Bashir Sabree, a
Titans seventh-grader, asked two Mavericks. “Three o’clock,” one responded. “Oh,” said Sabree, 12, slightly defeated. PA2 gets out earlier. He tried again.
“What time do you have to be at school?” “8:15.”
Sabree gave a satisfied smile. “We have to be in the building at 8 o’clock,” he said, “and in the classroom at 8:05.” The Titans are run by Harlem Lacrosse and Leadership, a non-profit organization that builds in-school mentoring programs based around lacrosse in New York City’s low- income and minority neighborhoods. HLL organizes teams, collects equipment donations and employs full-time staff to work in the schools as coaches, mentors and teachers. HLL teams regularly visit NCAA campuses and prep schools. April’s visit to Durham was arranged by board members with Duke ties. The team met privately with school academic officials, coach John Danowski and several Duke players, including All-American midfielder Myles Jones. Jones, who is black, has visited HLL clinics in Harlem and regularly promotes the game in black communities. This year, according to PA2’s senior program coordinator Jacques Ward, HLL enrolled about 300 boys and girls in five middle schools — four in Harlem and one in Baltimore. The goal is to send them to high-performing prep schools. “We’ll raise money to support those kids so they don’t have to pay anything,” Ward said. Ward grew up in East Harlem. To keep him out of trouble, his mother signed him up for New York’s Doc’s Lacrosse league. Lacrosse led Ward to the Governor’s Academy in Byfield, Mass., and eventually Skidmore College, where he was an All-American in 2011. “We’re not just with them in the afternoon. We see them
all day, every day,” he said. “We know what’s going on with their grades, their families, their friends.” One PA2 player, Terrence Rembert, 14, stood out for his play — and his shoes. As he twisted and spun past
40 LACROSSE MAGAZINE » June 2016
BY MATT WHITE How two
youth lacrosse teams from
vastly different worlds found common
ground at Duke HARLEM TO
defenders to shoot, his gold high-top Under Armour cleats shimmered. They looked tight on his feet, but that’s because he has had them a while. And he plans to wear them as long he can. They were a gift from his mother, Stephanie Jones, who passed away earlier this year.
“They were one of the last things my mom bought for me,” said Rembert, who now lives with his sister. He found HLL during his mom’s final year, and the support of Ward and other coaches have been at the center of his life since. “She was sick my whole life," Rembert said. "She had breast
cancer, and then bone cancer and then it was cancer all over.” When Rembert joined HLL, his mother had never heard of lacrosse. “This is the thing I showed her,” he said, his face breaking into a grin. “But she taught me how to string sticks. I would watch videos with her. She caught it after the first try.” It was the perfect way for a sick mom to connect with her energetic son. She showed him how to weave the strings, where to pull tight and when to let go.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
©MATT WHITE
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