NEW ERA
CAN YOUTH SPORTS AND LACROSSE BE THAT WAY AGAIN?
I. PASSION FOR PLAY
WHAT WAS YOUR UPBRINGING LIKE? My mom didn’t work until I was a teenager. My dad was the manager of a veneer mill in the Baltimore area. He was a very blue-collar guy. My mom was kind of a horsey person. We had a couple of horses and she loved it. We grew up solid middle class.
My parents wanted to send me to St. Paul’s School. My brother, who is 10 years older than me, went to St. Paul’s from K-12. And I went to St. Paul’s from K-12. Lacrosse was very much a part of the fabric there. I picked up my first stick in third grade. It was just something you did at St. Paul’s. And I just loved it.
WHY DID LACROSSE BECOME YOUR VOCATION AND LIFELONG PASSION?
Team sports generally are my lifelong passion. My parents were divorced when I was 10. Pretty ugly situation. They’re both deceased now. But it was a tough divorce, tough family situation. My brother was in college, so he was out of the house. It was me and my mom. My dad had moved out.
One of the things St. Paul’s gave me was this
very close-knit community, where the teacher- coach model was really fundamental to the educational experience. The nurturing that I received through sports generally and through the adult male role models who were teachers and coaches at St. Paul’s was incredibly formative for me, because my dad wasn’t around in those days.
WHAT WAS ENRICHING ABOUT YOUR LACROSSE EXPERIENCE?
The people. I grew up with coaches who were concerned about the person and the child, and sport was a way to motivate a child, to teach life lessons to a child. It wasn’t all about winning and losing. It wasn’t all about sport specialization. It wasn’t all about getting recruited to play at the next level. It was taking a child where he is and trying to use sport to develop that child to the next level.
34 LACROSSE MAGAZINE » September/october 2016
TELL ME ABOUT THE CAROLINA DAYS.
Willie Scroggs was a continuation of the teacher-coach model I experienced at St. Paul’s. My freshman class was a hodgepodge. The next class was an outstanding class that really defined the program, the Tom Searses, the Peter Voelkels, just outstanding players, several of whom are in the Hall of Fame now. And then he just built on it.
To pay for the uniforms, we cleaned Kenan Stadium, a 50,000-seat football stadium. Every Sunday at 6 a.m., after a home game Saturday, we were there rain or shine. It created a bond for that team.
Sure, and it is that way now. There are a lot of men and women out there exhibiting the same types of behaviors and philosophies that I experienced. It’s just that there are many more men and women who are focused on youth sports as a commodity and an industry. Club programs have been vilified because they represent a shift in the culture of the sport — a free market approach to youth sports. However, I don’t think club programs are necessarily the evil empire. There are a lot of club programs out there that are doing great stuff. We just have to be vigilant about being good consumers.
YOU PLAYED IN THE ARMADILLO GAME. HOW BIZARRE WAS THAT?
It was surreal. That was one of the only times that I broke curfew the night before. Going into that game, we were very confident. Virginia had blown out W&L, and we had handled Virginia. The team took W&L lightly. And that’s exactly what W&L was planning.
It was in Lexington, and we played right into their hands. Coach Emmer had a brilliant although controversial strategy that worked. Of course, it was outlawed the very next week. I didn’t have friends on W&L then, but my teammates did. And the night before we played, some of the friends from the W&L team conveyed kind of vague apologies almost. “Whatever happens tomorrow...” In retrospect, there was an expression of regret for what we were going to experience.
YOU GRADUATED. NOW WHAT?
I got a degree in journalism from Carolina, and I wanted to be a writer. I got a job during the day at a chemical warehouse, and then at night I worked at a liquor store. I moved in with a friend into an apartment and worked those two jobs — moving 50-gallon barrels of pool chemicals during the day and selling beer at night while looking for a job in my chosen field. I got a job at Nichols Publishing Services. One of the sub-contracted projects was Lacrosse Magazine, which the former Lacrosse Foundation started back in the late ’70s. I became the associate editor and then editor. I started with The Lacrosse Foundation in the fall of ’84. Executive director. The starting salary was $17,000. I didn’t know what I was getting into. I guess I mumbled the right words in the interview about what the sport meant to me and what I thought the potential of the sport was, and it resonated. My job was to build the resources for the organization so we could invest more in growing the sport.
A Publication of US Lacrosse
©BRIAN SCHNEIDER
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