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January 5, 2010 E-MAIL PRINT

To our sport's Mecca, and back

by Ed McCarthy/

Back in the day, during one of my first lacrosse games 30 years ago in Newton, Mass., Coach Clark screamed in that raspy, desperate coach’s voice known to us all, “McCarthy, GILMAN the ball!!  GILMAN IT!” And after throwing the ball into the infamous cluster of thornbushes near the sidelines of that primitive, boggy, all-purpose Warren Field off of Route 16, I ran, confused, to the sidelines with my Superlight Two, one of the first plastic stick models, and asked Coach Clark, a great mentor to me and a great collegiate football player and Newton alum: “What’s a Gilman, Coach?”

“It means throw the ball as far as you can.  Launch it!” he screamed. But after the game, because I was still confused by the term, I inquired, and he told me that the Gilman School in Baltimore was essentially the center of the lacrosse world.  I was intrigued, and like all young athletes, the dreams began.

Massachusetts lacrosse then was undeveloped, characterized by rough play on the ground, simple sticks, and divot-filled grass fields where, if you hit a player at the right time in the right place, he might end up in a thornbush. It was coached by football and hockey coaches who taught football and hockey players how to cradle, pass, catch, hit, and sometimes fight. We had a provincial perspective. That is, no one knew what or where or even who Gilman was.

What I did know was that lacrosse could open the door to lifelong opportunities.  And soon, Coach Clark’s assistant, Bussy Adam, a young, mustached, motorcycle-driving Newton alum who had played in the national all-star game in Baltimore, took me under his wing, showing me that the most important decision in my life would be choosing a school not for its name but for its fit, a challenge that many high school student-athletes and parents face today.

Because I was an all-star football player, Penn and other schools recruited me to play the sport, so I thought that my college experience would be planned and predictable.  It was not.  After being accepted to Boston College and meeting with all-world player and BC lacrosse coach Brooks Sweet, I thought that my college years would consist of studying business and running midfield in Chestnut Hill, which is what my parents wanted. Yet in my senior year, when watching a BC lacrosse game versus Massachusetts Maritime, a team that had been coached by the legendary Bob Shillinglaw (now at Delaware), I learned that I could attend a great engineering school, play immediately, and not have to worry about attending a school that my family could not afford.

In short, Massachusetts Maritime was the perfect fit for me.  I was a bright public school kid and the son of World War II-generation parents who did not attend college, and who therefore could not counsel me, so finding the right college was critical.  My high school coaches — men who measured you by your character and not by whether your father attended an Ivy League school — knew what was right for me, and wonderfully, Massachusetts Maritime allowed me to travel around the world, taught me to love learning, and eventually led me to double major in pure mathematics and English. I then received a master’s in English Education from UMass and a master’s in English from Middlebury. What a journey.

After an exciting high school and collegiate playing career at Mass. Maritime, I landed back in Newton coaching alongside Coach Adam at Newton North, and after eight straight league championships, five Eastern Massachusetts championships, three state championships, and a national ranking, it was time to explore dreams. After registering with a national independent school placement agency, what school from Baltimore called me one night in early spring?  Gilman.  But St. Paul’s, another vaunted lacrosse program in the storied Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association prep league, offered me an attractive position as an English department chair and football, wrestling, and lacrosse coach, After some negotiating, I accepted St. Paul’s offer. I was finally on my way to lacrosse’s Mecca.

When my wife and I unpacked our U-Haul boxes and eagerly left our apartment at 148 Murdock Road in Baltimore for a walk, we immediately realized we had landed in the epicenter of lax culture. We were right around the corner from Towson Stadium. Only one street away, the Kelly Post Youth League organized boys and girls in an amazingly efficient training program for future stars. Its bumper stickers read: The Nation’s Oldest Youth Lacrosse Program.

We found ourselves within a 45-minute drive of six major national collegiate lacrosse powers: Maryland, Navy, UMBC, Towson, Loyola, and Johns Hopkins.  Loyola and Hopkins — also the home of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame — were a bike ride away.  But of greatest interest was the high school scene, and the famous MIAA prep school lacrosse league, my new workplace.

I soon met Mitch Whiteley, the legendary St. Paul’s head coach. Since 1940, the Crusaders had won 24 MIAA/MSA championships, had sent more than 300 athletes to Division 1 programs, and had been represented by at least one player in every NCAA Final Four tournament game.  His last comment, though, was the most threatening: “You will be proud to coach here, but because there are seven teams led by some of the best coaches in the country, you will have to put in your time.”

In my first season at St. Paul’s, a K-12 independent school,  I coached one of the three middle school teams and in the Upper School.  Fortunately, my Upper School placement was with the junior varsity, a team that went 16-1 and beat Boys Latin in the MIAA JV championship. There were more spectators at that JV game than there were at any of the five Massachusetts state championship games in which I had coached.  After the game, Coach Whiteley told me that I had earned my spot on the varsity as the defensive coordinator. In only one year, the dream was coming true, but what I was about to enter was a position of pressure and intensity, things on which I thrived, but a far cry from Massachusetts lacrosse.

In my first year, St. Paul’s faced the most competitive collection of teams in the United States.  Our schedule included legendary MIAA teams such as Loyola-Blakefield, Boys Latin, and, yes, Gilman.  Out-of-league opponents included Western Reserve of Ohio; Georgetown Prep from D.C.; Cherry Creek, Colo.; Garden City of Long Island; Malvern Prep of Pennsylvania.  All powers.

Yet while facing the pressure, I was able to analyze what made these Baltimore kids so great: experience, competition, and culture.  Seniors at St. Paul’s, for example, had probably played in more than 500 youth, camp, club, indoor, and school games prior to their senior year.  Not only had they played in all those games, they had played alongside the most skilled players in the country.  Recently, a St. Sebastian’s player who had played in a club game in Baltimore said, “Those kids didn’t seem that good.”  Well, club games do not model MIAA competition, and this student’s measure of good was narrow-minded: He looked at the final score of the club game, and not at the fact that most of the players on the Maryland team did not have to play their best because they already had been recruited.  Eight from the St. Paul’s team that I coached have signed with Division 1 teams, and the others will be playing for the best Division 3 teams. College coaches trust the tradition and level of skill and coaching in the MIAA.  It is a proven commodity.

At St.Paul’s, I learned how to work on a staff of eight, run a practice, and demand excellence in every aspect of the game. And after seeing dozens of Division 1 college practices and games, I feel confident preparing young athletes to aspire to those heights. I also learned that home is where the heart is.  So after two Top 20 rankings in four years, and as the birth of my first son, Eamon, refocused my life goals and my wife’s goals towards Boston, it was time to return home.

I have missed Baltimore’s lacrosse world profoundly, but have found a new home back in Massachusetts as the assistant coach at St. Sebastian’s, following the lead of Shaun Stanton, a coach who puts pressure on the boys, but pressure to work hard, care for one another, and smile in the process. And at Sebs, I find myself evolving into two of my heroes, Coach Clark and Coach Adam, the men who encouraged me to excel in a game foreign to me, a game that gave much direction to my life, a game that is at the center of my love of teaching.  Lacrosse can provide young players with a goal, a Mecca, a future, and perhaps a profession.  And in the words of Coach Stanton, the most important lesson is to put the pressure aside and enjoy the ride.

Ed McCarthy is the director of the writing program and the assistant varsity lacrosse coach at St. Sebastian’s School in Needham, Mass. He is on of the board of advisors of the nonprofit MetroLacrosse in Boston and can be reached at middlewriter@yahoo.com.