December 22, 2011
Giving back through lacrosse
by William Wassersug/
Boston University and Siena were two of the women's teams sporting the special socks at the Catamount Classic. (photo: Mark Brodie/New England Lacrosse Journal)
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Through the years, sports and charities have in some ways become intertwined.
Everyone in New England thinks of the Red Sox when the Jimmy Fund is mentioned; for the past two years, Major League Baseball’s Roberto Clemente Award has gone to Red Sox players, with Tim Wakefield and David Ortiz honored.
Think of pink towels and shoes in the National Football League for breast cancer awareness. In hockey, regionally, it is the many charities supported by the Boston Bruins Foundation.
But a sport with less public awareness has done more than its share to raise awareness to charitable causes. Lacrosse has a culture that may make it the most giving of all games.
From simple gestures by individual players, to entire tournaments, to a charitable growth of facial hair to, yes, wearing pink, lacrosse is a sport that values giving and service off the field every bit as much as scoring on it.
While that spirit is easy to find throughout New England, there might not have been a better display than in early October, when 16 college teams descended on Thayer Academy in Braintree, Mass., to participate in the Catamount Classic Lacrosse for a Cure tournament.
The event benefiting the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and GU Oncology has grown from eight teams at its start in 2008 to the current 16 (eight each for the women’s and men’s brackets) and even had to turn teams away this year. Some 3,000 fans attended the event through the course of the day.
The idea started when a member of the University of Vermont men’s lacrosse team was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2007, forcing the team to learn about the disease and what it takes to combat it. From there, the Catamounts wanted to do something to help, and bringing the event to Massachusetts made it more centrally located and helped to draw the teams. Having raised more than $30,000 this year, the event has now donated more than $125,000 to the cause.
Participating teams included Sacred Heart, Brown, Bryant, Providence College, Holy Cross, UMass, Hartford and, of course, Vermont, on the men’s side, with Iona, Boston University, UConn, Holy Cross, Siena, Bryant, Brown and Vermont in women’s competition.
Tournament organizer Kelly Curtis said she is hoping it expands to two days next year, one day for women and another for the men. For Curtis — whose husband is Vermont head coach Ryan Curtis — the tournament has become a full-time endeavor.
“It is a full-time job now,” Curtis said, taking a moment as teams played and volunteers from all over New England and New York helped keep the tournament running smoothly. “I love it; Ryan loves it as well.”
The tournament itself is a microcosm of the way the sport brings people together for good.
“We do whatever we can do to help Dana Farber,” said Curtis, who at one time worked at Dana Farber. “Lacrosse is unbelievable. You see people who have never seen lacrosse keep coming back.”
On a more personalized level, Curtis pointed out a group of people that enjoyed the hospitality up close.
“There are four or five families here today that are Inspirational Families,” she said. “They have carte blanche. Everything is free.”
Breaking it down even more, sticks and equipment have been donated and volunteers abound.
“I asked Tewksbury Lacrosse and Matt Vasquez if they could come down with a handful of players,” Curtis said. “They came down and did anything we asked them to do.
“Lacrosse has the most amazing group of parents,” Curtis said. “We tell our players it’s the effort you put in, not just the money. We want to get the word out. We tell the players don’t go to the parents for money. They’re at every game.”
Hartford’s men’s team participated in the tournament and, at the same time, added a spice of its own by growing mustaches for the cause. The players grew their facial hair before the classic and got sponsors and sold T-shirts to raise an extra $2,500.
“The whole team doesn’t shave for a month and we see who has the best ’stach,” Hartford’s James Laughlin said. “We sell shirts for $20 each. It’s a fun rivalry.”
The mustache has become a popular charity tool thanks to lacrosse, a movement that has some New England roots.
Todd Faiella of Marshfield, Mass. — who finished his college career as an NCAA champion at the University of Virginia — and his college teammate Ken Clausen — now with the Denver Outlaws in Major League Lacrosse — started Mustache Madness, a month of growing cookie dusters to benefit prostate cancer research. That movement has brought in more than $100,000.
On the professional level, Major League Lacrosse is both a role model and a big contributor.
The MLL All-Star Game in July, held at Harvard Stadium, benefited the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
The partnership continued through the summer and included special signed All-Star jerseys that were auctioned off with proceeds going to JDRF.
“We are delighted to support JDRF through our signature event,” MLL commissioner David Gross said in a release in May. “Each year Major League Lacrosse partners with a charitable organization in order to give back to the community. JDRF has pioneered the support for diabetes research and awareness, and we are thrilled to align ourselves this year with such a worthy organization.”
Breast cancer awareness also was on the docket, with MLL teams playing a July game in pink helmets that were autographed and auctioned off through July. There have been special uniforms and other moves, all designed to raise money and awareness.
Other charities the league has supported in the game have been MetroLacrosse, Boys and Girls Club of America, Special Olympics of North America, Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), and Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.
In 2010, the All-Star Game benefited MetroLacrosse, an urban lacrosse program that started in Boston and now serves more than 700 children in Boston, Chelsea, Brockton and Lawrence, Mass.
Charity may begin at the league level, but it trickles down. The 2011 MLL champion Boston Cannons also are active in giving back.
The team was donating 20 percent of Cannons championship gear to MetroLacrosse during a MetroLacrosse Week. On Oct. 21, Cannons player Kevin Buchanan filmed an anti-bullying public service announcement for the Boston Sports Museum’s Anti-Bullying Campaign.
And all of the various lacrosse groups work together; the MLL championship trophy was on hand at the Catamount Classic, helping the cause by letting fans take a photo for a small donation.
The Boston Blazers indoor lacrosse team, which has suspended operations while searching for a new home for 2013, was equally active. In February, the Blazers teamed up with the Military Friends Foundation and donated $5 from advance ticket sales of their Heroes Night promotion to honor the memory of Lt. Scott Milley, an Army Ranger from Lincoln-Sudbury (Mass.) High School and the University of New Hampshire, who was killed in Afghanistan.
The team’s dance team, the Sparks, regularly attended charity events, and the team was active with youth lacrosse, hosting clinics and visits. The effort extended to the players, too; there was Brendan Thenhaus dying his mohawk pink when the team wore pink helmets for breast-cancer awareness, and Paul Dawson growing out his hair and using it as a charitable cause, raising money and ultimately donating his mane to Locks for Love.
Anyone who is involved in charity knows that one good deed brings out another. In 2010, Cohasset High School star Thomas Flibotte, a member of Cohasset’s state championship team, won a skills contest through the Blazers that netted him 25 Reebok sticks that valued at about $2,500. Flibotte turned around and donated the sticks to three programs — including one from a rival school — that needed the sticks more than he did.
To some, the whole thing might seem like an odd pairing, a sport that is tough and physical and punishing with a soft side. Even if it is an odd coupling, it works, and on a national level.
The Lax for the Cure tournament is known as one of the premiere tournaments for girls club teams, and it epitomizes the positive power of lacrosse. The tournament, based in New Jersey is not only a fundraiser in conjunction with the Susan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation, but it also is a tournament attended by college coaches and recruiters from all over the country. Virtually every club team that participates — including dozens of squads from New England — holds team fundraisers, and then turns the money over at the tournament; not surprisingly, organizers say the biggest fundraisers — and there are prizes for team and individual efforts — tend to come from teams where players’ families have been touched by breast cancer. The 2012 tournament already is sold out and the event should cross the $1 million charitable donation level next year.
In many cases, charitable lacrosse causes start organically, as the Catamount Classic sprang up from the illness of a player.
Another big lacrosse initiative at the college level is Lax-4-Life, which strives to raise awareness about suicide prevention. Lax-4-Life started in Pennsylvania, at West Chester University with NCAA Division 2 women’s teams participating. The movement started in memory of Allyson Rose Green, who took her own life in 2006.
Today, it has gone national and is a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization now involved through all collegiate divisions and at the high school level.
Salve Regina University in Newport has chosen a different avenue, directing its efforts to promoting stroke awareness and the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital after a player’s father had a stroke. The team had been taking donations and selling T-shirts with proceeds going directly to the hospital.
In all, there are too many good deeds and efforts to name. Whether it’s Sticks for Soldiers (a Thanksgiving charity tournament at Fairfield Ludlowe High School in Connecticut), Harvard University flying west to play in the San Francisco Fall Classic (which benefits the Bay Area Youth Sports Foundation) or fallball events including New England teams such as “Lacrosse for Hope” or “Play for Parkinson’s,” lacrosse teams seem to always be doing a bit more than just playing the game.
Salve Regina women’s coach Jen Eldridge summed up her team’s efforts simply, in a way that spoke for all lacrosse fundraising efforts: “As a team, we thought our donations could help more families receive this kind of treatment.”
This article originally appeared in the November-December 2011 issue of New England Lacrosse Journal.
William Wassersug can be reached at feedback@laxjournal.com
