June 17, 2005

By Elliot Olshansky

CSTV.com

GREENWICH, Conn. - Less than three weeks ago, Duke junior David Evans played for a national championship in front an NCAA record crowd at Lincoln Financial Field, taking part in an event that many hope helped to promote the further growth of lacrosse nationwide.

On Jun. 15, Evans once again played for a championship, and was again helping to promote the growth of his sport.  However, the similarities ended there.

Evans, who is spending the summer before his senior year as an intern at Merrill Lynch in New York, helped his company's team to a championship victory at the third annual Wall Street Lacrosse Tournament at the Brunswick School in Greenwich, Conn.

The tournament, which includes alumni from a host of Division I, Division II and Division III schools, is held annually to raise money for MetroLacrosse, a non-profit organization that provides sports-based character education programs to 500 inner-city children in the Boston area.

"We're giving kids an opportunity to play the game who otherwise wouldn't have it" said MetroLacrosse executive director Zack Lehman, "and then using that as leverage to get kids into educational programs and camps, and helping them get in to good schools."

The tournament attracted a wide range of ages, from summer interns - a category that also included Virginia's Matt Ward and Princeton's Tony Vita - to players who were encouraged by shouts of "Go, Daddy!" from the sidelines.  The range in ages made for quite an experience on the field.

For an intern like Evans, one of the youngest players in the tournament, playing with his company's team offers several interesting opportunities. "A lot of these guys used to be All-Americans," Evans said. "It's fun to see some of the older guys, who we grew up watching, and getting to play with them is a lot of fun."

Plus, being a current student-athlete, Evans was one of the best-conditioned players on the field, which might have helped him impress a superior or two.  Then again, maybe not.  "I think that the common line is, `you should have seen us ten years ago,'" Evans said."

For the older players, the changes in the way lacrosse has changed over the years can make the competition a bit more challenging, and maybe even a bit more fun.

"It's a great dynamic," said Loyola alum Pat Reed, who now works as a high-yield bond broker.  "The kids are better athletes. When I played, basically, all the lacrosse players were just that: lacrosse players.  It seems like today, a lot of the kids are two- or three-sport athletes who decided to convert into lacrosse players when they went to college.  You've got to get used to the speed of it.  You don't hold the ball as much.  Get it and get rid of it."

"There's so many different skill levels out there," said former Lehigh defenseman Tim Gosser. "You've got some of the old-school moves that can beat the young guys, and the young guys pull out some tricks that'll scare the old guys.  Altogether, it makes for a fun and interesting game."

One thing that hasn't changed over the years, of course, are the rivalries between the two schools.  The tournament offers graduates of schools like North Carolina and Johns Hopkins to compete against opponents who went to Duke and Princeton.

"We all work together," said former Dartmouth midfielder Jake Dwyer, who was part of the Merrill Lynch championship team, "and you have that every day. During the season, you're always getting on each other for wins and losses, but you definitely see it come out: Duke guys playing with Carolina guys, things like that."

It's not always like that, though. "Under the helmets, I'm not sure everyone knows who's who," Lehman, who also played for Dartmouth, said, "but I'm sure there's some rivalries out here. I'm sure there's more Wall Street rivalries out here than there are old college rivalries."

Paul LeSueur, a former Hopkins captain whose younger brothers just won a national championship with the Blue Jays, certainly isn't letting the old rivalries drive him on the field, especially since some of his new teammates come from rival schools. "It's nice to play on the same team with a lot of these Princeton guys who won championships," LeSueur said during a break in the action with the Merrill Lynch team. "I never got a chance to win one, but it's good to play with your heroes like [former Tigers goalkeeper] Scott Bacigalupo and the other guys."

In the end, though, the tournament isn't about renewing old divisions, but about coming together.  Specifically, it's about coming together to help MetroLacrosse, which helps the sport in addition to the children who get an opportunity to play it.  With Lehman and his team working to bring the game to inner-city children, the lacrosse community is becoming more diverse, and moving further way from the stereotype of a curiosity played primarily by East Coast preppies.

"Our program is kids from every walk of life," Lehman said. "Every ethnicity, every color, every religion,  The sport has been, predominantly, a white prep-school sport for a long time, but lacrosse is the fastest-growing sport in the country and it's only a matter of time before kids all over the country including urban areas pick it up."

And from that, Lehman and his fellow players hope, will come the next generations of the Wall Street Lacrosse Tournament.