By Staff
Athletic Management, 18.4, June/July 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1804/wulaxcity.htm
Less than a year ago, most of the players on the boys’ and girls’ lacrosse teams at A. Philip Randolph High School in New York City had never even heard of the sport. But that changed when Athletic Director Aquenette Purnell-Hurd, with help from nearby colleges and community organizations, decided the time was right to bring lacrosse to Harlem.
“As a predominantly minority high school, we have a lot of kids who’ve never played this game and don’t even know what it is,” says Purnell-Hurd, who helps coach the girls’ team although she’s never played lacrosse herself. “We’ve been able to expose them to a new activity, encourage them to learn new skills, and provide opportunities for college scholarships. It’s been a great addition to our program.”
To make the dream of lacrosse at Randolph a reality, Purnell-Hurd enlisted the help of Manhattan businessman Mat Levine, who runs CityLax, a non-profit community organization dedicated to bringing lacrosse to underrepresented minorities in New York City. Levine, a former Williams College player whose youth lacrosse program practices on the same field as Randolph, created a business plan for the new teams and presented it to the Public School Athletic League (PSAL), which oversees competitive sports at New York City’s public schools. With a start-up grant from the PSAL, another grant from the Board of Education, and private donations to CityLax, Levine raised enough money to purchase quipment and hire two Randolph teachers as head coaches.
In November 2005, Levine began visiting Randolph’s physical education classes, where he introduced students to the basics of ball control and stickhandling. Levine and Purnell-Hurd also hosted a series of free Saturday morning workshops in which student-athletes were paired with CityLax volunteers—most of them former college players—for one-on-one training.
“That first Saturday morning, only nine boys showed up. But there was something magical in the air,” says Levine. “This was not the same as in the gym classes, where I was facing 40 to 80 kids at a time and half of them were wondering why they weren’t playing basketball. On Saturday morning, the kids were listening to our instructions and working hard at the drills we put them through.
“At the end of the session, we asked them to come back, ”Levine continues. “And if they agreed, we let them take the sticks home to practice during the week. And we asked them to bring a couple of friends to the next workshop.”
With the support of Randolph’s fall and winter coaches, who encouraged their athletes to attend the Saturday workshops, Levine and Purnell-Hurd created a core group of about 25 boys and 12 girls over the course of the preseason. Some were among the best athletes in the school, and others had never formally participated in Randolph athletics. With teams traveling to away games on the subway, Purnell-Hurd created a schedule with contests against New York City’s six current public high school lacrosse programs, as well as tournament play against area private schools.
For Purnell-Hurd, starting these two teams is the first step in establishing a long-standing lacrosse program. For Levine, Randolph represents the beginning of a plan to expand the sport across New York City’s public school system. It’s an unorthodox strategy that attempts to build support by creating a handful of competitive high school teams, which will then encourage the creation of feeder programs at the junior high school and youth level.
“It’s a little counterintuitive because most people in the lacrosse world say you need to build a base of players who can learn the game at a young age, and you need to start at the community level,” says Levine. “But I don’t think kids in this community will be excited by lacrosse until they see people playing it at the high school level.”
Levine intends to expand fundraising for the program to include support from foundations and corporations, using former lacrosse players to establish connections. He has also partnered with the Goddard Riverside Community Center to provide college admissions counseling for Randolph student-athletes who are interested in college scholarships.
Purnell-Hurd says the key has been making use of all the outside help she could get. “To find people who are willing to work with your student-athletes, connect with a college coach or a youth lacrosse program,” she advises. “In the first year or two that you’re building the program, it may take some extra effort to get kids interested. But anybody who has an opportunity to introduce a lacrosse program should do it.”