SPORTS DESK

LACROSSE; Prep School Game Introduces Motivation Skills to Inner City Children

By SOPHIA HOLLANDER

''What's wrong?'' she said.

''We can do this,'' he said.

Graham, a sandlot football coach in New York since the 1960's, looked at lacrosse and saw basketball rules on a soccer field with football's physicality, all combined with running. He knew kids who could run. He thought lacrosse was a skill he could teach that some inner-city children could use to expand their opportunities.

So in 2000, Graham turned down a job to coach high school football and instead founded the Brooklyn Admirals. The Admirals are part of a growing movement that participants call motivational lacrosse. They are trying to bring the suburban and prep school game to the inner city, where players can advance personal goals, on and off the field.

U.S. Lacrosse, the sport's governing body, says it is working with 20 similar organizations in cities across the country, including San Francisco, Boston, Newark and Wilmington, N.C. The programs range in size, structure and emphasis; some use lacrosse to help improve students' academic performances, others emphasize drug- and alcohol-abuse prevention.

Zach Lehman started MetroLacrosse five years ago when he was a student at Harvard Law School. He began coaching a team in Charlestown, Mass. The program now serves 900 children in grades 5 to 12. In addition to teaching lacrosse, it offers college counseling, mentoring partnerships and community service, all supervised by eight full-time employees.

Graham's program in Brooklyn works on a different scale. The Admirals have 24 players who are in grades five through eight; all but one are boys. In addition, Graham and one of his coaches teach lacrosse once a week to 30 girls at their public schools. The Admirals are also planning to begin a team for third and fourth graders.

Graham, the program's chief executive, and Harold Jones, the president, both have full-time jobs. Graham teaches special education in New York City, and Jones works for the New York State Psychiatric Institute in Manhattan. Graham requires players to bring their report cards to practice to monitor their progress and to understand their interests and abilities better.

''It's been quite a beautiful thing because most kids don't have a clue about what they're doing,'' Graham said. ''But we explain it in terms of what they know.''

But it is not only the youngsters who can get confused. When Lehman, the founder of MetroLacrosse in Charlestown, distributed equipment to his first group of players, he received a call from a police officer, who wanted to know why he had armed children with long metal sticks.

Lehman, the program's executive director, said he had also encountered some people who disapproved of the sport's outreach attempts to minorities. ''Ninety-nine percent of the people want to see the sport diversified,'' he said. ''But then there's that rare person who wants to keep the sport in its traditional setting. That just gives us more strength to really make the sport inclusive.''

The majority of programs struggle to find volunteers and money to pay for the expensive equipment and traveling costs. Graham and Jones estimated that they spent $17,000 of their own money last year, most of it for bus rentals. But some days, someone might need lunch money or bus fare.

The young athletes' lack of familiarity with lacrosse often intrigues them and, because the sport is new to almost everyone in their neighborhoods, it offers a chance for them to feel immediately competitive.

''If you haven't started playing basketball in the fifth grade in the inner city, you're in trouble,'' Lehman said. ''If you can't slam dunk by the sixth grade, you're done.''

A broad range of body types can excel at lacrosse, which uses more players than many team sports. It also provides girls with a chance to compete without comparisons to the boys' game because girls' lacrosse is a noncontact sport.

''I feel if I hadn't had lacrosse, I would have had a much different life and it would not have been as good,'' said Beau McCaffray, the program director in Wilmington. McCaffray's parents had alcohol problems, he said, and lacrosse was an escape.

Now McCaffray is helping others to use the game in a way that served him. ''The sticks have been a great anger management tool,'' he said.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Admirals practiced indoors at the Pratt Institute's gym in Brooklyn. Several parents sat along the wall on blue mats while their children lined up in matching uniforms for drills.

As Bill Carney, one of four volunteer coaches, demonstrated how to cover an attackman, he bumped a small boy, sending the boy flying across the floor. The boy quickly scrambled to his feet and slipped back in line. The next defender executed the coverage correctly.

''That was not intentional,'' Carney said. ''I forgot I was playing against a 120-pound person instead of a 220-pound person.''

But why give them special breaks? ''We're not a poverty program,'' said Jones, the Admirals' president. ''We're looking for an opportunity, but we're full of energy and we're full of ability. We put in front of these children leaders and college grads. They may end up being a lousy lacrosse player, but they'll be a college grad.''

The Admirals are hoping to use lacrosse to help youngsters gain admission to prep schools and, ultimately, to colleges. They hope participants will have opportunities for scholarships and learn lessons in discipline, teamwork and other essential skills.

While it is too soon to know how successful the Admirals will be, similar clubs have already helped players get into college. This year, the first group of MetroLacrosse players graduated from high school; of the six players, four are now enrolled in college.

Last June, the Admirals traveled to an annual 80-team festival run by U.S. Lacrosse at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass., with MetroLacrosse the only other motivational team in attendance.

After the Admirals lost their first game, 17-0, Graham walked away and wondered what went wrong. Then he realized that none of his players were with him. They were still standing on the field.

''We've got to practice,'' they told him.

The team stayed until the mosquitoes drove them away. They lost their next game, 4-0. They did not win a game, but the Admirals impressed the people from U.S. Lacrosse, who will help defray costs for motivational teams that attend the tournament this year.

''People said: 'Are you from Brooklyn, Massachusetts? Brooklyn, Maryland?' '' Graham said. '' 'No,' we told them. 'Brooklyn, New York.' ''

By the end of the trip, several students expressed a desire to attend college for the first time, Graham said.

Yousef Moshin, 14, and several teammates recently toured Poly Prep Country Day School in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Dressed in suits and ties, they wandered through the fields and around the two lakes where several art students were quietly sketching.

Lee Pollard, a 13-year-old attackman, said that comparing Poly Prep with his public school in Queens was like comparing ''Russia to a tiny country, like Kuwait.'' Lee, who lives with his mother and brother, was the only Admiral to interview at the school; he will learn this month whether he is accepted.

''I knew something was missing in his life,'' said Teresa Pollard, his mother, who came to the United States from Brazil. ''And then the lacrosse came in his life. I knew that's going to make a difference in him. I don't have a big degree. I don't have family. I'm alone in this country. So I have to find a way, a door for my son to use his abilities and his intelligence.''