While many people spent their Saturday morning tucked fast-asleep, 30-plus lacrosse players braved the early morning chill for the 9th Annual Pleasant Hill’s Community Service Day – all for the betterment of others.
Said others were the students at Gregory Gardens Elementary School. Over the course of the day, the team weeded and replanted the school’s gardens, helped build cabinets, and even tackled a project of great artistic ambitions: painting the United States across a stretch of the school’s playground concrete area. This year marks the third year running that the team has collaborated with the school – something that Principal Cheryl Kolano was eager to praise.
“It’s so great that the team have come to help us again,” Kolano enthused. “We really appreciate their hard work, and it makes such a difference to the school.”
The lacrosse team is certainly no stranger to hard work. Their history, wrought with arduous struggles, began in 2008 when Terry Armstrong – now the club’s advisor – first inquired about establishing a lacrosse program at DVC. While the athletic director was quick to dismiss his efforts, Armstrong found support in Ralph DePew, the PE department chair. After some creative recruitment tactics, Armstrong was able to rustle up just enough lacrosse-enthusiasts to start a lacrosse club.
Despite being a club with no school funding, the team has managed to develop from a collection of players who lacked a proper uniform to a team that has beaten Stanford, UC Davis, and University of Nevada, Reno – just to name a few. “Although we are a club, we feel very much that we are a team,” explained Devon Bahary, Club President and Captain of the lacrosse team. “We were the first and remain one of the only community college lacrosse teams in California who play competitively against four year universities let alone other countries.”
Being a club has clearly not undermined the students’ dedication as athletes. “We might as well be taking a three-unit class,” Bahary admitted. “We practice nine hours a week, but we still have homework like everyone else… in that aspect we are no different from other student athletes.”
Indeed, the efforts of the lacrosse players have helped make DVC a model lacrosse program. Not only has the program attracted students from across the country, but other community colleges have approached Armstrong for a guide. “I’m going to have to sit down and write up the model,” Armstrong laughed.
Where the lacrosse community lacks in size it makes up for in passion. Attacker Chris Rowney explained, “When you find a football player, you compare how good your teams are. When you bump into a lacrosse player, you go, ‘you play lacrosse? Oh man, I love that sport!'”
It’s this deep love for the sport which has helped the players remain grounded despite their whirlwind of success. “We have a deep appreciation that we attend a community college with such a high transfer rate that also allows us to play lacrosse,” explained Bahary. “We want to give back to the community which has made this possible for us.”
The team certainly left their mark behind at the elementary school. The teams’ enthusiasm for the sport was clearly infectious, with third-graders squeaking their promise to show up at future lacrosse games. As midfielder Cory Callahan joked: “The only people who don’t like lacrosse are the people who don’t know about it!”
You can watch the Vikings play Simon Fraser University at the Viking Field on Friday the 5th of October, 1pm or watch them live on ustream.tv after searching for “Diablo Valley Lacrosse.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQBGaw9V1hU&feature=player_embedded&rel=0
