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Whole other ball game

In a land where pigskin and backboards rule, a new club tries to bring lacrosse to the fields of Hernando County.

By ABHI RAGHUNATHAN
Published December 28, 2005

	[Times photo: Edmund Fountain]
	Greg Longo, right of center, advises his team in between its drills at a Tuesday night practice at Veterans Memorial Park in Spring Hill. Longo is the director of the new Hernando Lacrosse Club, which is helping to introduce the sport to the county.

SPRING HILL - A steady drizzle falls, and thunder rumbles in the distance. But the kids sitting on the grass field at Veterans Memorial Park don't care much about getting drenched.

They just hope that the lightning doesn't keep them from playing a sport that didn't even exist in Hernando County a few months ago: lacrosse.

Greg Longo, 35, gives the okay after glancing at the dark sky one more time. Several dozen kids wearing helmets and carrying lacrosse sticks spring into action. The older members of the Hernando Lacrosse Club just have a few weeks of practice remaining before their season starts in January. In February, they will play their first official game against New Tampa's Freedom High School.

As he oversees the practice, Longo remembers his own youth. He grew up with lacrosse in New Jersey, played at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania and coached a team in North Carolina to a state championship last year.

His own zigzag journey has brought him to Hernando County. Along with other newcomers from the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, he hopes to establish the game here in his new hometown. Longo is the director of Hernando's lacrosse club and the coach of its countywide high school team.

For now, the Hernando Lacrosse Club hopes to field three teams: one for kids in Grades 4-6, a second team for seventh-and eighth-graders, and a third team for high school players.

Longo hopes to spark enough interest to expand even more, including starting a girls lacrosse team. The teams plan to play in the West Florida Lacrosse League and are seeking more players, especially for the youth and middle school teams.

It's an unusual game for Hernando County. Ask people what they associate with lacrosse, and they'll probably mention the Northeast, prep schools, maybe the Ivy league. Hernando County is more linked to traditional sports of the American South: baseball and football.

An American Indian game, lacrosse bills itself as the country's oldest sport. It might be described as a blend of soccer and hockey. Two teams armed with webbed sticks compete to score goals by running and passing a small, hard rubber ball that they try to hurl into goals similar to soccer nets.

"It's fast-paced," Longo said. "And everyone is important because it's a team sport. You can't hide somebody on the field here."

Lacrosse officials say it's the fastest-growing game in the country. They say it could take off the same way soccer did 20 years ago.

The game has meant a lot to Longo and the other coaches. Sean Arnold, 34, is a custodial manager for the school district who moved to Hernando in July. He played lacrosse for years while growing up in Syracuse, N.Y.

"A lot of kids have already played up there. Often, you're just tweaking. Here, you're starting from scratch," he said.

Arnold heard about the Hernando club from Mario Littman, a safety and security specialist for the school district. Littman, 47, has been living in Hernando for two years.

He played at Lindenhurst High School in New York, Suffolk Community College, and a year for a college team at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

"It's just one of the things I miss," he said. "I want to give kids here an opportunity to play the game."

For some of the kids, lacrosse eases homesicknesss. Mike King, 16, played lacrosse as a third-grader on Long Island. Four years ago, he moved to Florida and learned that it wasn't a big deal here.

"Football down here is like lacrosse up there," he said.

So he suits up now and practices on a field before an audience of zero in the rain. It's better than not playing, he says.

Some of the transplants like the newness of lacrosse in Hernando. Ben Noury, 15, grew up in Vermont, where every other kid seemed to take up lacrosse as soon as they could walk.

Here, it's different.

"In Hernando County, it's kind of like a beginning," he said.

That's true for kids like Ryan Behn, 17, a Hernando High student who grew up in Florida and wanted to try something new. He said lacrosse "takes a little bit more brains" than football and was helping him get into shape.

When the rain came pounding down on a recent Thursday evening and someone spotted flashes of lightning, Behn and the other players finally got off the field. They were drenched. And they couldn't wait to get back on the field for the next practice.

Times researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. Abhi Raghunathan can be reached at araghunathan@sptimes.com or 352 848-1431.

[Last modified December 28, 2005, 00:36:14]