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Lacrosse camp only for the dedicated

Roughly 160 participants from all over the region gather to take advantage of instructors' knowledge at Mary Washington camp.

Date published: 7/28/2006

By KURT NICOLL

There might be hotter beds of lacrosse talent, but Brendan Bailey jumped at the opportunity to attend the five-day instructional camp held this week at the University of Mary Washington.

"I like the school; the campus and area are really nice. And being close to D.C. and Baltimore was important to me," the 17-year-old defensive specialist from Durham, N.C., said before a recent afternoon session. "[Coming now] gave me a true feeling of what it is going to be like."

Bailey's Cardinal Gibbons team in Raleigh won a state title in the spring and UMW is near the top of his list of potential colleges. The past two summers he has attended camps at Duke and Washington and Lee.

Bailey's family has a rich lacrosse tradition. His father played for Loyola of Baltimore and his mother for Frostburg State; a great-grandfather played in goal for Johns Hopkins.

Bailey may be one of the most talented of the roughly 160 campers attending, but he did not come the farthest. That distinction goes to a teenager from Rhode Island.

Campers range in age from 8 to 17 and are divided into three age groups for instruction and scrimmaging.

Besides the day campers from the Fredericksburg area, many participants come from Prince William County or Northern Virginia and stay overnight in one of the college's air-conditioned dorms. Besides frequent water breaks during the three-a-day workouts, campers also had several chances to cool off at the Goolrick Hall swimming pool.

West Springfield High School coach Chris Brengel has been a member of the camp's staff for six years and expresses a sense of pride in its growth.

"This camp has gotten better every year. Kurt [Glaeser] has done an outstanding job of bringing in more and more kids each year," said Brengel, who once served as Glaeser's assistant coach at UMW.

"I tell parents to give them at least 3-6 months to play the sport and they will either love it or not like it--there is no in-between," he added. "If a kid loves it, his job is to recruit two or three younger kids into the sport."

First-time campers Hunter Bell and Josh Larson seem to be picking up the sport quickly, perhaps due to their participation with the Fredericksburg Falcons hockey team.

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Date published: 7/28/2006