AS PHYSICAL EDUCATION classes go, Diablo Valley College’s “Lacrosse 101″ is hard to top.
Consider that 45 students — 44 men and a lone female — take the class and comprise a club team that in its year-and-a-half existence already has faced off against such university squads as Cal, Stanford, Notre Dame de Namur-Belmont, Sonoma State and Chico State.
A year ago, the ambitious Vikings even upended Division II power UC Santa Cruz 11-10.
“I’m essentially an adjunct professor at Diablo Valley College running a lacrosse program through a P.E. class,” co-head coach Jeffrey Smith said. “And it’s the best P.E. class you could ever have.”
Without any other local junior college squads to face, DVC is taking its lumps against the big boys. The Vikings had lost five straight heading into the weekend.
But consider the big picture: After each game, the opposing coach is encouraged to make a presentation to DVC’s players, explaining to them what it takes to compete at a four-year program. Seven DVC players intend to transfer to Division I programs.
Team adviser Terry Armstrong, dean of counseling and student support services at DVC, admittedly knew only a “teeny bit” about lacrosse when he helped form the club last year. Now he enthusiastically endorses it.
Popularized on the East Coast, lacrosse is a back-and-forth sport in which players advance a hard rubber ball about the size of baseball toward a goal using a stick — the crosse.
Smith, who coaches DVC along with Jackson Riker, said the bigger guys play defense and tote the 6-foot-long poles; that the runners play midfield; and that the football/basketball types are the attack men, or goal-scorers.
Smith, who has coached at Cal and Saint Mary’s College and is a full-time teacher at Alhambra High, is a little like a master chef who’s cooking up something pretty special in Pleasant Hill.
The Vikings, who played respectably in a 10-4 loss to visiting Sonoma State on Wednesday, are led by De La Salle High graduate Laki Sotiropolous, a dominant defender who transferred from Syracuse after being the last man cut from the powerful squad, Armstrong said.
DVC also has a female backup goalie, Dahlia Singer (Miramonte), behind starter Mike Schleicher (San Ramon Valley). The team captains are Sotiropolous, attack man Marshall Bowden (Las Lomas), the team’s leading scorer, and midfielders Sam Nep and Alex Starr, both out of Acalanes.
Singer relishes the challenge and the camaraderie of training and competing around so much testosterone.
“It’s a lot of fun, actually,” she said. “They’re like my brothers.”
Singer has seen playing time against Cal and Chico State, and Smith raves about her hand-eye coordination and courage facing shots as fast as 90 mph.
“You have to have a lot of guts (to play goalie),” Smith said. “I wouldn’t step in there.”
Lacrosse is generally a spring sport, but by competing in the fall, DVC players don’t burn a year of eligibility, Armstrong said.
Why is DVC so good, so soon? It’s located in a lacrosse hotbed. According to Smith, nine of the state’s top 20 high school boys programs are within a 24-mile area of DVC, among them San Ramon Valley, Acalanes, Miramonte and De La Salle.
laxbuzz
