No. 1 in the West : Whittier Poets Well-Versed on Lacrosse Field

People, places and things associated with lacrosse: sticks, helmets, fast feet, finesse, near-naked Indians, beer, Jim Brown, Canada, the Eastern Seaboard, Johns Hopkins University and Whittier College.

Whittier College? The Poets ?

They’ve become the No. 1 lacrosse team in the West (14-1 record), not because of their iambic pentameter but because of their rapid-fire shots that shake up goalies and their body checks that almost rock the Whittier hills looming above the playing field.

“Nice day for a ballgame,” Skip McDaniel, Whittier’s assistant coach, said Saturday before the Poets took the field against Claremont College in a Western Collegiate Lacrosse League playoff game.

Lacrosse is a ballgame, and that’s usually a necessary explanation in California, where the East Coast and Canadian sport is about as vague as the hilltops on a smoggy day.

But Saturday was clear, allowing the hills to shine in their shades of green, and the sport to come easily into focus. It was an idyllic setting that would have impressed even lacrosse-loving Easterners, to whom the game, after a rugged winter, is a springtime state of bliss in which magic unfolds on April grass.

And Whittier put on a magic act Saturday. Its shots--fired from sticks (crosses) that had net pockets attached to them--kept disappearing into Claremont’s red, 6-foot-wide by 6-foot-tall goal cage.

The barrage began when senior midfielder Ben Hieltjes, who looked like a swimming pool man armed with a skimmer, scooped up the little white ball, ran down the field and scored with only 15 seconds gone in the first period.

It never let up. “Make that net move, make it wiggle,” the Whittier players yelled, and they did. Living up to the sport’s motto--”the fastest on two feet”--the gold-jerseyed Poets used a fast break that would have impressed the Los Angeles Lakers. Most of the shots could be called “layups,” attempted only when the shooter was close enough to see the whites of the goalie’s eyes.

Junior Kitt Clark bore down on the area in front of the goal that has been worn to dirt. Then, when a defenseman came out to challenge him, he flipped the ball to Steven Sather, an attacker, who caught it deftly in his net and flicked it past a goalie who had no chance.

What it takes to win in lacrosse, besides a lot of players who grew up playing it in Canada or New Jersey, is quickness, agility and the ability to locate the open man and make the proper pass.

And, said Doug Locker, Whittier’s 28-year-old head coach, “an awful lot of endurance” to survive all that dashing and dodging and the checking that crackled shoulder pads and occasionally sent bodies flying.

But the Indians who invented the game in Canada in the 17th Century would have probably perceived modern lacrosse, played on a football field, as a piece of cake. Now they endured.

Barefoot and wearing only breechcloths and war paint, the Indians--often hundreds to a team--battled over a countryside--the goals were sometimes miles apart. Games would last several days. If a player did not perform up to his ability, he suffered a fate far worse than hearing a coach’s wrath--he would get a switching from squaws.

It was more than a game then, according to Bob Scott, former coach of Eastern collegiate power Johns Hopkins and author of a lacrosse handbook. “The roughness of the game served to accustom players to conditions of close combat, and its length to develop endurance for war and hunting parties,” Scott wrote.

Whittier’s only defeat this season was an 18-7 loss to Guilford during a spring trip to that North Carolina college.

“The West is a few years behind (the East),” Locker said. Eastern colleges such as Johns Hopkins and Syracuse, where football great Jim Brown was also an all-American lacrosse player, have long dominated the sport.

At those schools, lacrosse players get scholarships. But at Whittier, where lacrosse is not a varsity sport, none is given. It is a club sport, and each player is charged yearly dues of $200 and must also furnish his own helmet, gloves and stick.

Locker, who is also the assistant admissions director at Whittier, has been the team’s only coach in its five-year history. When the club formed, Locker, who knew next to nothing about lacrosse, was its administrative adviser. He became the coach, he said, because “they couldn’t find anyone to do it.” Now, after years of attending clinics and studying, he has become well-versed in the sport’s strategies.

But Locker’s main talent is recruiting, and the Whittier roster reflects that--12 players are from Canada and 8 are from the East, including freshman attacker Derek Godfrey of Montclair, N.J., who leads the team with 51 goals. McDaniel, Locker’s assistant, said, “We offer a solid lacrosse program for the kid who wants to come to the West Coast and go to a small, liberal arts school.”

With this load of imported talent, the Poets, averaging 17.6 goals a game, are in first place in their 21-team league and are ranked 17th nationally in Division 3.

There is only one native Californian on the team, junior Bob May of La Mirada, and it surprises him to think that he is actually a lacrosse player.

“I had never heard of the game,” said May, whose only athletic competition at La Mirada High School had been cross-country. “I never thought I’d be in a contact game like this.” May said the game is fun and has gotten him in shape.

“For two years I worked at Jack in the Box and did nothing but eat,” said May, whose weight is at 160 after having ballooned to 185.

At half time, Whittier was ahead, 13-3, which had been expected, considering the weak opponent. Locker told his team: “They’re going to get frustrated as they realize this is their last 30 minutes of the season. Do not retaliate.”

Bob Roble, a sophomore midfielder from Seattle, was happy. The Poets were getting revenge on a team whose coach, Roble said, had accused the Poets of bad “keg etiquette” after an earlier game this season. It is a lacrosse tradition that the home team furnishes a keg of beer for the visitors after a game.

“He had the nerve to say our keg was 20 minutes late,” Roble said.

Whittier’s etiquette, keg and otherwise, apparently does not sit well with most opponents.

“Basically, teams don’t like us,” Roble said. “We’re kind of cocky and have an abusive crowd.” Only about 50 spectators--crowds are normally at least in the hundreds, one player said, suggesting that a lot of Friday night parties had been responsible for the small turnout--lazed on the opposite sideline from the players Saturday. Two of them were being abusive.

“Nice shorts, goalie,” one called out.

“I like them,” returned the goalie.

“Your mother wears them,” said the fan, who added a vulgarity.

This is supposed to be, like rugby, a gentlemen’s game. Referees are called “Sir.”

But when Whittier goalie Dean Farano was sent to the penalty box late in the game, he admitted that what he had said to the referee was not gentlemanly.

Farano, a sophomore from Vancouver, British Columbia, has played lacrosse for 16 years. He was also an ice hockey goalie. Looking out from his mask, he said lacrosse was tougher. “You get hit in the groin (with the ball) at least three times a game,” he said.

The game was almost over. Whittier kept scoring so often that some of the players seemed to develop a blase attitude on the sidelines, moaning about the lack of competition--”They’re so bad.”

The Whittier team has a reputation of having a bunch of characters. Farano laughed at that. “We have our punk rockers and our surfers,” Farano said.

And the Poets also have Tom Keilty, a Canadian midfielder who is running for student body president.

Sophomore midfielder Adam Kurtenbach, son of a former National Hockey League player, tried to think of all the characters.

“Kitt Clark is a music major, he’s just amazing on the piano at our sing-alongs,” Kurtenbach said. “And we have a Rhodes Scholar finalist, Bill Ludlam. He practices lacrosse, then goes and does his homework--a long, long time.”

Ludlam, a senior defenseman and goalie who learned the game in New Jersey, is a premed major.

“We have strong students and guys who just like to have fun,” Ludlam said. “This team probably has the highest morale of any I’ve been on. No one is really nasty to anybody.”

The final score was a nasty 23-7 but the Poets were gentlemen afterward, congratulating the Claremont players who warned them that next week might not be so easy.

Whittier plays Stanford Friday night in the playoff semifinals in Santa Barbara. If it wins, Whittier will meet UC Santa Barbara or San Diego State for the league championship Sunday afternoon in Santa Barbara. Tougher competition to be sure, but the cocky Poets know there is no rhyme or reason why they should lose. HOW THE GAME IS PLAYED

* Ten men to a team--a goalie, 3 defensemen, 3 midfielders, 3 attackers.

* The ball is white, made of hard rubber and the is size of a tennis ball.

* The game is played on a 110-yard-long field with the goals 80 yards apart.

* Players use sticks made of wood or aluminum with net pockets attached, in which the ball is caught. The goalie’s stick pocket is larger than the other players’ stick pockets.

* The object is to shoot the ball into a 6-foot-wide by 6-foot-high goal cage.

* The players wear helmets, shoulder pads, jerseys and shorts.

* There are four 15-minute quarters.

* As in hockey, players who commit penalties must spend time in a penalty area, allowing the other team to have a man advantage.

* You can check another player with your body, hitting him anywhere but below the knee, in the throat or in the back. It’s a penalty if you slash a player with your stick, but you can hit his stick with yours.