It’s a sunny day with a light breeze as the lacrosse team strolls into the St. Mary’s High School football stadium in Stockton on March 21. The St. Mary’s JV team is already in their gear and warming up on the far end of the field.

At this point it’s calm. Coaches Brooke Wells, Mark Whitney and Andy Cunningham meander through the 19-odd boys as they don their shoulder pads and helmets.

Head coach Wells has been playing lacrosse ever since he learned about the game as an impressionable fourth grader outside of Philadelphia, where he grew up.

“There was a fifth-grade teacher who played, and he ran a mini course,” Wells said. “I liked it immediately. It ran into baseball season, but in baseball you don’t get the ball that much—I wasn’t patient enough for that.”

Wells played on Haverford College’s varsity team, then for a semi-professional team in New Orleans, where an Iroquois Indian told him about the origins of the game.


Lacrosse began, according to Wells, with the Iroquois Indians and was very different from the game known today. The sport was called Little Brother of War.

There were no boundaries, people carried two sticks (one for carving your way through the masses and the other for cradling the ball) and there were no limits to the number of people allowed on the playing field.

Wells said that he used to hear stories about the rules of the ancient game in the locker room before matches.

The team’s other coaches also have a lot of experience that allows them to help the many inexperienced players. Whitney played in high school and at Bowdoin College, and Cunningham played for Menlo College.

“Hey, guys, bring it in!” senior defender Cabot Jackman yells to the team during warm-ups.

The team circles around Jackman and Hutchinson to stretch. Wells walks around the middle of the circle, at one point looking like a god that the boys pray to as they bow their heads in a leg stretch.

“Get hot, boys, let’s get hot,” Wells repeats several times. “Come on, Caleb. Let’s go, buddy.”

“Come in, red,” Wells says. “Everyone lock and load. Get the ball and run our plays, and we’ll win the game.”

“Country Day on three. One, two, three: Country Day!”


The starters from each team line up across from each other at midfield and walk forward to shake their opponents’ hands.

Then Hutchinson takes his place in the center of the field for the faceoff against a St. Mary’s player.

Hutchinson’s broad shoulders aim directly at his opponent, as he gets low enough to the ground that only a couple inches separate his legs from the turf. He freezes, body in the low, athletic position, as the ref says “Down. Set,” then blows the whistle.

The struggle lasts only a few seconds, after which a green St. Mary’s jersey break free with the ball.

“Win the ball to win the game, boys,” Wells says from the sideline, where he paces back and forth in front of the bench.

At the score table, the sound of stats being recorded is a continuous stream. The announcer calls out the numbers of players who take a shot, get an assist, pick up a ground ball, get a save or get put in the penalty box for a foul.

The first rest comes after the first quarter, when a siren like a police car’s sounds.

“If you do not have a player, you are in the wrong place,” Wells tells the boys in their huddle. “If two of you have the same player, one of you is in the wrong place.”

After a short break the team takes the field again.

At the end of the second quarter, the piercing sound of an air horn blasts, signifying halftime.

Junior Morgan Bennett-Smith has scored three goals, but the Cavs still trail 3-6 at the half.

They take off their helmets, revealing exhausted sweat-drenched faces as they trudge towards their corner of the field for a halftime talk.

“Who here knows what a slide is?” Hutchinson asks his team. “Because that guy just came around the crease, and we should have absolutely wrecked him.”

The crease is the nine-foot circle around the goal, where the goalie has sole control of the ball. Then Wells comes over, crouches in front of the guys and tells them he loves the way they’re taking their shots.


Those who know Wells may associate him with his Quaker roots or his love of poetry and the acoustic guitar.

The physical, sometimes dangerous, sport of lacrosse may not seem like the most logical fit for this gentle English teacher, but Wells says he never thought of sports as “violent.”

In fact, Wells’s grandfather, a Quaker preacher, was a boxer (Wells says this is before the sport was corrupted). But Wells said that the point of lacrosse is to get the ball, not to injure.

“I was a goal scorer,” Wells said. “I very rarely would just try to knock someone down. I was also much better at avoiding being hit than hitting others.”

Wells said he was quick, easily maneuvering himself out of harm’s way.

“I’m sort of tall and skinny, but I weigh a ton,” he said. “I have a lot of hidden mass. People would hit me and bounce off, even in college.”

Back in the huddle, Whitney is coaching the boys on hitting.

“I don’t want you just willy nilly hitting people,” Whitney tells the defense in the huddle. “It has got to be at the right time.”

Before the Cavs take the field for the second half, Wells gives them some words of encouragement.

“You slide hard! You slide the holy bejeezus out of it! This is our game—I believe it!”

A slide is when the defense shifts to protect the goal from an oncoming attacker. As if to emphasize the Cavs’ need to protect the goal, St. Mary’s scores within 30 seconds of the start of the second half.

With two quick fouls Hutchinson and freshman Dominic Stephen are in the penalty box, giving St. Mary’s the advantage.


Like hockey, when there is a foul, the player stays in the penalty box for 30 seconds to four minutes, leaving their team down a player. A player who receives five personal fouls is ejected from the game.

After another penalty a couple minutes later, Hutchinson scores. Thirty seconds after this, freshman attacker Skovran Cunningham gets the ball past St. Mary’s skillful goalie, putting the score at 5-8.

“C’mon, boys, pick up the ball. That’s our bread and butter,” Wells shouts from the sideline.

The siren sounds and the third quarter is over. The Cavs are still behind 5-8.

The fourth quarter goes by quickly, with one more goal by Bennett-Smith but two more for St. Mary’s.

The green mass from the St. Mary’s bench swarms their players on the field, celebrating as the Cavs skulk towards their bench.

“We keep our helmets on and we shake their hands,” says Wells.

Wells said that the team’s biggest obstacle is inexperience, for only seven boys have played the sport before this season.

Traditionally an East Coast sport, lacrosse has become increasingly popular on the West Coast in the last 15 years.

Wells thinks the interest could have come with the dot-com boom, when all the Ivy Leaguers brought the sport west with them.

Regardless of how it arrived, lacrosse has caught on fast. The pull of this action-packed sport was enough to create the largest first-year team Country Day has ever seen.

“It was (athletic director) Matt Vargo’s decision to start the team,” Wells said. “But there was a lot of interest this year (from high-school students), and there are some middle school students who are also interested.

During the after-game pizza party, Wells’s exuberance doesn’t wane. As he hands out pizza, he pats players on the shoulder, repeating, “You played really well tonight.”