John Danowski helps bring Duke lacrosse back

Steven Marcus

12:06 PM EDT, May 9, 2008

The cycle of reviled to revered is almost complete for Duke men's lacrosse. The remaining athletic validation could be just two weeks away if the best-known lacrosse team in America can win its first NCAA title.

Duke lacrosse is no longer surrounded by the firestorm that polarized the university while exoriating the sport and athletes who played it.

Justice, so often questioned in the months of insinuations and allegations of sexual assault, eventually prevailed. But credibility takes time to be restored. As is turned out, the person most responsible for that would be John Danowski, who was coaching at Hofstra during the frantic period at Duke.

Danowski was worrying from afar about his own son, Matt, a member of the Duke team. Matt and, as it turned out, none of his teammates were involved in whatever story was being concocted. But all were essentially pictured as co-conspirators as the salacious tale of the supposed victim unfolded.

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Even before all of the legal issues began to be rectified, Danowski, named coach for the 2007 season, was able to put lacrosse back on the fast track of respectability. He was the rallying force behind which Duke rebuilt its reputation.

Now, as the NCAA Tournament begins, full circle would be Danowksi and his son sharing the spotlight of a national championship. Coach Danowski helped repair Duke's image by declaring open house for his team. No player was hidden from the media. No question or topic was off base. No public relations or university official stood in his way. That was the way he worked at Hofstra for decades.

It all started during the 2007 season, when the wounds were still fresh for Danowksi and Duke. Danowski was basically out of a coaching job at Hofstra, and Duke, trying to figure out which way to go after the scandal that wasn't, decided that Danowski was the one man who could bring Duke lacrosse back.

Duke is only two years removed from the very incendiary situation that was about to bring down not only its program, but also perhaps others. Words like "elitist" and "sense of entitlement" were callously thrown around when describing those who play lacrosse. The ammunition seemed to be in place for a general denunciation of the sport.

Duke was the catalyst, with a team that seemed to be running amok.

To be sure, coaching and institutional control had been lacking. An off-campus party with underage drinking and the calling in of strippers was not the image-maker Duke coveted. It all boiled over with a false allegation of sexual assault, aided and abetted by a so-called "rogue" prosecutor. The case fell apart, but the damage had already been done to the reputations of individuals and a university. Also, the sport.

College lacrosse was under siege and picked apart for its composition, which is mostly white, mostly suburban, and most often from the top of the economic ladder -- at least at the prominent schools. But on the whole, there are more players on financial aid than the misnomer that it is populated by sons of the country club.

Lacrosse is a niche sport. It has a big following, but mostly in the northeast. It is played with sticks, but it is not baseball. It can be rough, but it's not football. If you don't understand it, you probably do not like it.

Thus, it became an easy target. Why would a university of Duke's repute put up with such gross behavior by a team that now threatened to undermine legendary Duke basketball? Faculty, staff and some administrators within Duke piled on, so did the media. We call it a feeding frenzy and many, fueled by a zealot of a prosecutor, had a gluttonous appetite.

Would lacrosse, suspended at Duke for most of the 2006 season, return at all? And if it did not at Duke, would other schools follow and drop the non-revenue producing sport?

Leading the charge against Duke was the prosecutor and he eventually paid with his career. What Danowski had to do was rebuild the team not only for Duke, but in a sense, the entire sport. He did both. During this season, he said normalcy had returned. "They cheer us at home and boo us [in an athletic sense] on the road."

Danowski's team, which is led by his son, came close last year before losing in the title game to Johns Hopkins. Falling one game short made it a no-brainer for fifth-year senior Matt Danowski to return, even though he could have started making money playing professionally and embarking on what surely will be a successful coaching or administrative role in the sport.

This Memorial Day should belong to Duke and the Danowski family.