The Great Lengths Volunteer Coaches Go to for Patches of Green

After selling insurance all week, Joesph Privitelli was not pleased to be spending five hours last Saturday mowing the lawn at the Verrazano Sports Complex in Brooklyn.But it could have been worse. If it had rained that day, the poorly drained field would have been waterlogged and unusable, and if Mr. Privitelli were not friendly with the head of a Brooklyn youth soccer league, who lets him use the field free of charge, he doesn’t know where his team would play.Mr. Privitelli is among dozens of volunteer coaches in New York City who had to go to great lengths to secure practice space for their teams to prepare for the 2005 Empire State Summer Games, which began yesterday in the Hudson Valley.Since New York’s amateur Olympics was first held in 1978, the city’s athletes of high school age have fared poorly in field sports in the competition, which also involves athletes from the Adirondack, Hudson Valley, Long Island, Central, and Western regions. None of the 73 gold medals won by New York City individuals and teams through 2004 came from the city’s scholastic field hockey, lacrosse, or soccer teams.“One of the main reasons outdoor sports in the city are never going to excel is because there are no facilities,” Mr. Privitelli, coach of the Empire State Games boys’ soccer team, said.“It’s one of those ‘I know a guy’ kind of things,” the coach of the girls’ soccer team, Celia Moser, said of finding a field. Her team practices at O’Connor Field in Bayside, Queens, because the high school coach of a girl on her team had a permit for it.The coach of the boys’ lacrosse team for 13 years, Ken Cook, learned the importance of making connections the hard way. Ten years ago, he and his players woke up before dawn to practice from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. at the Great Lawn in Central Park. That was also the time when dogs could be let off their leashes.“We had to fight with the dog owners,” he said. “It was a war every morning.”Over the years, Mr. Cook cultivated relationships with the lacrosse coach at St. John’s University and with the Columbia alumni parents of his players. Now his team splits its time between the St. John’s Queens campus and Columbia’s Baker Field, which boasts new turf. His team does have to pay for field time at both venues, but he gets a discount rate.The coach of the Empire State girls’ lacrosse team, Kate Delp, also made the mistake of holding her team’s practice at Central Park. The athletes were kicked off by a park official, who said they were making divots when they picked up balls. “In all my years playing, coaching, and watching boys’ and girls’ lacrosse, I have never seen one divot,” an exasperated Ms. Delp said. She now rents field space from the Trinity School, the City College of New York, and Columbia, at nightly rates of between $100 and $250.“We can’t go knocking on doors, asking for donations,” she said. Although there is no official fee for playing on any Empire Games team, parents end up footing the bill for the fields by making contributions.A shortage of field space may hurt the city’s teams, but Ms. Delp called that excuse “a cop-out.” She said lacrosse suffers most from a lack of exposure, and the boys’ and girls’ soccer coaches concurred that their teams were hurt by league coaches who would not let their kids participate in the games. Euclid Mahon, who coached the games’ field hockey team for 16 years, quit a few years ago because he was getting 12 girls trying out for 16 spots.Despite hurdles, New York City’s coaches are going into the three-day, five-game round-robin with optimism.“My girls look amazing,” Ms. Delp said. “For the first time ever, we might have a chance to win one game.”

The Great Lengths Volunteer Coaches Go to for Patches of Green

The Great Lengths Volunteer Coaches Go to for Patches of Green

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