Duke is far from bereft of a lacrosse tradition, but it's one whose highlights go back many decades.
The championship team of 1946 handled Maryland. Five years later, the Blue Devils beat Johns Hopkins and Navy and were voted No. 2 in the USILA rankings. However, the program slipped and was relegated to club status in 1965, and it was another two decades before the sport took off again in Durham.
"There was moderate success in the 1980s, but all the ingredients were here," said Mike Pressler, the Duke coach since 1991. "You had a great academic institution with the necessary athletic support. It was in a great part of the country, and you saw that [North] Carolina could do it in the South.
"When I came here, I felt our goal shouldn't be just to be competitive, but to play for the whole thing."
That's what the Blue Devils will do this weekend, when they crash the Final Four at Byrd Stadium. It will be the 15th straight visit for Syracuse and the third in the 1990s for host Maryland. No. 1 Princeton is favored to win it for the fourth time in six years, but first it must deal with Duke, which has never advanced this far.
The Blue Devils don't plan on bowing to the crowd and heading home tomorrow, because they have everything a Final Four team needs.
There is a dependable goalie in Joe Kirmser and a record-setting goal-getter in junior John Fay. Jim Gonnella and Scott Diggs may be the nation's best midfield combination, and there's enough talent in the back that Tyler Hardy, Defenseman of the Year in 1996, moved to the long-stick midfield this spring.
Duke also has gotten solid work from its front office, where
Pressler has shown himself to be one of the game's up-and-coming coaches.
Pressler, 37, is in his seventh season at Duke. He had two top-ranked teams in five seasons at Ohio Wesleyan, but always beat his head against the Hobart wall in Division III. There were two seasons as an assistant at Army -- yes, he enlisted -- and before that, he oversaw VMI's move from club to intercollegiate status.
Fresh out of Washington and Lee, Pressler was all of 23 when he got the VMI job. Recruiting is a tad easier in Durham than it was in Lexington, Va., but he still looks for the same qualities in a prospect.
"I was a football player in college," said Pressler, a Division III All-American nose guard. "We accentuate the physical part of the game, especially on defense. I'm not so concerned with the lacrosse pedigree -- who someone played for -- as much as I am in the fact that he's an athlete."
