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ALUMNI REFLECTIONS
As a spunky,
overactive kid
growing up
in Flushing,
Queens, I cut
my athletic teeth
playing football
and baseball
in the city
parks. The city
streets were the
venue for our
neighborhood
roller hockey,
punchball,
and stickball
games. In 1951,
at age 13, I
graduated from
Saint Mary’s
Elementary
School. By
September of
that year our
family moved
to Mineola in Nassau County. According to my 13-year
old odometer that was a million miles away. I was playing
football for the Mineola freshman team and the word
lacrosse was not even in my vocabulary.
That spring of 1952 my new friends and football teammates
lured me away from baseball by taking me to watch a strange
game called lacrosse. The Manhasset Lacrosse Club was
playing the New Jersey Lacrosse Club and I fell in love
with the game in the first 10 minutes and baseball became
a thing of the past in my life. I was on the Mineola team,
playing defense the next week. The first lacrosse game I ever
played in was only the second game I had ever seen. I didn’t
even know all the rules yet, but I knew not to let my man
score. Coach Pete Kuchinski ran the show for Mineola and I
was having one of the greatest experiences of my young life.
There were only five high schools playing lacrosse in
Nassau County in those days and not one school district in
Suffolk County fielded a team. The Metropolitian Lacrosse
League was the only competitive scholastic lacrosse
association in the greater New York Metropolitian area
within a 150-mile radius. Mineola, Sewanaka, Garden City,
Manhasset and Freeport made up the Long Island contingent,
while Brooklyn Poly Prep, Peekskill Academy and New York
Military Academy from Cornwall on Hudson rounded out the
eight-team league. We played each other twice in a home and
home series giving us a 14-game schedule. To the best of my
memory there was no other high school competitive program
in New York State, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
Rhode Island, Delaware or Massachusetts at that time. There
were no playoffs then but at season’s end two All-Star teams
were chosen by the coaches. and a final game was played
in June in the stadium at Jones Beach State Park. This All-
Scholastic honor team competition was the Super Bowl of
high school lacrosse throughout the 1950’s. The thrill of my
life was when I was selected to participate in that game in
the Spring of 1955.
Meanwhile Coach Howard “Howdy” Myers left Johns
Hopkins University after three National Championship
victories and signed on with Hofstra College as
athletic director, head football coach and head lacrosse
coach. Howdy had come north to put Hofstra on the football
and lacrosse map. In the fall of 1955 I joined the Hofstra
Football/Lacrosse family, just three months after Howdy’s
team had beaten national power Rutgers to win the Laurie
Cox Division Lacrosse Championship. This was an NCAA
version of a National Championship since the playoff system
had not yet been developed. From 1950 until the late 1970’s
Howdy had not only put Hofstra on the map but he was a
prime mover in helping to develop high school lacrosse
throughout Nassau and Suffolk Counties by contributing
equipment and conducting clinics and on the field
demonstrations at countless high schools in the area.
My lacrosse experience at Hofstra was more than wonderful.
Howdy developed very successful programs and the
Dutchmen of Hofstra were constant residents of the top 15
or 20 teams in the nation against competition such as Army,
Rutgers, Virginia, Penn State, Penn, Duke, Loyola (MD),
Harvard, University of Baltimore, Ohio State and others. We
never played with any other type of lacrosse stick but
wooden. Actually it was a conglomeration of wood, leather,
cat gut, and string. Breaking or snapping the wooden head
or handle of your stick back in the day was paramount to
losing a very close relative. It was every lacrosse player’s
nightmare and the saddest day in the life of a “Lax Man” was
to hear the snap of wood while scooping a loose ground ball.
Some of the happiest moments of my athletic life at Hofstra
involved stepping on the field to represent my school,
winning the opening face-off, and bringing the ball down
to the attack to set up for a goal. As head coach of the Half
Hollow Hills East High School lacrosse program for 11
seasons, I used what I had learned from my experiences at
Mineola and most certainly at Hofstra to help my teams win
146 games in 11 seasons. I loved Hofstra back in the day, I
loved Hofstra during my 25-year football/lacrosse coaching
experience and the connection continues 55 years later.
As we grow older our personality builds as a result of life
experiences. In part I am the result of the efforts of the
dedicated coaches I had in lacrosse and football, who cared
enough to spend the time helping me to develop into a decent
human being. They helped mold my personality and launch
my coaching career. Hofstra was then and is now a major
factor in my life.
Lou DiBlasi
Hofstra Lacrosse
1955-61
2010 Hofstra Men’s Lacrosse — 11