Duke’s Dan Loftus, left, Dan Theodoridis, Coach John Danowski and Michael Hutchings with Victoria Heaton at Ronald McDonald House.

May 18, 2008

Lacrosse Teams Form Bonds in Durham

By PETE THAMEL

The reverberations from the false accusations against members of the Duke lacrosse team more than two years ago are still felt throughout the campus and the community of Durham, N.C. Lawsuits linger, controversy simmers over Duke players’ being granted an extra season of eligibility, and players say they occasionally detect tension when they wear Duke lacrosse gear around town.

But perhaps the most overlooked result of the turmoil can be found on the Duke campus at the Ronald McDonald House of Durham. When John Danowski became the lacrosse coach before last season, he required his players to perform community service.

Last year, Danowski had to lobby officials at the Ronald McDonald House to let his players volunteer there. The women’s team joined the men’s team this year as consistent volunteers. In two years, the bond between Duke lacrosse and the Ronald McDonald House has grown so strong that Danowski and the Duke women’s coach, Kerstin Kimel, have been named honorary co-chairmen of a fund-raising program to help support its expansion.

“Just by them reaching out and asking myself and Coach Kimel, I don’t think they would have asked lacrosse coaches to do that in the past,” Danowski said. “That’s not anything negative, but usually that’s a Coach K thing or a football or women’s basketball thing. It’s become a lacrosse thing, and that’s awesome.”

The Ronald McDonald House, which provides a place to stay for the families of seriously ill children who are receiving treatment at nearby hospitals, is on the Duke campus. During the last two years, the Duke men’s and women’s lacrosse players have cooked meals for families and volunteered for events. The men’s team again donated the proceeds from a lacrosse clinic, more than $1,000, to the house. Danowski’s wife, Patricia, has become a frequent volunteer.

The Duke lacrosse programs are so tied into the house that the players have become competitive over which team prepares better meals for the families. The early verdict, according to Noreen Strong, the executive director of the Ronald McDonald House of Durham, is that the men’s team has an edge because of its homemade mashed potatoes and eggplant rollatini.

“They don’t just come in and cook the meals and go home,” she said. “They connect with the families.”

The lacrosse players have helped put smiles on the faces of youngsters like 13-year-old Victoria Heaton, who has gone to the Ronald McDonald House sporadically for the last three years while having operations related to spina bifida. The Heaton family lives in Statesville, N.C., about 125 miles west of Durham, and just finished a six-week stay at the house.

Heaton’s mother, Anna, said that the Duke players always dropped down on a knee to talk with Victoria, who is in a wheelchair.

“They’re a long-distance family,” Anna Heaton said of the Duke players. “Victoria loves it. Now when we go up for appointments here and there, she’s always wanting the Duke lacrosse team to be there.”

With Danowski and Kimel as honorary co-chairmen of the fund-raising campaign, Duke lacrosse will probably have a presence in the Ronald McDonald House for years.

Kimel’s affinity for the Ronald McDonald House comes in part because her daughter, Caroline, was born two months premature in 2000 and spent time in a neonatal intensive-care unit. Kimel lives two miles from the hospital and did not need the services of the Ronald McDonald House while her daughter was in the hospital. But the experience gave her an understanding of the stress that accompanies an extended stay in a hospital.

It also helped her forge bonds with families who were dealing with the problems associated with premature births. Those families, in turn, have been delighted to see a perfectly healthy 7-year-old Caroline, who weighed three and a half pounds when she was born.

Kimel said she thought the expanded Ronald McDonald House could become part of the lacrosse teams’ legacies. “To me as a coach,” she said, “that’s as important as anything that I can coach.”

Two campaigns are raising money for the new Ronald McDonald House in Durham. One is focusing on bigger donors, with the goal of raising $25 million to build a new Ronald McDonald House. The new house would nearly triple the number of available rooms to 75. Last year, the Ronald McDonald House in Durham handled 742 families, but had to turn away more than 600 because of space limitations.

The other campaign, called the Hearts of Hope Society, is the one that Kimel and Danowski are working on. That campaign is trying to raise money to support the operating costs for the new house, which will be $1.2 million to $1.5 million a year.

The support from Kimel and Danowski has been appreciated by George Grody, the campaign’s chairman and a former executive with Procter & Gamble.

“A lot of times they’ll go pull out some celebrity who may not have anything to do with the charity or the house,” Grody said. “But both of the lacrosse teams are involved and obviously care about the families there.”

Grody, who is now a marketing instructor at Duke and a special assistant to the athletic director, is leading the campaign that is trying to raise $250,000 by the end of the year.

The postseason is a more immediate concern for the lacrosse teams, which have a lot of support at the Ronald McDonald House. The Duke women’s team played Saturday at Maryland in the N.C.A.A. quarterfinals. The men’s team plays Ohio State on Sunday in Ithaca, N.Y.

“It would be a wonderful close to a horrible story,” Karen Morgan, the volunteer coordinator for the house, said of the prospect of the top-ranked Duke men’s team winning the national title. “I’m happy for them.”

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