Fear Factor

The upcoming Hebron season would test not only Caitlin's composure but that of the entire team. The longer Hebron's winning streak had lasted, the greater the pressure had grown to defend it. And there was more than pride and prestige at stake. Each year about a dozen Hebron lacrosse players earn at least partial scholarships to Division I colleges. This year Hebron players were being recruited by Notre Dame, Maryland and Boston College, among others. Some were following in the footsteps of their sisters. For families with two or even three daughters on the team, winning could translate into hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition money.

Caitlin was one of the few seniors who had never started before, and she wasn't being recruited by any Division I juggernauts. The coaches at small Elon University in North Carolina had expressed some interest in her, but Caitlin wasn't even sure if she wanted to keep playing lacrosse.

After almost three hours of drills, Brooke clapped her hands to signal the end of the first practice. Caitlin grabbed her water bottle and joined her teammates in a huddle on the edge of the field. Brooke addressed the players just before dusk turned to darkness and drizzle turned to downpour.

"Remember, for those of you seniors, this is your time," she said. "The tradition is yours. The streak is yours.

"You're not just going to win because you're wearing the M-H on your chest. Every team in the country is gunning for you. We're going to have to work harder than anybody if we want this program to stay at this level. And, seniors, that's your responsibility."

FOR MORE THAN A DECADE, BROOKE DESPISED MOUNT HEBRON LACROSSE AND ALL IT REPRESENTED. She took a job in Howard County in 1987, fresh out of Towson University, and traveled among the county's high schools to develop a curriculum in modern dance. She never considered coaching until 1990, when a friend asked if she would supervise the mediocre, uninspired junior varsity lacrosse team at Hammond High School. Hammond's team, like many others in Maryland, consisted mostly of girls just being introduced to lacrosse, a sport only beginning to enjoy widespread popularity. Brooke herself knew almost nothing about lacrosse -- she didn't play any team sports in high school -- but she enjoyed teaching the girls at Hammond. She agreed to try.

From the start, Brooke cared about winning. She owns season tickets to the Baltimore Ravens, and the football team's performance dictates her mood from week to week. After a win, Brooke is chatty and optimistic, friends say. After a loss, she sulks and refuses to read about the Ravens in the newspaper until the following Sunday.

Just as she expects the Ravens to win now, Brooke then expected her novice lacrosse players at Hammond to be successful. Then she took her girls to play her first game against Mount Hebron in 1991. Mount Hebron came out in its fancy, black-and-white uniforms and systematically ran up an 18-1 beating that left a handful of Brooke's Hammond players in tears. It felt like an ambush, Brooke said. As she walked off the field, she felt the sting of a lopsided loss for the first time, and she hated it. She promised never to suffer such humiliation again.

Hebron became Brooke's obsession after that. She signed up for coaching clinics. She studied videotapes of college games. Each season at Hammond, Brooke assembled fast, athletic JV teams engineered to challenge Hebron. She scouted the Vikings incessantly. When Hebron coaches scouted Hammond during its practices, Brooke stopped drills and told her players to drop their sticks and sit on the field. "I'd rather just not have practice," she told her team, "than let those coaches see anything more."

In the late 1990s, Hammond's JV team lost twice to Hebron by only one goal, while its varsity continued to lose to Hebron by 10 or 15 goals. What had once been an annual JV trouncing had developed into a heated rivalry. And then the enemy called to offer Brooke a job.

Chris Robinson, Hebron's head coach at the time, asked Brooke to become his assistant coach, with a chance to become varsity head coach if he retired. Season after season, he had watched Brooke turn teams filled with beginners into refined players who desperately wanted to win. Brooke stalked the sidelines with the intensity of a college coach. And what high school besides Hebron, Robinson asked Brooke, could accommodate that kind of competitive drive?

Brooke debated for two weeks. She loved Hammond, but that school's varsity job wouldn't come open anytime soon. She asked her husband, Tommy, who had starred in lacrosse at Towson High School, for advice.