The following article was reprinted with permission from Lacrosse Magazine. It illustrates the impact FCA Lacrosse members have on their campus. To check out more info about FCA's Lacrosse ministry click on www.fcalax.org.

When the pairings for the men’s and women’s NCAA Division III lacrosse tournaments came out last May, you may have noticed an unfamiliar name – Gordon College.

The tiny Christian school in Wedham, Mass., saw both their men’s and women’s teams win the Commonwealth Coast Conference championship and advance to the NCAA tournament for the first time last year.

Gordon is anything but your typical lacrosse school. It’s not even your typical Christian school. Despite the success on the field, lacrosse continues to be just a small part of players’ lives at Gordon College – lives that are deeply rooted in their relationships with God and their relationships with each other.

“These players don’t just go to church on Sunday,” said Kevin Dugan, first-year head men’s lacrosse coach at Gordon. “Everyone is first and foremost a Christian. That is how these students identify themselves first and foremost. They wake up everyday and wear that on their sleeves.”

All incoming students at Gordon are required to sign a statement of faith in which they pledge that they are in fact Christians, and believe that Jesus Christ is their lord and savior. They are also required to attend chapel a minimum of two times a week, although many attend more than two, and alcohol is not allowed on campus and is not served at any college events.

“If you come to campus, you talk to our guys and they’re still typical lacrosse guys,” said Dugan. “They look like lacrosse players, they have their scruffy hair, they’re just not running around getting drunk all the time.”

While some might think it difficult to recruit talented student-athletes to a dry, deeply religious campus, the reputation of Gordon College is spreading throughout the Christian community in the United States. As word spreads, Gordon is quickly becoming an easy choice for Christian lacrosse players.

“We’re a niche market,” added Dugan. “A lot of kids find us, and in that way kids can kind of recruit themselves. But we’re starting to develop relationships with high school coaches who can tell us if they have a kid who fits our profile.”

Dugan is in his first year at Gordon, inheriting a program from Skip Milne that went 10-6 last season, winning the CCC and losing to SUNY-Cortland, 19-2, in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Among Dugan’s first orders of business is to take a more active role in recruiting.

“As an institution we have a national recruiting base, but as an athletic department we haven’t yet built that strong foundation,” said Gordon College Athletic Director Joe Hakes, who hired Dugan. “We have the ability to draw student-athletes from all over the country, from the Mid-Atlantic region all the way to California.”

And Dugan is wasting no time in beginning to build that foundation. He has already developed a strong relationship with Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) Lacrosse, based out of Maryland. In fact, when the team traveled to California March 8 to play Whittier College, Gordon coaches and players held several FCA Lacrosse-sponsored youth clinics. Members of the team led Sunday School at the Calvary Baptist Church.

“Hopefully we can get all the kids from the clinics to come out to the game,” said Dugan before the trip. “It’s a great recruiting tool and it’s great for the sport of lacrosse.”

Warren Shumate, a junior long-stick midfielder from Calvert, Md., learned about Gordon when he attended an FCA Lacrosse camp while in high school. Shumate was looking at some Division I schools, but he quickly realized that Gordon would be the perfect place to play lacrosse.

“I never dreamed I would go to a Division III school, but when I visited, the people here were just amazing,” said Shumate. “There’s something about the Christian atmosphere, it’s very accepting, and the team has a brotherhood that I didn’t feel when I visited other schools.”

That brotherhood stems from time spent together both on and off the lacrosse field. Every Thursday night the team meets with their coaches for Bible study. They sit down to eat a meal as a team and discuss a chapter from the Bible and how they can apply it to their play on the lacrosse field.

“We all live on the same floor, we all hang out together, it’s really tough to explain to other people that aren’t a part of it,” explained Shumate. “We have continuity on the field, and I think our opponents can feel it.”

The closeness also comes from experiences like the one Shumate and teammate Jon Harshaw experienced last summer. The teammates spent the summer in Guatemala serving as missionaries, building churches and assisting the nation’s poorest citizens.

“Spending an entire summer with a teammate in a third-world country, you develop a bond that you really can’t measure or put into words,” said Shumate.

While Shumate found Gordon through the FCA, other players have found different routes to Gordon. Junior midfielder Dan Mitchell, the team’s leading scorer last season, transferred to Gordon from a Division III school in Pennsylvania after only a semester. He learned about Gordon from Harshaw, his friend and high school teammate, who had enrolled at Gordon that fall. Now the two are teammates in college as well.

“The first school I went to took partying to a whole new level,” said Mitchell. “It distracted me from my studies and it distracted me from lacrosse. At Gordon, I’m able to focus on my studies and lacrosse has been a lot of fun.”

Michael Neumann, a freshman from Fallston, Md., played lacrosse on a club team that was made up exclusively of home-schooled Christian athletes. The Christian Homeschool Education Network (CHEN) out of Bel Air, Md., competed against many of the top-notch club teams in Maryland and Northern Virginia.

“I learned about Gordon from a friend of my sister, and my parents really wanted me to go to a Christian college,” said Neumann. “I thought about playing lacrosse at a big-time Division I school, but I knew it would be a huge distraction from God, from lacrosse and from academics. Here I can focus on things outside of lacrosse comfortably. Even though I haven’t played a game yet for Gordon, I already know I made the right decision.”

The men’s team isn’t the only lacrosse program making noise in the Division III lacrosse ranks. The women’s team not only made the NCAA tournament last season, it won a first-round game, defeating Cabrini College, 15-8, before falling to the College of New Jersey in the Round of 16.

Fourth-year head coach Cory Ward, who’s also the head field hockey coach at Gordon, also points to his team’s closeness as the primary reason for success.

“We don’t have the most talented girls in the nation, but we do have one of the strongest teams in the nation,” said Ward. “Our girls care for each other, they want to succeed for each other and for God, and a lot of time that turns into a victory.”

Like the men’s team, the women’s team also holds a weekly Bible study session and is busy with off-the-field activities. Over the past year, it raised money for a spring trip to Florida by baby-sitting, cleaning houses, and shoveling snow. The team spent a week in Florida in early March practicing and then played Ithaca College in West Palm Beach.

“We’re a very relaxed team and we’re all dedicated to playing hard for each other and having fun out on the field,” said Rebecca Lambertson, a junior captain from Cumberland, Maine, and whose older sister, Ruth, played soccer and lacrosse at Gordon. “Gordon is a special place to be, and our team is a special group of girls.”

Like Dugan and the men’s program, Ward is beginning to become more actively involved in recruiting.

“I’ve gotten more tied in with the FCA since Kevin [Dugan] came here,” said Ward. “We’re trying to build an established recruiting base, and down the road, the FCA will be our main tunnel for recruits.”

Dugan’s and Ward’s task will be made easier thanks to a new $4 million lighted artificial turf field that will be used primarily for lacrosse. Construction is set to begin in the spring and the new facility is expected to be ready for the 2005 season.

“There are sports in which we can be very successful at both a regional and national level, and I believe that lacrosse is one of those sports,” said Hakes. “We’ve tried to up the ante in everything that we do. Both Kevin and Cory have a real sense of building a program here.”

“I really envy the younger kids,” said Shumate, a junior. “I mean I’ll see some of it, but with a new coach and the new facility, I think we can be one of the top 20 or even top 10 teams in the nation on a consistent basis. It’s impressive to see what’s happening here with lacrosse, and I believe strongly that we’ll be back in the NCAA tournament this season.”