Starting Lacrosse Program, Don Daubney

Lacrosse  at Lakeland Middle School, 1976

I am taking a look at my lacrosse career through the lens of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers. It argues that success is a combination of opportunities, timing, and people in one's life. I talked about Elliot stark starting lacrosse in Croton-on-Harmon just before my family moved to Croton in the late 1960s. Without Elliot Stark there might not have been lacrosse in my town and in my life. Next there was Croton Harmon middle school physical education teacher, Don Daubney, a University of Rhode Island grad, who taught a soft stick and soft ball lacrosse unit to my eighth grade class. That rare exposure to the lacrosse in Westchester County at the time was crucial in my career. I would guess that less than half of the county’s public schools had lacrosse as part of their physical education curriculum and my tiny public school system was one of them. Thereafter Daubney ran a boys 8^th grade summer recreation program that lasted about three or four weeks. We learned the basics and once we had them down, the summer program culminated with a game against the Lakeland/Walter Panas recreation program. Like Elliot Stark, Daubney gave me a rare opportunity to play the game of lacrosse.

Excerpts from Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, The Story of Success: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html

Interview with Malcom Gladwell on Outliers: [Listen Now 4 min 31 sec] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz4hPbHIZ6Y

Croton and Yorktown Lacrosse: http://lacrossememoir.blogspot.com/2010/01/be-steve-mabus-in-your-lacrosse-world.html