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It was a late winter evening and practice was ending. Ricardo Quinonez, Jr., a hip, African American high school senior sporting long hair asked his coach if he could talk to the team. Coach Doug Mills of Carrollton Boosters said he still gets goosebumps thinking about it, that moment he knew his high school lacrosse team was going to do something special this season.

“Three or four weeks ago, I thought I’d never play lacrosse again,” Quinonez said to his team. “Now, a month later, I’m getting ready to play a game with my new team. I’m coming to play tomorrow with all my heart and soul. You guys do the same.”

The next day, they arrived in Mandeville and faced their impeccably outfitted opponents.

“We looked like the Bad News Bears,” Mills said, laughing at the memory. “Some of our players had uniforms, but they didn’t match, and some were wearing old practice pennies … we looked like a bunch of misfits.”

Outfits aside, his gut feeling inspired by Quinonez’s words the night before was validated as the team won the faceoff and then their first goal. They went on to win the match, 10-0.

In January, Mills got a call from the lacrosse coach from Walter L. Cohen High School. Without the previous year’s seniors, Cohen’s team was one player short. Mills jumped at the opportunity to roll the Cohen students into his high school lacrosse team at Carrollton.

Like a scene from a movie, nine African American players walked toward nine white players for the first time.

“They all came together and kind of looked at each other,” said Mills. “One of the kids from Cohen said, ‘Hey, just a bunch of dudes who want to play lacrosse.’ That’s all that was ever said.”

Lacrosse is the fastest-growing sport in America, a phenomenon Mills attributes to two dynamics in the New Orleans area:

“One, they absolutely positively love this game,” Mills said. “They come, they learn it and they love it.”

The second dynamic, Mills explained, is a number of athletes looking to get away from football, boosting lacrosse’s popularity.

“As the younger kids look to pick a school,” Mills said, “they tell me their parents don’t want them to play high school football, they’re not good enough to make the high school basketball or baseball team, so what are they going to play? Lacrosse gives kids an opportunity to play.”

Mills got involved in the sport after his oldest son was forced to quit football while recovering from mononucleosis. His son played lacrosse his junior and senior years, made all-state, went to a state championship—lost, but had a great experience, Mills said.

In 2010, Mills went to the board at Carrollton and proposed a lacrosse program. “They said, ‘that’s great, but you’ve got to do everything.’”

So Mills did. Having never played himself, he recruited coaches who played high school or college lacrosse and focused on the fundamentals. The program started with 17 players (one of whom had experience) in brackets ranging from under-11, under-13, under-15, and high school. By the third year, he had 40+ kids in the program and the high school lacrosse team “started to get some seasoning to them” as kids with experience moved up. Last year, there were 80 boys, and a girl’s team was added.

This year, with 100+ boys, 20 girls, and 15 volunteer coaches in the overall program, Mills was honored in January at the U.S. Lacrosse National Convention in Baltimore with the “Excellence in Growing the Game” award, given to an individual who tirelessly develops lacrosse in a geographic area.

“Nobody in the Deep South has ever won this award,” Mills said. “We’re so glad that Louisiana and lacrosse were mentioned on the national stage. After five years of blood, sweat, and tears, it was great. But I could name a dozen people who deserve it more than I do because so many people are involved in this program.”

Jackie Smart, the owner of Southern Lacrosse, was one of the parents who nominated Mills for the award. She said her son’s lacrosse experience was transformed under Mills’s leadership and vision for the team.

“Everyone—coaches, parents, and players—was clear the goal was to learn, share the excitement, and to allow the boys to have fun,” Smart said. Smart’s son, Michael, is now captain of his Jesuit High School lacrosse team.

This summer will mark Mills’s 22^nd year involved with Carrollton. His youngest son, who started playing at Carrollton, now plays for his high school team.

“Carrollton’s been around for 60 years, and do you know how many people we’ve sent pro?” Mills asked. “I can think of 2: Eli and Peyton [Manning]. I tell parents if your mindset is that your kids will play pro, you’re totally missing the point.”

The point, Mills said, is that playing sports teaches kids the values of discipline, teamwork, respect, and perseverance.

His high school lacrosse team took that lesson one step further and developed relationships across socio-economic lines.

“So many of those inner-city relationships are on the periphery, in passing,” Mills said. “I’m so glad we merged those teams, I loved seeing these kids, whose paths would’ve otherwise never crossed, come together and play.”

For more information, visit www.carroltonboosters.org and click on the lacrosse link.

Originally published in the New Orleans Advocate, May 20, 2015.