New Haddonfield coach preaching team play

Mike Walker approached the reporter about to interview him. A few teammates took notice. "Walker's back," they said, laughing. "Make sure you tell him Walker's back."

Last season after a bad game, Walker was mad at himself. So he took the liberty of completely taking over the next game, just to "score a bunch of goals so I could make up for it," he said.

"Walker's back" was what he heard from just about every one of his teammates that day.

It turned into a nickname that stuck.

The episode aptly sums up the first three years of Haddonfield boys' lacrosse: Players talented enough to take over games, but doing so in a way that made it feel more like a sandlot program than a polished one.

That was before Damon Legato stepped in, back when Walker, a senior attack, thought he knew something about the sport he had been playing since the seventh grade.

"Once Damon got here, turns out I didn't know much," said Walker, an Ithaca College recruit. "Practice is like a college practice - we're always moving, and we're moving fast.

"Games are completely different. We're running an offense; we're working as a team. It's a whole new atmosphere."

Legato is beginning his first head-coaching gig since 2005, when scheduling conflicts with his job ended a successful six-year stint at Moorestown. He led the Quakers, his alma mater, to a state title in 2001. After Moorestown, he spent a couple of years as an assistant at Eastern and a couple more coaching youth programs.

"It was really my wife who pushed me to work things out at work and get back into being a head coach," Legato said. "She saw how much I missed that competition, and I did. I'm just fortunate that I found a great opportunity at Haddonfield."

Legato takes over a Haddonfield team off to a fast start, considering it's in just its fourth year as a varsity program. The Bulldogs finished 13-6 in 2011 and bring back a veteran core, spearheaded by Walker, and talented underclassmen.

"There's a lot of individual talent and ability, both athletically and mentally. These are smart kids," Legato said. "But we've been trying to elevate the level of play and teach a little more than just going one-on-one. I think the kids are picking it up and doing a little better every time they take the field."

To be sure, Legato isn't trying to build a winning team. He wants to build a winning program. He already has put a curriculum in place, from third grade up, for the Haddonfield youth program. The Bulldogs' varsity team spends two nights per week working with that program.

"We made it a goal of ours to connect the youth with the high school," Legato said. "And the best part is that the town, the parents, they're wholly supporting it and getting behind it.

"And that's what it takes to build a program, I think. And having that base and that potential is one of the things that drew me to Haddonfield."

One of the Bulldogs' biggest surprises this preseason was their first look at their preseason schedule - lined with state and national powers such as Montclair and Prep Charter (Pa.).

"It was a little bit intimidating at first," Walker said. "We didn't beat Montclair or Prep Charter, but it was a great experience. It made us realize what we need to work on, but at the same time, we played really well and it helped us realize that we can play with them."

Those scrimmages are just part of a preseason that Walker described as intense. After all, "that intensity, the hard work, being able to see kids respond to that and succeed, is one of the things I missed most about coaching high school lacrosse," Legato said.

It's an attitude that Walker said works just fine for the Bulldogs.

"Haddonfield has always been a really competitive town," Walker said. "The lacrosse program has gotten off to a fast start.

"But we mostly just had a bunch of great athletes. No one really knew the game of lacrosse. But that's changing."