Starting over, in more ways than one

The landscape is beautiful. One plush green field, framed by even more green, flows into another. The serenity can be soothing - the passing road, and the building just across it, seeming miles away.

Lee Krug didn't retire here.

He unretired here.

And this isn't his field of dreams.

Krug is coaching the young Octorara girls' lacrosse team in southern Chester County, and after more than three decades at Unionville and three years of retirement, he is doing things he never imagined.

He is teaching the raw Braves how to catch and throw.

"I have relearned more about the basic fundamentals this year than I have taught at the high school since I can remember," Krug says. "When you have a program that's established, there's a learning between the new players and the veterans. Just hanging around the veterans, they learn what the expectations are, and what to do.

"That doesn't exist here, or exists in very, very small quantities. You have really little of veteran players teaching beginning players what to do, because the veteran players don't know too much themselves."

He is playing girls who miss practice, because with only 12 players, he can't sit any out. And he is tolerating what he considers an unacceptable level of dedication, simply because he has no choice.

"I had to compromise a lot of my coaching principles just to put players on the field," says Krug, 63. "I mean, if I said if you miss a practice this week you're not going to start, I would have six players out there. Not that they're cutting without a reason, but they're just not willing to dedicate themselves to the game of lacrosse right now."

When it comes to the sport, Krug has learned, the distance between Unionville and Octorara is much, much greater than 15 miles.

Octorara doesn't have a middle-school or feeder program, so many girls who come out for Krug's squad have never held a lacrosse stick. The Braves are in only their second varsity season after two junior-varsity years. They are 0-8, playing a nonleague schedule, after going 1-8 last year.

The program, like its boys' counterpart, isn't an official school sport. It's a club team, funded totally by a booster club, that plays a PIAA schedule and follows PIAA rules. The boosters even pay Krug's salary. Scott Grimes, who heads the boosters, says each player pays a $150 fee.

The school district cannot fund the programs because of the "economic crisis facing public ed," athletic director Jim Weagley says.

Octorara started boys' and girls' lacrosse simultaneously. The boys' program has grown to include both a varsity and junior varsity. As of last week, the girls had only the dozen players in a sport in which teams put 12 on the field.

"I tried to prepare [Krug] as best I could," Weagley says. "The boys' program has really taken off. . . . The girls, for whatever reason, we've been spinning our wheels a little bit."

For 33 years, it was full-steam ahead for Krug at Unionville. Bolstered by a middle-school program and clinics that sometimes attracted even first graders, the Indians went 475-110-15 under Krug, and won district titles in 1991 and '92, when there was no state tournament. They had only one losing season in his three-plus decades - in his very first year.

Krug retired from teaching chemistry and coaching in 2006, hindered by an ailing left hip that made participating in practice tough. He underwent hip replacement the next year. After regaining his mobility, and having missed the challenges of coaching and the interaction with players, he decided to come back.

He sees occasional positives in his team, such as Thursday, when the Braves led Chichester for about seven minutes before losing. But he often sounds like a man plagued by buyer's remorse, and he admits to a lot of frustration.

The perceived lack of dedication fuels that.

"I think when you look at all the really good athletic programs, no matter what the sport is, you find that the players are asked to give 100 percent of their time and effort in that sport when they're supposed to do that," Krug says.

"If you have a little ache and pain, you still come out and play. You find ways to supplement your education without going on field trips if it means missing practice or a game. You do schedule your work so it doesn't conflict with a game or practice. And the parents don't ask the child to babysit when they know they have a game or practice."

How long Krug will keep going, he wouldn't say. He is putting all his energy into the rest of the season, he says, and into a clinic he will run later this week for fifth- through eighth-graders.

"We're trying to keep some future lacrosse here at Octorara," Krug says. "What I will be doing remains to be seen."